“Yes, but you—you, my darling, are my first. My first precious little girl.” Mama’s lips quivered, and she pressed them together to still them. “I remember the night you were born, the days I led you about the garden on your leading strings. I remember sitting up with you when you caught scarlet fever and watching your father teach you to ride your first pony. When I close my eyes…” She did, her dark lashes fluttering against her cheeks. “When I close my eyes, you are my little girl again, for just a few moments. You’ll understand someday.”
Good God, she hoped not. “Mama—”
“I wanted better for you than this,” Mama said fervently. “I know your time out in society has not been easy for you, butthis…”
“He’s Emma’s brother, Mama. How bad could he truly be?”
“Her illegitimatebrother. Unacknowledged by his father. Legally, he is no one.”
“That’s hardly his fault, Mama.” Probably he didn’t require her to defend him to anyone, but it seemed somehow unfair to be judged on the basis of one’s birth alone. “He’s done a great deal of good for the country,” she said.
“As aspy.” Mama said the word as if it were a filthy one.
“Like Lord Rafe,” Phoebe said. “And you did not hold it against him.”
“That’s different. Lord Rafe is—is—” Noble, Phoebe surmised. The son of a marquess, and now the brother of one. “Lord Rafe is Lord Rafe,” Mama concluded weakly. “We know his character. His family. He is a man of consequence, of principles.”
“Mr. Moore is going to be my husband,” Phoebe said. “Could you try to be pleasant to him? For me?”
Mama’s eyes began to glitter with a sheen of tears. “I suppose I shall have to,” she said bravely. “I could not bear it if her were to take you away from me. To send you off to the countryside, or—or—” She cast about, struggling to find some suitably horrible fate. “Or to a convent,” she said at last.
“A convent! Mama, how medieval. And besides, we’re not Catholic.”
“I’m only saying that we do not knowhim,” Mama said. “He might be capable of anything. Anything at all.”
“He might,” Phoebe allowed, “but we should do our best to give him the benefit of the doubt. And, Mama, he owns the largest house on the street. I cannot believe that he would beeager to abandon a house he spent such a sum to purchase. And I—I shall be right next door. Just over the wall.”
“Yes, but—will your family be welcome within?”
“I shall see that you are. After all, it will soon be my home, too.” Phoebe collected one of her mother’s cold hands in her own with a gentle squeeze. “But it is ever so much easier to welcome pleasant guests than unpleasant ones. Perhaps you shall find common ground between you, if only we can all strive for a relationship that is not contentious from the outset.”
“Oh, my dear,” Mama sighed. “I fear the only common ground we shall have is you.”
Chapter Seven
It was done. They were married. A simple ceremony—if one could call it that, when one considered that their union was a mockery of a marriage at best—performed in the Toogoods’ drawing room as the grey evening had oozed into night, and Chris had got himself a brand new wife.
Mrs. Moore. A step down upon the rungs of the social ladder, to be sure. Had she had the inclination, she could have landed a lord. But then, a lord would likely have wanted things of her that she would have been loath to give. Instead she had wed a bastard of no name and worse reputation, of whom her family resolutely disapproved, and of whom she knew next to nothing.
He wouldn’t be agoodhusband, by their standards. But since Phoebe had no standards of a husband of which to speak, excepting those that were unconventional at best and shocking at worst, perhaps he stood a chance of at least being a halfway decent friend. She’d been a good one to Em, after all—and she had, after a fashion, assisted in saving his worthless life.
The largest part of the Toogood brood had already departed, thank God—and now there was nothing left but to take his wife to her new home.Theirhome.
Hell. Somehow he’d failed to give the full weight of consideration to that fact. From this day onward, there would bea womansharing his residence, one not in his employ and whom he could not order about like a servant.
A woman who was hiswife.
She stood now, alone in the drawing room, with a sort of aimless air about her, as if she were uncertain of her place within it. But then, he supposed her place wasn’t within it any longer. He’d left her there only to oversee the last of her things being moved from her residence—herformerresidence—to his. And she hadn’t known what to do with herself in the meantime.
They were evenly matched, there. He didn’t know what he was meant to do with her, either.
“It’s done,” he said, and she jerked as if she’d been pulled abruptly back into her body from a thousand miles away, those crisp curls swaying with the motion. “Your things, I meant to say. That’s the last of them.”
“Oh.” She flexed the fingers of her left hand, at which she had been staring. “Thank you for that,” she said. “And—for the ring. I didn’t expect it.”
“Got to have a ring.” It was only a simple gold band, since he hadn’t the slightest idea of what she might have preferred. “Replace it with something you like better, if it doesn’t suit your taste. I’ll have my man of business open accounts for you—”
“It suits me well enough. I just…didn’t expect ever to wear one.” Her shoulders firmed. “I’ve said my goodbyes privately,” she said. “I told my parents I’d be round to visit tomorrow. Mama got a bit too weepy this evening. And chatty.”
