Free Rules for Being a Mistress by Tamara Lejeune Page A

Bath.
    Lady Rose, their only daughter, had been brought up in the country by a governess, then brought out in Town by an obliging aunt. The return of Rose to her mother’s bosom had forced the invalid to make a remarkable recovery, but it was very tiring to be well again. Society expected so much of one when one was well.
    “Are you or are you not pregnant?” Lady Matlock snarled as she neared the end of a long, uncomfortable interview with Rose. She was no closer to understanding Lord Westlands’s odd behavior toward her daughter than she had been the day before, and her delicate nerves were completely frayed. I am too young, she raged inside, to have a grown-up daughter. “If you are increasing, he will have to marry you. We will make him marry you.”
    Rose was curled up in the window seat, scornful and sullen. Her eyes were red from crying, but she was all cried out now. “I am not increasing,” she howled.
    “Then you will have to marry someone else,” said her parent, exasperated. “You can’t stay here. I’m too ill.” Opening her daughter’s wardrobe, Lady Matlock began pulling out the gowns Rose’s maid had so carefully put away the day before. “And no wonder!” she exclaimed in disgust. “You will never catch a husband dressed so modest. I was practically naked when I met your father. Fardle! Fardle!”
    Rose’s maid, who had been banished to the privy closet for the mother-daughter interview, reentered the room. “Yes, my lady?”
    “Here is a shocking piece of intelligence for you, Fardle,” said her ladyship. “Men like looking at bosoms! Lower the bodices of the ballgowns by three inches, and the day dresses by two inches. That ought to do the trick.” She looked angrily at her daughter. “I expect you to try, Rose. For my sake. You will find little competition here. There is a Miss Vaughn that all the men are in love with, but she’s poor, and half-Irish, so I do not take their love for her seriously. Better to be rich than pretty, I always say, and you, my dear, are both!”
    “I should like to meet her,” Rose said eagerly.
    “Who? Miss Vaughn? What on earth for?”
    “She is Lord Wayborn’s niece, Mama. That makes her Westlands’s cousin.”
    “Then, for all we know, she is the reason Westlands jilted you,” snapped Lady Matlock. “Though, I daresay, if she is poor, Lord Wayborn would never approve the match.”
    “Westlands did not jilt me,” Rose protested for the hundredth time. “There was never any understanding between us, Mama. We are friends, that is all.”
    “Men and women cannot be friends. For one thing, their parts don’t match. Aye, me!” Exhausted by her exertions, Lady Matlock sank down into a chair.
    “Couldn’t I stay here with you, Mama?” Rose begged. “I could help look after you. I could bring you your hartshorn as well as any nurse. I need not go to balls. I need not marry.”
    Lady Matlock rallied. “My daughter? A nurse? No, indeed! You are the daughter of an earl. Your duty is to make us all proud, and marry well. Honestly, Rose, with this ungrateful attitude, I am tempted to marry you off to the first gentleman who asks for you!”
    Rose suddenly shrieked in alarm. Kneeling up in the window seat, she pressed her nose against the glass. “Oh, no! It is Sir Benedict Wayborn! He is coming here!”
    Instantly, Lady Matlock was on her feet, marshaling her forces like a general. “The nice gentleman who found you in the road and brought you home? Yes, I think he will do very nicely. Don’t just sit there, child! Go and wash your face. Put on your blue gown. Hurry!”
    “No, Mama, please!” begged Rose. “He’s so old. And I am sure he does not like me.” She looked out the window again. The baronet had stopped at another door. “He has stopped two—no, three—doors down. Who lives there?”
    Lady Matlock was furious. “Serena! He ought to have called on me first. She may be the daughter of an earl, but I am a countess. More to the