The Honorables: The Complete Series by Elizabeth Boyce

Author:Elizabeth Boyce
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Crimson Romance
Published: 2014-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

“Get me up this instant!” the dowager marchioness squawked.

Reaching into the tangle of aubergine satin, Sheri plucked his mother off the floor and set her back on tottering feet. He kept a steadying hand on her arm while she settled. “All right, madam?”

“An inkling of things to come, no doubt,” the dowager muttered blackly. Of Arcadia, she demanded, “Well, gel, what have you to say for yourself?”

“Oh, my lady,” Arcadia moaned. She looked utterly stricken, her lightly tanned face devoid of color except for two red splotches high on her cheekbones. Her mosaic eyes were wide and bright with tears, some of which had already been shed. The evidence was on her cheeks, where silvery tracks ran to her chin, and the tip of her nose was rather pink and soggy, now that he had a good look.

Behind her, the music room was like a reenactment of the aftermath of a battle in miniature. Henry De Vere was the walking wounded, turning in small, limping circles, while Claudia was trying to order him into a chair so she could nurse him in the field surgery. A spindly man of Mediterranean coloring, who must have been the dancing instructor, was the defeated general tearing his hair and weeping to the heavens. And through it all, the piper—or the pianist, in this case—went on playing the battle standard. A Viennese waltz was the score of this skirmish.

“My lady,” Arcadia repeated, reaching a hand toward the dowager, then drawing it back. “I beg your pardon.”

“Sheridan,” his mother said, turning her head to address him, “you will complete the introduction now, so we can cease this infernal dancing about in the doorway.”

“It would be my eternal delight. Mother, I am honored to present Miss Arcadia Parks. My dear, this ambrosial creature before you is the Dowager Marchioness of Lothgard, who is widely rumored to be my mother.”

“Wicked child!”

He ought not goad his mother. Since luncheon, she had rung a peal over his head for dueling with Tyrrel and making the Zouche name a byword. If he did not reform, the dowager warned, not only would she endorse Eli’s plan to cut him for the good of the family, she would also remove him from her will.

It was difficult to mind the thin ice beneath his feet when he saw his quip had the desired effect. Arcadia did not smile, but a little of the strain eased from her features. She regained her composure well enough to execute a pretty curtsy. “My lady.”

“So you’ve said,” the dowager drawled. “As far as I know, I’ve still got my wits, if you haven’t just dashed them right out of my skull. Should I come to the point of forgetting my own identity, it’s a comfort to know I can rely upon you to remind me of it, Miss Parks.”

Arcadia ducked her face. “My . . . yes, ma’am.”

In her highest heeled slippers, Sheri’s mother stood just shy of five feet tall, but she managed to fill whatever room she occupied with the force of her consequence.

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