Besides, it must be a ploy. A woman who could deny her grandchildren didn’t have the capacity to cry. It was all a trick to engage her sympathies.
Catherine sniffed and turned her face, but not before a single tear coursed down her wrinkled cheek.
“I’m so sorry! I take it all back.” Netta’s words tripped over each other. Confound it, she’d made an old woman cry. “From what John said, I didn’t think my words could upset you. Please pay me no mind,” she implored. If the dowager started crying then Netta would start, and she didn’t cry pretty.
“Whatever my grandson has said about me I deserve.” Catherine dabbed at her eyes with a lavender-scented handkerchief. “It’s no excuse, but you can’t know how much I hated their father. And how much I missed my daughter. Looking at those boys was like a knife to the heart.”
“Now, now.” Mary patted the woman’s hand. “There’s no blubbering in my club. It does no good, and I won’t have it.”
Netta stepped forwards. “Yes, please do stop. It was horrible of me to bring the subject up. I promise not to do so again. Except—” She bit her lip.
Catherine took a deep breath. “Except what?”
“Well…” She rubbed her thumb along the rim of her glass. “It does seem a shame that you and Summerset live in the same city but never see one another. If your attitude has changed and you wish to reconcile—”
“It has and I do.” Catherine tapped the end of her walking stick onto the floor for emphasis.
“Then perhaps there is something we should do about it.” John would be changing her life for the better, transforming it with the money he would give her. He would never know how much he’d saved her.
And she wanted to leave him better off, too. Yes, getting his ore mine back would help him financially, but it wouldn’t transform his life.
Forgiving his grandmother, reestablishing a relationship, however, could be life-altering.
Damned if she knew how to accomplish it though.
She sipped her drink.
“What were you thinking?” Mary asked.
“Nothing yet.” The task would require plotting. Cunning. Luckily, she had that in spades. “But give me a minute and I’ll come up with something good.”
Chapter Eighteen
John stared at the ceiling of his library, one foot propped on the armrest of the settee he lay upon, the other dangling off the seat, swinging in a gentle circle. “I don’t want to do it so I’m not going to do it. You can harass me until the stars go dark, and I won’t change my mind.”
“Lovely,” Montague said. “We’ve come to the point of the conversation where Summerset acts the child. He even lounges about on the furniture, just as my son would. My three-year-old son,” he added pointedly.
Well, that was rich coming from the man sitting in John’s chair with his own feet propped up on his desk.
“I didn’t realize one of the misfortunes of age was the inability to sit comfortably.” He already suffered from a knee that was wont to crackle as he climbed stairs and a decreased tolerance for spirits. Now he couldn’t lounge? John scowled. He hated growing older. But he rolled into a seated position.
Rothchild ran a hand through his hair. “You must see reason. This is a matter of state security. Liverpool will provide assistance, and he has a right to know about any plot against England. I realize you’re sulky since he released you from service, but that doesn’t excuse playing light with our national security.”
Fire churned in John’s gut. “I’m not playing light. I’m playing to win.”
Sutton straightened from the wall. “As do we all. But Liverpool has contacts we do not. He can provide information we don’t have access to. Why do you resist seeing him?”
“His priorities do not mirror my own.” John leaned forwards and braced his forearms on his thighs. “In addition to discovering Sudworth’s plot, I must have the deed back to my brother’s home. Without those ore deposits, my holdings will take a hit. One from which they cannot recover.”
He tapped his heel against the floor. His houses in Bath and Ramsgate would have to be sold. Not to mention his villas in Tuscany and Barbados.
The amounts he paid monthly for his wardrobe alone supported four entire families of tailors. Without that steel operation, he would be forced to wear simple clothes. Sell off his jewels one by one. He would be plain. Diminished. He would be…nothing.
The disgust in his grandmother’s eyes haunted him. Hunted him. Swamping his memories.
His heartbeat thrashed in his ears. He jerked on the knot of his cravat, needing more air. No, he wouldn’t allow it. He wouldn’t let an arsewipe like Sudworth reduce him to insignificance. He’d worked too damn hard. He would never be poor again.
“Is that one smelt so important?” Montague dropped a boot to the floor with a thud. “You still have various other enterprises. Your gunpowder mill for example.”
