The earl lowered the paper enough to send Iris a pleading look. Iris not only prevented the more outlandish purchases, she prevented the proprietresses from gouging the earl’s younger daughters.
“I’ll stay home,” she said. “I can take a look at your ballgowns and plan embroidery and trim that might freshen them up a bit.”
“You are so clever with a needle,” Holly said. “We’ll bring home some lemon cakes, and you can show us your ideas over tea this afternoon.”
“I’ll look forward to that.”
The earl glowered at her. Iris smiled back, and Lily, Holly, and Hyacinth left the breakfast parlor discussing an itinerary that could bankrupt a nabob.
“You don’t do yourself any favors by antagonizing me, Iris,” the earl said. “It’s not my fault your mother left you only a modest inheritance. I have other children and must look after them as best I can.”
Or perhaps, her sin was not being a son. Falmouth had two sons still at public school, else he’d likely have married yet again.
“If the purchases they make are too extravagant, I will send the articles back,” Iris said. “I can find fault with a seam, a shade of silk, something credible, and your exchequer will be unscathed by anything so inconvenient as generosity toward your offspring. They are good girls, my lord, and if you’d host a few entertainments for them, buy them a barouche for parading at the fashionable hour, or even let us attend a few house parties…”
Falmouth put the paper aside and waved a hand at the footman. The servant withdrew, not daring to even flick Iris a glance of sympathy.
“Here is where your importuning would land me, miss: Hosting a few entertainments would require dipping into my investments, or perhaps even the settlements set aside for Lily, Holly, and Hyacinth. What I do for one of them, I must do for all three, lest my peers think one daughter more marriageable than another.
“That’s not one ball,” he went on, “but at least two, possibly three if Holly snares a husband and Hyacinth does not. House parties have been the ruin of many a proper maiden, and if I send the girls to house parties, I will be expected to host a house party. Have you any idea what that would cost?”
Well, yes, Iris had an exact idea. She had become the de facto unpaid housekeeper managing the earl’s various domiciles. She planned his rare dinner parties down to the farthing, knew exactly when the candles in the formal parlor were changed, and watched the coal man unload his goods lest he think to deliver a short weight.
“If you had any sympathy for me at all,” the earl went on, “you’d find some vicar to wed or a younger son with a career in foreign service. For all of society to know that I already have one daughter on the shelf only damages the prospects for the other three.”
This was a new weapon in the earl’s arsenal of insults: According to the earl, Iris was to blame for her silly, shallow, sisters remaining unwed. In fact, if Falmouth had shown his younger daughters any real fatherly regard, if he’d bothered to learn that Lily had nightmares about spilling punch, and Holly and Hyacinth were worried about having to live apart, then perhaps all three might present as other than anxious and vapid.
“If one of my sisters hopes to snabble a duke,” Iris said, rising, “then I’d best make myself useful. I’ll be in the sewing room, should anybody have need of me.”
The earl snorted and went back to his paper. He was no longer young, and he no longer frightened Iris. Mama’s will left Iris’s money to her and to her alone. She’d come into possession of the funds the previous year, and they were accumulating interest at a tidy rate.
“What is that vulgar sound supposed to mean?” Iris asked, taking a currant bun from the sideboard.
“Nobody needs four daughters,” the earl said, “much less three marriageable daughters and a crabby old maid. You will be agreeable to Clonmere, you will praise your sisters to him at every turn, and you will make it very clear to him that you will never be a burden on the ducal purse. You will even go so far as to ingratiate yourself with the duke to learn what his favorite color is and whether he favors emeralds or sapphires. You will share that intelligence with your sisters and ensure one of them marries him, or I will have to find a cottage for you in rural Devonshire.”
All of Devonshire was rural—also beautiful. Iris would never abandon her sisters but the notion of a peaceful life far from London….
“I’m responsible for ensuring a duke I’ve never met falls head over coronet in love with one of my sisters?”
