“Do so. As soon as possible. Then come see me, and we can begin looking for a wife who would be strong enough to support you and those little girls.”
He still frowned. “Is this a service you perform for everyone?”
“For no one, actually. You may consider yourself special. And now, I have two little girls I must bid farewell to. Thank you for your time.”
And before she could change her mind, she curtsied one more time and headed out the door.
Grey stoodthere for the longest moment listening to the faint murmurs of that woman bidding the girls goodbye before Chalmers, the butler he had inherited with everything else, showed her out the door.
He was just about to head into his office to pen a note to his fiancée when Braxton stepped into the room.
“Eavesdropping again, Braxton?”
“Only in the most respectful way, my lord. We believe it was needed.”
“Oh, do we?”
“Indeed. A certain gentleman is waiting in your office to discuss your travel schedule. And there are rumors from the kitchen, where the cook’s assistant is walking out with a certain groom, that the young persons’ grandmother is planning a surprise visit to them today.”
Grey scrubbed at his face, suddenly beset by a new headache. “And I have a fiancée who doesn’t seem to want my poor self.”
“And, if you’ll pardon our saying, milord, a grandmother who will use the opportunity of your trip to take advantage.”
“A grandmother who makes Brutus growl and bare his teeth.”
“A grandmother who might well be able to convince the Chancery that a single man is no guardian for little girls.”
Hearing the bright chatter of those two little girls, Grey fought a fresh wave of fear that he would ultimately fail them. “And damn it all if I don’t know that. It seems my clever plan to acquire a wife has suffered a set-back.”
“A thought which has occurred to us as well. Whatever you do choose to do, Colonel, you’re running out of time to do it.”
“And damn it if I don’t know that as well.”
4
All Grey could think as he sat on yet another painfully uncomfortable settee in the fussily overdecorated gold drawing room at the Mayhew house, a cup of tea balanced on one knee and a piece of dry seed cake on the other, was that he should have met his fiancée before he signed for her. He should have at least met her mother.
“We aresohonored to have you here, your lordship,” Mrs. Mayhew trilled, fluttering the lace square in her plump little hand like a flag of surrender. “Are we not, Priss-Priss?”
The only thing keeping him from wincing was the too-obvious strain on his fiancée’s features, tightening even further at her mother’s obsequiousness. He might have better withstood the assault to his senses if his head wasn’t once again caught in a vise of late-night drinking. Rob Glenn had not moved on. And after a few hours of refighting battles over Rob’s excellent whisky, Grey had somehow let loose the information that he was being forced into marriage. So, Rob had decided to stay, to “help a comrade,” he’d said with a lopsided grin and a slap to the back.
Grey just wished his friend were here now to take some of the attention from the mother. Rob was at least an earl.
“It was nice of you to visit, my lord,” his fiancée said in a near-whisper.
He hated to agree with The Termagant, but she was all too correct. This was a girl. Unformed, unsophisticated, unhappy in the extreme. Possibly even more unhappy than he was. And yet, looking at the predatory gleam in her mother’s eye, Grey suspected that he would have had an easier time getting out of the Tower than this marriage.
“Will you be at the Conynghams’ tonight, my lord?” the mama asked now, patting at overcurled hair that was a yellow color he suspected wasn’t found in nature. “I am certain you will be delighted to hear that our Priss-Priss will be performing. She plays the harp like the veriest angel.”
Something else he should have learned from the Termagant, he supposed. Whether he would be able to withstand fifty years of a frightened, rabbity wife and rapacious in-laws. He suspected he would end up at the gallows for throttling his solicitor, who had set up this unholy alliance. Right after he throttled the mother.
“I wish I could be there, ma’am. But I fear I have duties that will keep me away.”
Thank a merciful God.
Should he bring up the girls? He suspected he already knew how the news would be received by both mother and daughter. The mother would gush about ready-formed families and how her darling was a natural-born mother, and the daughter would lose the rest of her color and faint right off her chair. He was ashamed at how tempting the idea sounded. At least it would break up this stultifying conversation. No, not conversation. Monologue.
“...and, of course, like any well-bred girl, our Priss paints the most delightful watercolors. Why, her painting of Mayview—that is our estate in Oxfordshire, of course—is worth hanging atthe Academy, I vow. But it is in her sweetness with her younger sisters that I am most proud of her. So patient. So loving.”
