No sooner had his boots reached the final step than the door swung open and the family butler welcomed him inside. “Good afternoon, my lord.”
“Heath!” his mother exclaimed in surprise when he strode into the front parlor. “What brings you here?”
He kissed her cheek. “I’ve a meeting with father at two. Has he asked for me yet?”
His mother’s smile wobbled, and they both darted a glance at the clock upon the mantel.
“It’s early,” Mother assured him with a nervous pat on his arm. “You know how Lord Grenville plans each task down to the minute. If your meeting is at two, why, he must be finishing up whatever has been scheduled before.”
Heath nodded tightly.
A quarter till two was not shockingly early, but his mother was right: Father had likely penciled his chat with Heath into today’s journal as an appointment from two o’clock sharp until five past two.
Still, it wouldn’t hurt to send a footman up to Father’s study to remind the great man of their scheduled conference.
Heath crossed over to the quill and parchment on the mantel and penned a short note with as pristine a hand as he was capable.
Father,
I am downstairs, eagerly awaiting our conversation.
Your son,
Heath
With a murmured word to a footman,the note quickly made its way up the stairs toward the baron’s study.
“While you’re here…” Mother began twisting her hands together. “You must speak to Bryony.”
Heath blinked in surprise. “Bryony? Don’t you mean Camellia?”
His mother let out a frustrated sigh. “You cannot understand how difficult this has been for me.”
“She’s a countess now,” he reminded her wryly. “Your eldest daughter brought the Lord of Pleasure up to scratch.”
Mother grimaced. “All three of my girls have turned their backs on their good upbringing and on Society itself.”
Heath sighed. “Surely the situation is not as pitiful as that.”
“It’s worse,” Mother insisted. “Camellia is an opera singer, Dahlia voluntarily presides in a rookery, and Bryony needs…” Mother pursed her lips. “There is no hope for Bryony. She will find some way to humiliate her family even worse than her older sisters.”
“I am far from humiliated,” Heath said firmly. “Camellia has found true love, and her true calling. Dahlia is saving the lives of underprivileged children who would starve in the streets were it not for her bighearted intervention. And Bryony…”
Skeptical, Mother arched a thin brow. “And Bryony?”
Heath conceded the point. “All right, I’ll talk to her.”
Mother gestured toward the spiral staircase. “They’re upstairs, of course.”
He took the stairs in twos.
As much as he believed his mother’s preemptive lack of faith in her youngest offspring both flawed and unfair, life had recently ceased to follow its prescribed, unchanging pattern. Starting with his sisters.
Dahlia’s lifelong best friend had not been born to the peerage, so it had been of little surprise when she expressed her interest in employing her money and advantages toward helping the less fortunate.
Camellia, however, had struck Heath with a left hook he’d never seen coming.
She had always been his ally, the one he could rely upon to mind the family’s reputation as well as her own with the same steadfast dedication as he.
