Page 21 of Courting Miss Lancaster
“No doubt, your impatience leaves you with flat hair before the end of an evening.” Mrs. Handley sniffed.
“My curls are not created with curling papers,” Athena answered, realizing she’d been misunderstood. “They are natural.”
“Of course they are.” The comment was not merely dripping with sarcasm, it was saturated with it. “Your father. Who are his people? What sort of family connections does he have?”
Athena clasped her hands in her lap, doing her best to maintain a calm and civil demeanor. “His grandfather was Lord Henley, though the title now belongs to a somewhat distant cousin of mine.”
“That is not a barony of great significance,” Mrs. Handley said with another audible sniff.
“The baronies in your familyare,then, I assume,” Athena shot back.
Mrs. Handley’s mouth tightened, but she didn’t reply. Athena strongly suspected there were no titles, significant or otherwise, in Mrs. Handley’s family. Only a moment passed before Mrs. Handley continued her picking. “And what kind of person is your mother?” she asked, her tone indicating she expected to hear something to disapprove of.
Athena gave her a very direct look. She would not endure insults to her beloved, departed mother. So Athena selected a response she knew would close the subject. “The dead kind,” she answered, turning her face away, gazing as if mesmerized by the passing view.
The landau slowed to nearly a stop as they converged upon the congestion of Hyde Park. All around them was the noise and commotion of the fashionable hour, but amongst the passengers of the Handley carriage there was only tense silence. Mrs. Handley managed to look both indignant and frail, depending upon which of her fellow travelers she was looking at. Mr. Handley had grown felicitous to the point of being almost frantic. Athena was simply annoyed. From the moment they’d entered the carriage, Mr. Handley had essentially forgotten her existence. If only his mother had as well.
“Now. See there, Jonas,” Mrs. Handley said, breaking her blessed silence. “There is Miss Harrington. Nowsheis quite an agreeable young lady. Her uncle is an earl, you know. And her mother is the daughter of a marquess.” Mrs. Handley gave Athena a look so pointed Athena half expected to find herself bleeding from someplace vital. “And yetshedoes not put on airs. I do not think we would hear her spouting nonsense about natural curls and family connections that were not worth mentioning.”
Athena clasped her fingers more tightly, keeping herself quiet by sheer willpower. If only Adam were in the carriage at that moment. He would set the dragon to the right about!
“Quite right, Mother,” Mr. Handley agreed. That was all he’d done from the moment they’d left Falstone House. He’d simpered and fussed and agreed to every bit of nonsense that had dropped out of his mother’s mouth.
“Oh, Jonas! See. There is Mr. Windover. Do wave him over. I simply must speak with him.”
Harry? Athena shifted in her seat enough to peer in the direction Mrs. Handley was indicating. Sure enough, there was Harry, riding his dappled mare and looking as carefree and unaffected as ever. Harry and his ridiculous friends!
A moment later, Harry was beside the landau. “Mrs. Handley,” he offered with a most charming smile. “You are as handsome as ever.”
“Flatterer,” Mrs. Handley replied with a playful wave of her hand.
“Not at all,” Harry grinned. “I have often said that you are a lady whose looks defy comparison.”
Harry’s eyes slung quickly to Athena, laughter sparkling in their depths. Athena understood then. Harry was speaking absolutely truthfully but phrasing his words in a way that could, if one was inclined to hear them a certain way, be interpreted as flattering. “Miss Lancaster,” he said, sounding for all the world as if he had only just noticed her there, even though his mischievous smile told Athena otherwise. “Well met. How are you enjoying Hyde Park this afternoon?”
“The park is much as it was the last time I was here,” Athena replied, borrowing Harry’s method of careful phrasing.
“Would you say you are enjoying your ride today as much as you did on your previous jaunt?”
“In some ways I would even say this ride has exceeded the experience of my last.”
“Oh, I see.” Harry kept his tone light and cheerful, but Athena saw empathy in his eyes that nearly undid her determined air of indifference. Mrs. Handley’s barbs had not been enjoyable.
“Miss Lancaster is the Duke of Kielder’sward,I understand,” Mrs. Handley said, commandeering the conversation once more. She’d managed to make the position of “ward” sound as demeaning as “boot boy” or “scullery maid.”
“She is, in fact, his sister-in-law,” Harry corrected but with such a brilliant smile, Mrs. Handley responded with an almost infatuated smile of her own. Athena couldn’t help noting that Mr. Handley knew as much but had not seen that she was given her proper place in his mother’s estimation.
“Tell me,” Mrs. Handley leaned closer to Harry, her layer upon layer of facial wrinkles piling atop one another as she twisted her face into a conspiratorial look, “do all of His Grace’s wards claim to have naturally curly hair as this one does?”
“Miss Lancaster’s youngest sister, as well as her brother, share with Miss Lancaster the very great fortune of having been born with the envy-inspiring ringlets you see before you,” Harry told her. “Her Grace, the Duchess of Kielder, has perfectly lovely hair, as does another of His Grace’s sisters-in-law, though their hair does not curl naturally as Miss Lancaster’s does.”
“So itisnatural.” Mrs. Handley was obviously not happy to discover as much.
“It is, indeed. Naturally beautiful.” Harry smiled at Athena, and something about his expression, coupled with his tone, made her blush.
“It is a shame the gel is so impertinent,” Mrs. Handley said, skewering Athena with her beady little eyes. Athena had to clamp her jaw shut to keep from saying something uncivil. “If she weren’t generally quiet, she wouldn’t be welcomed anywhere, I dare say.”
“The Duke of Kielder’s sister-in-law will always be welcomed everywhere,” Harry countered. His eyes fell on Mr. Handley, pulling that gentleman’s gaze away from his mother for the first time in a quarter of an hour. “And all would be advised to remember that His Grace does not take kindly to seeing his loved ones, most especially his wife’s family, mistreated or made unhappy.”
