Marigoldscannedeverywindowof the train as it passed, its white smoke billowing out around her skirts and tangling the muslin about her ankles. Her nose stung with the tang of soot and ash, but she still stepped closer. The train’s panels whipped by far too quickly for her to see with any clarity, and she clutched the reticule in her hands, digging her fingernails into the fabric as the compartments rolled to a stop.
Something in her heart had been disjointed for the past two months, as though she’d forgotten misplaced vitally important. But she knew what was missing.
“Mama!”
She turned just in time to collide with a wall of boy, his honey-blond hair pressed to her sternum. “Oh, hello, my darling.” She pushed him back by the shoulders and kissed the crown of his head. “Have you gotten taller?”
Matthew lifted his chin and beamed, revealing a gap where a tooth had been when she’d last seen him. A pang struck her chest; how much had she missed while they were away?
How much would she miss if they were taken from her?
“I am taller, and look what Uncle Alex helped me make!” He pulled a whittled wooden figure from his pocket, one she belatedly recognized as canine in form.
“It looks just like Grandpapa’s spaniels!”
Matthew’s grin lit up his soft amber eyes, and she wrapped her arms around him once more, the disturbance in her breast settling a bit. But not entirely.
She looked up to see her mother, the children’s nanny, and her eldest son striding towards them, Reggie dragging a cart bearing their trunks. Her heart skipped and clenched. Had he grown three years in the months he was away, or had the change from boy to young man happened so gradually she hadn’t noticed?
Reggie tolerated her brief embrace, and she let herself get a better look at him. His hair was longer, hanging around his ears and curling over his collar. She could see the man he would become in the strength of his brow, the cut of his jaw, despite the awkward angles of his limbs and concave chest. “I’ve missed you, my love.”
“I missed you too, Mum.”
Marigold’s eyes stung as she looked at him. He had learned what to say, the appropriate response on the tip of his tongue like the sum of a mathematics problem, devoid of emotion and deeper meaning. Was she entirely wrong about him? Would he even miss her if he were to attend Felton?
“Darling, how are you?” her mother said, wrapping Marigold in the circle of her arms and breaking her free from her spiraling thoughts.
Her exhalation was shaky. “I’m so happy to see you,” she said, not quite answering the question.
Based on the look her mother gave Marigold, she noticed. “Come, let’s get some tea. The boys are starving, but they’re always starving.”
Within moments their luggage was on its way to her townhouse, her mother had provided excruciating detail about how her youngest sister had settled into motherhood, and they sat tucked in a booth in Betsy’s Tea Room while the children and Nanny Emerson explored the confectionery next door.
Her mother sniffed her tea and took a sip, her eyes rolling back in pleasure. “I’ll never understand the Americans’ obsession with coffee.”
Marigold paused to admire the woman who raised her. A beauty even in her sixth decade, Lady Clara Waverly, the Viscountess Redbourne, was slight in stature, but carried herself like a much taller woman. Her dark hair was now streaked with silver beneath her hat (Samantha would have adored it), and when she smiled, the small gap between her front teeth flashed. The boys delighted in spending time with their Grandmama, as she was always overflowing with affection, handing out embraces, kisses, and sweets like a benevolent queen. “Thank you again for taking the boys.”
“It was beyond a pleasure. Matthew told me about learning to play cricket, and Reggie taught me all sorts of tricks in chess, and together we’re making a plan to rout your father.”
Marigold grinned, a fair measure of her anxiety shedding from her skin. Her father, the viscount, was a well-known anomaly in Britain’shaute monde—an aristocrat head-over-heels in love with his wife. “How is Papa?”
Her mother’s lips flattened, though the edges turned up, like they couldn’t resist a smile. “I think he’s found a way out of this mess. Lord Trembly is selling a large swath of his estate to us for a pittance. It’s the most profitable portion of his lands, and I can’t imagine why he’s doing it.”
Tension she hadn’t realized she was carrying dissolved in her chest. The Waverlys had been on the cusp of financial and social ruin after they’d paid off a bounder who’d threatened to destroy the family—her sister Violet in particular, after discovering she was pregnant out of wedlock. Lord Trembly himself was a close friend of Violet’s and on the verge of moving to Paris with the man he’d fallen in love with that summer. “I’m sure you know, Mama.”
A knowing bob of the head. “That boy was always a good one. But enough about us. That’s not why I wanted to speak to you. How are things with the marquess?”
Marigold gripped her napkin beneath the table, tugging at the neat linen hem with her fingernails. “I have a court d-date.”
Her mother’s eyes popped. “You do? Already?”
She nodded. “August t-tenth.”
“Gracious. Not much time then.”
“No.” She swallowed hard, knowing the next part would only cause her mother strain. “Filing the case has caused a st-stir in the society p-pages. It will only get worse.”
Her mother stilled her by stretching her arm over the table and catching Marigold’s fingers before they wrapped around her tea cup. “Our family has seen plenty of scandal in the last several months, and I’ll endure a dozen times more if it means my girls are happy.”
