“Do you know the cost of bread, sugar, or tea? What about fish?”
To each question, he shook his head. She enlightened him until his head spun with numbers.
“And you know all this because?” he asked.
“Because, Lord Hargrove, I have to count every penny I spend. I scrimped until the day I had to let my last maid go.”
“Yourlast maid? But you don’t keep a house in London by yourself?”
“I managed my family’s modest residence, north of Hyde Park, along with my brother, Rhys. Sometimes my parents came to Town for a few weeks and then I relinquished the task to my mother. Rhys is rambling around in it on his own now, and I don’t know if he has a staff of even one.”
She was fuming, and James understood her brother was at fault.
“I’m sorry to hear that. I know a little of your brother. Quite a swell, yet with more the reputation of a pigeon than a shark, if I recall correctly.”
“Sadly, you do. He receives enough to pay for running the entire household, but he squanders it and lets someone give him a sound physicking at cards every week. And still my parents find no fault with him.”
“That sounds terribly unfair. And thus, when I mentioned your allowance as a viscount’s daughter—”
“Pittance,” she said. “I do my best with what I have. When the creditors were tenfold upon the doorstep on a Monday morning, I left London and went to Bath.”
“Bath is lovely,” James began.
“Bath is also expensive and...,” she trailed off momentarily, her eyes taking on a faraway look. “And the slip-slops and cats.”
“Gruel?” he echoed. “And cats?”
She shrugged. “I have an elderly great aunt in Bath. However, she could only introduce me to other elderly people, mostly women.”
Now, James was confused. “Then where did you meet your fiancé?”
She startled, paused, drank some wine.Was she embarrassed? Had she trapped the man into it the way she’d tried to trap him?
“Lord Aberavon is a friend of the family. His ancestral home is not too distant from ours.”
He supposed that was an answer, bespeaking of a long-standing promise between the families to wed the son to the daughter.
“Your parents will send you nothing more?”
“They think me still in London,” she confessed, shocking him.
Miss Talbot was not only without a chaperone or a protector, her family had no idea of her whereabouts. This simply wasn’t done in his circle. When a young lady went missing, the search usually began instantly due to the ever-present fear of an elopement to Scotland.
“Besides,” she said, “and I hate to speak out of turn, but I shall although my father would be mortified and my mother, too. Our Welsh viscountcy is not as I understand some of the English ones to be. Yours for instance probably has a good income associated with it, not to be vulgar,” she added. “And what there is to spare goes to the heir.”
“The Honorable Rhys Talbot,” James muttered, feeling outraged on her behalf.
She held up her glass as if toasting his astuteness.
“Then I say again, it is unacceptable for you to be in Brighton without a chaperone or even a maid, as I now discover. Moreover, it’s unconscionable that your parents haven’t discovered your departure yet. And what about your brother? Surely he has noticed you’re not at home handling the creditors.”
“Rhys believes me still to be in Bath.” She lowered her gaze, and he had to admit she was a clever lady for having managed to gain her freedom with no one the wiser. Clever but foolish.
“And what of Aberavon? Doesn’t he care that you are gallivanting around, close to drowning? Not to mention starving most days?”
“I’m sure he would care if he knew,” she said. “When my fiancé gets here, all will be well.”
And then she burst into tears again, but this time, they were loud, body-wracking sobs.
