The Serpent Prince

Sir Rupert grimaced. His wife’s red hair had mellowed over the years of their marriage, lightening with the addition of gray, but her temper had not. Matilda had been the only daughter of a baronet, an old family now impoverished. Before he’d met her, Sir Rupert had thought all aristocratic women were little more than wilting lilies. Not she. He’d found a will of iron underneath Matilda’s delicate exterior.



He raised his glass and watched to see how this dinner table confrontation would play out. Matilda was usually a very lenient mother, letting her children choose their own friends and interests. But she had recently gotten a bee in her bonnet about Iddesleigh and Christian.



“Why, Mater, what do you have against him?” Christian grinned charmingly at his mother, his hair the same shade of Titian red that hers had been twenty years before.



“He’s a rake, and not a nice one either.” Matilda looked over the half-moon spectacles she wore only at home with family. “It’s said he killed two men in separate duels.”



Christian dropped the bread basket.



Poor lad. Sir Rupert mentally shook his head. He wasn’t yet used to prevarication. Fortunately, he was saved by his elder sister.



“I think Lord Iddesleigh a perfectly delicious man,” Rebecca said, defiance in her dark blue eyes. “The rumors only add to his appeal.”



He sighed. Becca, their second child and the beauty of the family with her classical features, had been at loggerheads with his wife since her fourteenth birthday a decade ago. He’d hoped she would’ve grown out of her spitefulness by now.



“Yes, dear, I know.” Matilda, long used to her daughter’s gambits, didn’t bother rising to the bait. “Although I wish you wouldn’t put it in such a crass way. Delicious makes the man sound like a side of bacon.”



“Oh, Mama—”



“I can’t see what you find to like about him, Becca.” Julia, the eldest, frowned down at her roast chicken.



Sir Rupert had long wondered if she’d inherited her mother’s nearsightedness. But despite the fact that she considered herself practical, Julia had a vain streak and would have been outraged at the suggestion of spectacles.



She continued, “His humor is not often kind, and he looks at one in such a queer way.”



Christian laughed. “Really, Julia.”



“I haven’t ever seen Viscount Iddesleigh,” Sarah, the youngest and most like her father, said. She surveyed her siblings with analytical brown eyes. “I don’t suppose he’s invited to the same balls as I. What is he like?”



“He’s a jolly fine fellow. Very funny and superb with a sword. He’s taught me a few moves. . . .” Christian caught his mother’s look and found a sudden interest in his peas.



Julia took over. “Lord Iddesleigh is above average height, but not so tall as our brother. A handsome form and face and he is considered an excellent dancer.”



“He dances divinely,” Becca tossed in.



“Quite.” Julia cut her meat into precise little cubes. “But he rarely dances with unmarried ladies even though he himself is unwed and therefore should be looking for a suitable wife.”



“I don’t think you can hold his lack of interest in marriage against him,” Christian protested.



“His eyes are an unnatural light gray, and he uses them to stare at people in a horrible manner.”



“Julia—”



“I can’t think why anyone would like him.” Julia popped one of the chicken cubes into her mouth and raised her eyebrows at her brother.



“Well, I do like him, despite his unnatural eyes.” Christian bulged out his own eyes at his eldest sister.



Becca giggled behind her hand. Julia sniffed and took a bite of creamed potatoes.



“Hmm.” Matilda studied her son. She looked unswayed. “We haven’t heard your father’s opinion of Lord Iddesleigh yet.”



All eyes turned to him, the head of this little family. How close he’d come to losing this. To ending in a debtor’s prison, his family scattered to the poor sympathy of relatives. Ethan Iddesleigh hadn’t had any understanding of that two years ago. He’d recited moral platitudes as if words would feed and clothe a family or keep a decent roof above his children’s heads and ensure his daughters married properly. That was why Ethan had been removed.



But that was behind him now. Or should be. “I think Christian is of an age to judge a man’s character.”



Matilda opened her mouth and then closed it. She was a good wife and knew to defer to his conclusions, even if they did not match her own.



He smiled at his son. “How is Lord Iddesleigh faring?” He helped himself to another piece of chicken from the dish a footman held. “You said he’d been hurt when you left so suddenly for Kent.”



“He was beaten,” Christian said. “Damn near killed, though he doesn’t like to say so, of course.”



“My goodness,” from Becca.



Christian frowned. “And he knew his attackers, it seems. A strange business.”



“Perhaps he lost money at the gaming tables,” Sarah said.



“Good Lord.” Matilda looked sharply at her youngest. “What do you know of such matters, child?”



Sarah shrugged. “Only what I hear, unfortunately.”



Matilda frowned, the soft skin around the corners of her lips crimping. She opened her mouth.



“Yes, well, he’s better now,” Christian hastily interjected. “He said, in fact, that he had business tonight.”



Sir Rupert choked and took a sip of wine to cover. “Really? I thought the recovery would take longer from your initial description.”



At least a week, or so he’d hoped. Where were James and Walker tonight? Could he warn them? Damn them anyway—James for fouling up the initial attack on Iddesleigh and Walker for failing to even wing him with his pistol. He glanced at his wife, only to find her looking at him worriedly. Bless Matilda, she didn’t miss a thing, but he could do without her shrewdness at the moment.



“No, Iddesleigh’s fit enough,” Christian said slowly. His eyes were puzzled as he watched his father. “I don’t envy whoever it is he’s after.”



Neither do I. Sir Rupert felt the signet ring in his waistcoat pocket, solid and heavy. Neither do I.



Chapter Eight



“You’re mad,” Patricia pronounced.



Lucy reached for another pink Turkish delight. The candies looked almost inedible, their color was so unnatural, but she was fond of them nevertheless.



“Mad, I tell you.” Her friend’s voice rose, upsetting the gray tiger cat curled on her lap. Puss jumped down and strutted off in a huff.



They were having tea while Patricia exclaimed over Lucy’s failed romance. She might as well, too. Everyone but Papa was watching her sorrowfully these days. Even Hedge had taken to sighing as she went past.



The front sitting room of the little two-story cottage Patricia shared with her widowed mother was sunny this afternoon. Lucy knew for a fact that their finances had been in a dire state since the death of Mr. McCullough, but one would never know it from looking at the sitting room. Clever watercolor sketches lined the wall, painted by Patricia. And if there were brighter patches in the yellow-striped wallpaper, few people would remember that oil paintings had once hung there. Black and yellow cushions were piled on the two settees in a way that was careless and elegant at the same time. One wasn’t apt to realize that the furniture beneath the cushions was perhaps a bit worn.



Patricia ignored her cat’s defection. “The man has been courting you for three years. Five, if you count the time it took him to work up the nerve to actually speak to you.”



“I know.” Lucy selected another candy.



“Every single Tuesday without fail. Did you know there are some in the village who set their clocks by the vicar’s carriage passing by on the way to your house?” Patricia scowled, pinching her lips into an adorable moue.



Lucy shook her head. Her mouth was full of sticky sugar.



“Well, it’s true. How will Mrs. Hardy tell the time now?”



Lucy shrugged.



“Three. Long. Years.” A gold curl had worked itself loose from Patricia’s bun and bounced with each word as if in emphasis. “And Eustace finally, finally gets around to asking for your hand in holy matrimony and what do you do?”



Lucy swallowed. “I turn him down.”



“You turn him down,” Patricia echoed as if Lucy hadn’t spoken. “Why? What could you have been thinking?”



“I was thinking that I couldn’t stand fifty more years of listening to him talk about the church roof repairs.” And that she couldn’t stand the thought of living intimately with any man other than Simon.



Patricia recoiled as if Lucy had held up a live spider in front of her nose and suggested she eat it. “Church roof repairs? Haven’t you been paying attention the last three years? He always prattles on about church roof repairs, church scandals—”



“The church bell,” Lucy cut in.



Her friend frowned. “The churchyard—”



“The tombstones in the churchyard,” she pointed out.



“The church sexton and the church pews and the church teas,” Patricia trumped her. She leaned forward, china-blue eyes widening. “He’s the vicar. He’s supposed to bore everyone stiff about the bloody church.”



“I’m quite certain you shouldn’t use that adjective in conjunction with the church, and I couldn’t take it anymore.”



“After all this time?” Patricia looked like an outraged titmouse. “Why don’t you do what I do and think about hats or shoes while he talks? He’s quite happy as long as you interject a ‘yes, indeed’ every now and again.”



Lucy picked up yet another Turkish delight and bisected it with her teeth. “Why don’t you marry Eustace, then?”



“Don’t be silly.” Patricia folded her arms and looked away. “I need to marry for money, and he’s as poor as a . . . well, a church mouse.”



Lucy paused with the remaining half of the confection hovering before her mouth. She’d never considered Eustace and Patricia before. Surely Patricia didn’t actually have a tendre for the vicar? “But—”



“We’re not discussing me,” her friend said firmly. “We’re discussing your appalling marriage prospects.”



“Why?”



Patricia rolled right over her. “You’ve already wasted your best years on him. You were, what? Five and twenty last birthday?”



“Four and twenty.”



“Same thing.” The other woman waved away a full year with a dimpled hand. “You can’t start over now.”



“I don’t—”



Patricia raised her voice. “You’ll just have to tell him you’ve made a terrible mistake. The only other marriageable male in Maiden Hill is Thomas Jones, and I’m almost certain he lets his pigs in the cottage at night.”



“You’re making that up,” Lucy said rather indistinctly because she was chewing. She swallowed. “And who, exactly, are you planning to wed?”



“Mr. Benning.”



It was a good thing she’d swallowed the sweet already, because she would’ve choked on it now. Lucy gave a most unladylike shout of laughter before she looked at her friend and realized she was serious.



“You’re the one who’s mad,” she gasped. “He’s easily old enough to be your father. He’s buried three wives. Mr. Benning has grandchildren.”



“Yes. He also has . . .” Patricia ticked off her fingers as she spoke. “A fine manor, two carriages, six horses, two upstairs maids and three downstairs ones, and ninety arable acres, most of it tenanted.” She lowered her hands and poured herself more tea in the silence.