Page 3 of All For You

“Howrude,” she said. “He’d go a long way to find women as beautiful and sophisticated asmydaughters. Indeed, as sophisticated as our family. Why, last Saturday night, we had the McClusters over, and I served crudités and a lovely Mallorca Spritz.” She pronounced crudités with an exaggerated, quite wonky French accent. She sniffed. “I’m not sure we even want to be bothered with someone like Darcy Wainwright.”

Outraged, she bent everyone’s ear for another minute, which would have amused me if she weren’t speaking so loudly. Then something flickered in her expression, which I knew indicated she’d concocted some kind of plan. I didn’t like that look. That clarity in her eyes and set of her lips usually preceded an embarrassing interaction.

She touched her phone to cue up her next song.

“Still, they are the billionaire brothers—handsome ones—so I counsel tolerance,” Mum said to Jane, Emma, and me in one of her stage whispers that must have been heard by everyone in the room. Her frequent Regency romance phrases were the result of her position as administrator of my author Facebook group. “Show them your assets. Jane, out with the boobs, Lizzy—bum. Emma, no instructions for you, love. As usual, you’ve got this.”

When she tapped her phone again, a song boomed from the speakers. She stuck out her bum and slapped it, exhorting us to do the same.

Mortified, Jane and I stood stock-still. Cousin Emma, dressed like she was striding the catwalk for Chanel, joined in without a trace of self-consciousness.

“C’mon, girls. Let’s be having you.” Mum squealed with joy. “A trick as old as time.”

“Mum, stop. They can hear you,” I said.Scotland can hear you.

“Mum, please don’t do this,” Jane pleaded. “Let’s go back to line dancing.”

“Jane, a primary school teacher will never make a bean, dear girl. God helps those who help themselves.”

Mum kept on slapping and shimmying her bejeweled denim behind, delighted with her plan.

Not that Jane and I had many other options in the room.

On arrival, one of the guys had flirted with a young woman during the dog walking. They’d bumped hips during the cocktails and, after only one dance, were wrapped around each other in the corner, full-out snogging. I could use the young couple’s exuberance in my next book, but theirs was instalove rather than friends-to-lovers like my characters, Peony and Thomas. My story needed to be the slowest of slow burns.

Another guy, a terrible know-it-all, was starry-eyed over a woman who was devastated from a recent breakup.

Cousin Emma’s neighbor Knightley, who was busy doing Emma’s bidding adjusting the light machine, seemed secretly stuck on her, so he was out of the question.

So the Wainwright Brothers were the only single, male options for us. And Darcy had his arms crossed over his wide chest, looking appalled.

Not that I cared—I wasn’t looking for anyone this weekend. I’d come out of a subpar relationship and was here to get ideas for my next novel, as I always tried to give my Regency romances a fresh, more contemporary angle. I was hoping this weekend would inspire the spark I’d written about countless times—and believed in—but had never actually experienced.

“Jane and Lizzy, could you do us a favor?” The homeowner, Penny Balfour, gracefully swept up in her floor-length blue gown, more formal than what you’d expect for this evening, but I’d heard she and her husband, Monty, loved to dress in theirvintage hand-me-downs. “Would you ask those Wainwright boys to dance?”

Monty Balfour scuttled up in his Edwardian groundskeeper outfit and touched his plaid cap. “We’d be terribly grateful. I’m worried they’re being left out.”

Maybe they should go all the way out. Or at least try jumping in instead of rudely standing in the corner and slagging people off.

“Darcy Wainwright looks as though he wants to be left out,” I said. “He certainly looks rather more pleased with himself than with the company.”

But Jane had a softer heart than me, and her forehead creased with sympathy. “I think we should do it, Lizzy. I’m sure he feels terrible about what he said. There must be some sort of explanation for it—maybe he was nervous. I think we should be welcoming. It doesn’t cost us anything.”

I sighed. “Sometimes it’s a burden having a sister who’s so sweet and easily forgiving.”

“Lizzy,” she said with a small smile.

“Okay. Could you get Mum to switch to something that’s easier, like an English barn dance?”

“I’ll ask her,” Penny said.

Jane, ever dutiful and kind, took my hand and pulled me over to the brothers. I’d ask the smiley red-haired one to dance.

“Hello. Would you like to dance?” Jane asked him shyly.

“I would love to,” said the pleasant brother. “I’m Wills, and this is my brother, Darcy.”

Close up, Darcy was an uncompromising wall of shoulders, raven hair, and hard midnight-blue eyes, whichstilldid not seem to like what they were taking in. To leave me in no doubt about his feelings, his mouth tightened even more.