Anyway, he didn’t want to watch the two of them talking and laughing together for the remainder of this ride. He urged his horse to move faster and overtook them, pulling to the front of the group so he wouldn’t have to think about what was going on behind him.
But he couldn’t get it out of his mind.
CHAPTER 21
“What are you looking at?” Seth’s mother’s voice interrupted his thoughts.
Several miles from the estate, the whole party had climbed down from their horses and settled in for a picnic. Blankets had been spread on the grass and baskets were unpacked. For a moment, Seth had allowed himself to look over at Lady Lavinia, who was still with Lord Hennington. Lady Edwina had joined them on their blanket—it wouldn’t have been completely inappropriate for Seth to join them as well. He was tempted to do it.
Seth turned away, not wanting a conversation about his complicated feelings regarding Lady Lavinia. “I wasn’t looking at anything,” he lied. “Would you like to have our meal together, Mother?”
“I’m surprised to hear you offer,” she said.
“We haven’t spent much time together this week,” he said.
“No, we haven’t, but that was deliberate on your part, and I won’t pretend not to know it,” she said. “I know you don’t always enjoy my company.”
“Perhaps it wouldn’t be that way if you weren’t so insistent on sharing your opinions about my choices regarding marriage.”
“I’m still your mother,” she told him. “You may be a duke, but I’m still your mother. And I saw you—you had your eye on Lady Lavinia, the daughter of the Marquess of Feverton.” She took a seat on a picnic blanket.
Seth took a seat beside her. “Mother, for heaven’s sake,” he said. “I didn’t have my eye on anybody. You’re imagining things.”
“I don’t think I was, Seth. I think you were looking at her. And I’m not the only one who has noticed it. Lady Everly told me she saw the two of you talking the other night. And I certainly haven’t seen you spending time with any other young ladies.”
“Mother, you go too far,” Seth said sharply. “I agreed to this picnic with you, but that certainly wasn’t meant as an invitation for you to say things of this nature. You know you have no right to tell me what to do when it comes to my socialization.”
“Well, I have the right to give you information, at least,” his mother said. “And someone ought to tell you about that young lady before you get in too deep with her.”
“What do you think you’re going to tell me, precisely?” Seth asked his mother. “What do you think you can say to me that I don’t already know?”
“So you do know things about her?” his mother asked swiftly.
Seth began to rise to his feet. “I’m not going to sit here and be spoken to this way,” he said. “If you can’t figure out how to honor the title I hold, the way you did when my father held it, and to treat me with respect, I don’t think you and I have anything further to say to one another.”
“No—for heaven’s sake, Seth, sit back down,” his mother said hurriedly. “It’s just that you ought to be madeaware,that’s all. You ought to know of the potential for scandal that surrounds that young lady. I hate to see you get too close to someone who can do you harm by her reputation.”
“And what reputation might that be?”
“Everyone knows she’s strange. Everyone knows that she’s unlikely to marry—that she’s almost certain to be a spinster.”
“Well, that isn’t what I heard,” Seth said. “I heard her father has some sort of plan for her future.”
“In which case you would be just as well served by staying away from her,” his mother said. “Either way, there’s nothing there for you, Seth. No reason for you to get close to her.”
“Do you see me getting close to her? Mother, you saw me looking in her direction, a thing I am at perfect liberty to do even if she and I never speak to one another. Now really, I’ve had enough of this, and I’m not going to put up with any more of it. I’ve allowed you to have your say, but this conversation is over.”
He got to his feet.
“Seth, wait,” his mother protested.
But Seth shook his head. “I’ve given enough chances,” he said. “I know what will happen. If I sit back down, you’ll try to speak to me about this again, and I’m not having any of it. You have no right, Mother. Enjoy your picnic.”
He walked off, feeling a little bit dissatisfied—he’d hoped to have a pleasant conversation with his mother. He ought to have known how unlikely that was, of course.
She was so single-minded about the idea of seeing him marry that it often felt impossible that she would ever turn her attention to anything else. It bothered Seth, but how many times could he possibly tell her that she was overstepping her bounds in speaking to him the way she did? If she didn’t know it by now, it seemed to him that she might never know.
Needing someone else to spend the day with, he looked around, deliberately avoiding looking at Lady Lavinia. He would have liked to go over and sit beside her, to see how her conversation with Lord Hennington was going, but there was no way to do that, not after what had happened back at the stable. If only hehadn’t made a show of saying that he and Lady Lavinia had a discussion that needed to be finished at a later time, he might have felt free to approach her now.
