Celia beamed her with a brilliant smile as Mrs. Couch hurried out in an effort to disguise her twitching lips.
“Before I forget, Virginia. I’ve accepted the Faulks’ soiree invite for this evening.” The baroness glided over to the settee and patted the seat next to her. Celia skipped over and dropped down beside her.
Ginny opened her mouth to refute the dictate, but snapped it shut again. She hadn’t left the house in two days. Clearly, she missed Brock’s self-assured arrogance. Surely he’d attend. But doubts crept in. She’d had no guarantees from him. For all she knew, he’d taken her up on her offer to leave her alone.
After the small, intimate service held for Corinne, there hadn’t been a single minute to speak with him. She wanted to wrap her arms about his neck, tell him… tell him… that hedidbelong in her life. In her daughters’ lives. Tell him that he was right all along. That she knew so now. Tell him he was the only man for her.
“Now, young lady, where is your sister?” the baroness asked Celia.
“I’m here, Grandmother. Mama.” Irene’s soft yellow muslin with its white sash was spring personified. With her presence, Ginny could already feel her muscles unbend. “I had no notion how tiring being with Nathan a full four days would wear on my person. I slept late.”
“Your mother sent for tea,” the baroness said. “Tell me, ladies, what have you been up to?”
Mrs. Couch entered with the tea tray, and Ginny let her mother pour while her own mind tuned them out and wandered in a rare moment of tranquility. She was still half in shock over having heard Irene’s childlike laughter in that cavernous, empty ballroom at Kimpton’s country house.
Common sense forced her to step back from the situation. Did she love Brock in that glorified moment? Yes. The love in her heart, fragile though it was, swelled to momentous proportions, her heart felt too big for her chest. But was shein lovewith him? Yes. Yes, a million times yes. And this sensation was nothing similar to that of a decade ago. Absolutely nothing. She dropped her head in her hands, rubbed her temples. She never wanted to lose him. She couldn’t lose him. Not again.
“Good heavens, Virginia. What is the matter with you?”
Ginny’s head snapped up so quickly, she felt faint. “No-nothing, Mother. Apologies,” she croaked out. “Please, carry on.”
“We’ve been learning to safeguard ourselves,” Celia said.
Ginny’s eyes whipped to her younger daughter. “Celia,” she said abruptly. She didn’t know whether to be angry or wish the floor would cave in and swallow her up.
The baroness’s hand paused in the midst of pouring a cup of tea. “You’re what?” Her eyes narrowed on Celia, then moved quickly to Ginny. “What on earth is she talking about?”
Ginny fought a surge of panic and searched her scrambled thoughts for an explanation that didn’t sound half-baked. Her mother would never understand. But then, these were Ginny’s children. No one could tell her how to raise them. She lifted her chin.
“Safeguarding lessons,” Celia said with great enthusiasm. “Lord Brock is teaching us to get away from hoodwinkers and mean people who might try to nab us right off the street.”
Celia’s blunt explanation didn’t curtail the heat in Ginny’s face, and did nothing for the lack of oxygen she attempted to purchase for a single breath.
Slowly, her mother lowered the cup and teapot back to the tray. She turned to Irene. “Is this true, Irene?”
“Yes, Grandmother,” she answered in her straight-backed, formal, crisp tones. “Lord Brockway has imparted some very valuable techniques and stratagems to assist us in the event that something nefarious should cross our paths or befall us.”
The baroness blessed Ginny with one of her carved-in-ice smiles for which she was so well known. “Is that so?”
The very sight ignited Ginny’s temper. “Leave it be, Mother. ’Tis none of your affair.” She spoke sharp enough to startle the baroness momentarily speechless.
Of course, it was a temporary status. “Safeguarding lessons. Why, the very idea. Are you out of your mind, Virginia? The notion is-is ludicrous. How will these girls ever contract a favorable marriage?”
Ginny took great pleasure in returning her mother’s glacial smile. “And how dower a prospect that is when a man is allowed to take a stick to his spouse so long as the circumference is no thicker than the width of his thumb. Who made these asinine rules?”
“If word gets around regarding such a scheme, you’ll be ruined. Yourchildrenwill be ruined.”
“Then we must make certain word never goes outside these walls, mustn’t we?” she shot back.
Celia’s lips quivered as her thumb slowly crept its way past her lips. Irene took Celia’s free hand, her face cleared of expression in a blank mask that was all too telling.
Another sort of fury coursed Ginny’s veins. In as gentle a tone as she could muster, she said, “Girls, please excuse your grandmother and me. Go upstairs and find Miss Lambert. I’ll come for you in a few minutes.”
Irene nodded and led a somber Celia from the room.
“Don’t you ever question my methods for raising my children,” she told her mother with the deadly calm blanketing her.
“But, Virginia. You know how imperative it is for young women to marry well. They don’t have the options men have.”
