A Marriage Most Inconvenient (Inconvenient Matches Book #1)

Chapter 32: Seraphina

'Sera, pleeaassseeee,' whined the eighteen-year-old sitting on her bed in the room they shared at the Sanctuary. Lillian was one of the charges at the Sanctuary, rescued from near death outside of a brothel by one of their board members. 'He's here. Ye 'ave to take me. You can say I am your assistant!'

'You have.' Seraphina corrected sternly. Lillian was never doing well in her elocution lessons, but she needed to improve if she wanted to fulfill her dreams of becoming a housekeeper.

'You have to take me to see 'im-' At Seraphina's reproachful look she hastily amended, 'him! Why won't you take me?'

The he is question was the man who had rescued her; the Viscount Carlisle, who was, in fact, a board member at the Women's Sanctuary. Though perhaps board member was putting it a little liberally, for the man only made his way down to their set up in Richmond about once every six months if they were lucky, preferring the hustle and bustle and –ahem- nightly entertainments of the city. His personal rakish lifestyle aside, the man was a shark. Between him and Lady Rothbury, the rest of the Sanctuary's benefactors could drop dead, and still, Lord Carlisle would be able to keep them financially secure. Ever since he had come onto the board after his return from the war in France, the Sanctuary had stopped cutting corners and struggling to make ends meet. It was his investments of last year's donations that were paying for the new maternity wing that would finish construction in a few months. He had some kind of sixth sense when it came to investments, knowing exactly which project would be lucrative. He was something of their bookkeeper, sending for the records bimonthly and making sure there were no discrepancies, investing and reinvesting any revenue, and making their annual budget. She had seen him at work once, and it had seemed that he needed only to pass a glance over a page to do the calculations that would take a regular person several minutes.

Why he wasted his obvious intelligence on gambling and other depraved acts was a mystery to Seraphina.

He was here today to introduce a potential benefactor, the American fiancé of one of his friends. Thank the Lord for wealthy Americans looking for a way into English high society. More money meant better resources, better resources meant an expansion of their organization, which meant there were more women that they could help. More women they could employ.

Now, Lillian had shown quite the talent for the defensive art that Seraphina taught at the Sanctuary and even took over sometimes when Seraphina was tending to her father. It would indeed not be entirely unreasonable for her to say that Lillian was her assistant.

But there were two problems.

The first one being that Lillian was still a little.....rough around the edges. She made crude comments, her unrefined cockney accent did not make the best impression on gently bred upper-class women, and she certainly did not know the difference between a Duke and a Viscount. 

Seraphina winced at the hypocrisy. The entire point of the Sanctuary was to help women and girls like Lillian, but no one from the upper class would find it respectable to associate themselves with their organization if they were advertising left and right that they housed a large number of former prostitutes and runaway wives, gave them skills and education that would give them freedom. Lady Graham had worked tirelessly to earn them the status of respectability amongst the ton, which was the only currency these people valued. The last thing she wanted to do was to scare away a potential donor.

'Seraaaaa, I will be on me bes' be'avior! My best behavior.' She corrected hastily, this time without any instruction from Seraphina, then putting extra emphasis on the H, 'honest!'

Seraphina felt her heart soften, but she was not entirely convinced. There was another reason she was hesitant; Accompanying Lord Carlisle and Lord Stanhope was the focus of her rather persistent infatuation. Lillian had something of a runaway tongue and if she saw the way Seraphina blushed around Lord Graham...... well it certainly wouldn't take long for the news to reach her employer. And that was not a conversation Seraphina wished to ever have.