The Firstborn

Chapter Eight

Before him, there stood a wall of white. White lace, white flounces, white satin gloves and white strings of pearls around white, slender necks. Sisters, he realized. And all of them unmarried, he also realized, but a moment too late. Their mother, a most stalwart woman dressed in a vibrant orange silk creation that drained the last vestiges of color from her daughters' complexions in her proximity to them.

"Why, Lord Haughton!" she cried, and snapped her painted fan shut with a flick of her wrist. "How long it's been since you've graced our humble home with your presence!"

Our home? His mind leapt back to the invitation on his desk, the one on top of a stack of hundred others.

"Mrs. Carruthers," he said, recalling the name a mere second before he bent over her proffered hand. "How kind of you to invite me."

"Oh, well!" She waved an arm in a broad, sweeping gesture that nearly boxed the ear of her eldest daughter. "You can be a bit of a recluse, you know. I take it you're like my Richard, always poring over his ledgers and cantering about the countryside, measuring canals and pastures and—oh!—I don't know what it is that some of you men get up to in your own time. But I'm always sure to send a card your way, though it's a rare thing to see you in a ballroom, I must say!"

She laughed, high and loud, and his glance swept across the faces of her assembled daughters—four, in all—as their tired smiles became a little more pained at the edges.

"Quite rare," Haughton agreed, but without humor. Already, his gaze had traveled beyond the ring of women before him, towards the doors, and in his mind's imaginings, a straight path that would lead him back to his own dark, quiet townhouse.

"Oh, but you must have a dance!" Mrs. Carruthers said, her hand wrapping like a vise around his forearm. Though her eyes remained bright and her speech overflowing with exclamation points, he felt the strength in her fingers as she steered him toward one of her daughters, a small thing with pretty blonde curls and an unfortunate tendency to cringe every time her mother opened her mouth. "Brigitte? Stand up straight, girl! No one likes to see a slumping set of shoulders in a brand new gown!"

Brigitte mended her posture admirably, though her chin remained tucked against her chest as her cheeks burned with spots of red and pink.

"Here, you'll do for each other!" Mrs. Carruthers slapped her daughter's hand onto Haughton's arm and began waving towards the screen where the musicians were tucked away. "Ah, there we are!" she trilled as they struck up another song. "A shame dear Briggy cannot waltz yet, but a gavotte will have to suffice!"

Haughton led the poor girl out onto the floor. She was a shy thing, barely capable of making eye contact with him as moved through the patterns of the dance. Not a surprise, Haughton mused, considering both Brigitte's mother and her place in the line-up of sisters. Being neither the oldest nor the youngest, she seemed to have settled into an existence of doing as little to be seen as was necessary.

He attempted to make conversation with her, to draw her out in some way, but her gaze continually flicked back to where her mother stood, and when Haughton glanced over his shoulder, it was to see that woman miming directions to her second youngest child.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, as the dance wound to a close.

"Oh, no," she said in a faint whisper. "You are a fine dancer, my lord."

"No, I mean that I'm sorry I must return you to your mother."

She raised her chin at that, and a touch of a smile graced the corners of her mouth. She was a lovely girl, he realized. Too quiet and reticent by half, but perhaps she would improve if she ever found her way out from beneath her mother's wing.