He thought all of this in the time it took to climb the stairs to the receiving line in his new evening attire, the shirt points as stiff and unpleasant as his uniform collar, the coat cut so close Braxton had had to coax him into it like a corset. Grey wasn’t quite certain that he could lift his arms high enough to defend himself if needed.
Just another uniform, he kept thinking to himself, even if he felt completely out of place in it, especially every time he looked down to see the severe black jacket he knew to bede riguer. But then, he’d been wearing the scarlet one since his seventeenth birthday.
“Stop scowling,” Rob hissed alongside him. “Two debs are crying, and a footman just ran the other way.”
Grey snapped to attention. It was already hot in this mausoleum of a house, his stomach was growling, and his feet hurt. At least his head was in better shape. He and Rob had only breached one bottle last night before admitting they were too old to play rambunctious youths anymore. He still wasn’t certain how he felt about Rob’s offer to help rid him of a fiancée. He was even more uncertain since Rob told him he knew the Packham girls quite well. Would that help or hurt?
He still couldn’t believe he’d put his problem in their hands. He had been so relieved when Deevers had followed the news of his inheritance with the offer of help from the Mayhews. He’d been home no more than a week and had just finished verifying the extent of his cousins’ mismanagement, which left him saddled with two frightened little girls, several entailed estates encompassing an enormous amount of land, any number of buildings, and no cash to support any of it. Marriage to Priscilla Mayhew had seemed a godsend.
And yet here he was trying to get out of it.
“Lord Adam Noah Ezekiel Robert Glenn, Earl Hexham!” the butler bellowed.
Grey was impressed. Rob didn’t even flinch at hearing his name being shouted out like a fishmonger’s catch as he stepped up to take the hand of a florid man with a taste in bright colors and eyebrows that bristled like white gorse.
“Lord Peter Prentice Philpot Marsden Greyville, Marquess of Coleford!”
Grey did flinch. It was the first time he had been announced at all, much less like a cavalry charge. The first of many, he was afraid. Funny how strongly a man could yearn to be back on a battlefield.
“My lord,” the florid man with the gorse eyebrows and chartreuse waistcoat gushed in a voice that sounded like a creaky door and a smile that revealed missing teeth. “Such a pleasure to welcome you.”
Grey forced a smile and took the snuff-stained hand. “My pleasure, Halverson.”
Don’t thank him for the invitation,Grey reminded himself.It’s his privilege to have you here.
Maybe he should have the Packham chit give him a refresher in precedent. No one had ever thought to in the slapdash horse farm where he’d grown up, too far from the title to worry about inhabiting it. The only precedent the military had taught him was that a colonel could court-martial a lieutenant, but if he knew what was good for him, he’d leave the regimental sergeants alone.
He seemed to have passed some test, if the beaming smiles were any indication. Halverson turned to the lady next to him, a breathless powderpuff of a woman in puce and feathers that swayed well over the top of Grey’s head.
“This is my lady, Coleford.” Halverson beamed. “The new Marquess of Coleford, my dear.”
Grey saluted the air above the woman’s hand. Thank heavens for Rob, who’d at least brushed him up on those niceties, although they’d both been three sheets to the wind when he had. Thank God Grey remembered not to actually kiss her plump knuckles. He would have sliced his face open on those rings.
“My lady, a pleasure. Thank you for inviting an old soldier to your home.”
She giggled, which didn’t fit the partridge-shaped fifty-year-old frame very well. “Looking pretty spry in those breeches for an old soldier, Coleford,” she trilled with a hard smack on his arm with her fan.
Which almost left Grey speechless. Glenn hadn’t covered this.
“Well,” he drawled, still holding onto his smile. “We old soldiers keep fit on horseback, ma’am.”
He got another slap on the arm with her fan for that and quickly moved along before she went for his nose.
“You didn’t warn me,” he muttered to Glenn as they strolled away.
“Yes, I did,” his friend answered a bit too smugly. “You didn’t listen.”
“Adam Noah Ezekiel?” he volleyed back. “Why did we never know that?”
Now Glenn was flinching. “Because you would have immediately started thinking of droll jests having to do with my parents’ Biblical leanings.”
“Are all of you similarly afflicted?”
“You mean like my sister Miriam Rachel Eve?”
Grey couldn’t help it. He let loose a bark of laughter that turned heads. “At least they didn’t decide on Bathsheba. Or Jezebel.”
Glenn was still scowling. “I wouldn’t go throwing stones, Peter Prentiss Philpot.”
