Free Rules for Being a Mistress by Tamara Lejeune Page B

point, he spent four hours in a closed carriage with my daughter—and I am not even acquainted with him! He has a duty to call on me first! But that is how it is.” She sniffed. “No one has any manners anymore.”
    “Perhaps he will marry Serena,” Rose suggested happily. “She is quite as old as he is!”
    “If not older,” said Lady Matlock, but that was only spite. Anyone who possessed a copy of the Peerage could easily discover that Lady Serena Calverstock was only thirty.

    Lady Serena received Benedict graciously in her elegant drawing room. She was just emerging from mourning for her sister, Lady Redfylde, and she looked charming in a lavender gown with a jabot of black lace at her throat. Her black hair was worn in a topknot with a frisette of glossy ringlets on her brow. As a debutante, her ivory pallor, raven tresses, and cool violet eyes had made her portrait one of the most admired in the National Gallery, and she was still considered one of the handsomest women in England.
    They exchanged the usual pleasantries over strong black China tea.
    “What brings you to Bath, Sir Benedict?” she smiled.
    “Duty, I’m afraid,” he admitted ruefully. “My brother has managed to get himself elevated to the peerage, leaving my little baronetcy quite without an heir. Suddenly, I find myself in want of a wife, Lady Serena.”
    Serena inclined her head. “I saw your brother’s name in the List of Honors. Tell me, does his lordship mean to build a fort somewhere with archers on the battlements, or will he be content to live in London as a man of fashion?”
    Benedict suppressed a shudder of revulsion. “It is a bought title, of course. A wedding gift from his father-in-law. A Glaswegian whiskey merchant, and the girl’s not even pretty.”
    “You wrong Lady Kensington,” Serena chided him. “Heiresses are always beautiful, or didn’t you know that?”
    He smiled briefly. “I am glad my brother married money, at least. I was terrified he’d make some disastrous love match with an actress, like your poor cousin, Lord Ludham.”
    “Lady Ludham was an opera dancer,” she corrected him without rancor. “ Pamela was the creature’s name, if you please!” She laughed discreetly.
    “How relieved you must have been when the divorce petition sailed through Lords.”
    Her violet eyes widened. “I, Sir Benedict? Why should I be relieved?”
    “It cannot have been easy watching an opera dancer take your mother’s place,” he said quietly. “Forgive me. It must be a painful subject. I should not have mentioned it.”
    “I never met the famous Pamela. I spared myself the degradation of curtseying to her ladyship . As you know, I had no brother, so Felix inherited. I went to live with my sister and her husband immediately after my father’s funeral. Isn’t it curious? When Papa died, I lost my father and my home all in one day. Likewise, when Caroline died, I lost my sister and my home in one fell swoop. It seems to be my lot that, whenever there is a death in the family, I lose…everything.”
    “It must be something of an adjustment to live alone,” he hinted blandly.
    She replied, “It must be something of an adjustment to find yourself without an heir.”
    “I mean to marry as soon as possible,” he said. “I might advise your ladyship to do the same. Then you would not have to adjust to living alone.”
    She looked down at her hands. “But I have been single so long that no one thinks of me! I can not compete with these seventeen-and eighteen-year-old debutantes. They seem to be getting younger every year.”
    “Quite,” said Benedict.
    “I understand you rescued Lady Matlock’s daughter on the road from Chippenham,” she said, smiling. “Naturally, everyone is dying to wish you joy. A very pretty girl, but so young! Too young, I think, to be pitchforked into society. But…very pretty, I grant you.”
    “You are wrong when you say that no one thinks of you,” said Benedict.
    Serena