“Says every mother since the beginning of time.”
“Stop patronizing me.” Lucy twisted the kerchief tight in her hands. “I know my son. He is smitten and he’ll do something foolish if we don’t chase this woman away. Worse, she isolderthan he is.”
His nephew was sounding wiser and wiser as this conversation progressed. Bran feigned a frown to hide his grin. “Fine, I will talk to him.”
“He won’t listen.” She spoke to Bran as if he was a child. “This woman has bewitched him.”
“When did he meet her? In London, the duke said nothing to me about any woman.”
“Yesterday.”
The word stopped him.
“Yesterday?” Bran shook his head. Mars and Thurlowe were not going to believe this story. “Lucy, he met her yesterday and he was bewitched on the spot? And you believe him? You have better common sense than that.”
“You should hear him. He’s not himself.” Indignant color rose in her cheeks.
“And how did he meet this actress yesterday?” Bran tried to hide his skepticism. He was not successful.
“He came upon a troupe of actors on the road. Their wagon had broken down and he offered to help. He saw her and fell in love. He said it was that quick.” She snapped her fingers for emphasis. “He told me there isn’t anything he won’t do for her.”
Until he beds her, Bran thought, but wisely refrained from voicing this observation. In truth, he was a bit relieved his nephew was not so wrapped around his mother’s finger. In fact, in London, Bran had suggested His Grace come for the Season. There were responsibilities to the title that the duke must understand and he wasn’t going to learn them doing his mother’s bidding in Maidenshop.
Bran patted his sister’s hand. “All right. I will talk to him.”
“He won’t listen. I’ve talked and talked. We must buy her off. Pay her to leave. That is the only way that we can keep him from her. Truly, Brandon, he acts possessed. He washummingbefore he left the house.”
Bran wasn’t about to waste good money on an actress. “You are taking this too seriously. It is the normal course of things for young men to do. A rite of passage even.”
“Are you trying to make me feel better? You aren’t.”
“Very well,” Bran said patiently. “I was once in love with an actress. Heart and soul and you can see I survived the adventure.” Barely... but he didn’t need to say that to Lucy. If it hadn’t been for his actress, he wouldn’t have taken a position with the East India Company. He had literally exiled himself to be away from her.
He also realized that he himself had been a bit naïve like Winderton. His actresshadmade a man of him. Certainly, she had set him on the course that had made him a very wealthy man. This one might do the same for his ward and nephew. “He will be all right, Your Grace. He will.”
She bit her lower lip as if to stop it from trembling. “I thought Christopher was safe from that sort of woman here.”
“And that is why you don’t want to let him go?”
“His father died. He needs guidance.”
“Thomas died almost four years ago,” Bran corrected quietly. “It is no longer an excuse to keep him tied to you. Young men must learn their own lessons and they often do it through trial and error. If you don’t let him go, then he’ll do things like making an actress his duchess.”
“Those types of women are crass.”
“They serve a purpose.”
Lucy put her hands over her ears and closed her eyes, acting like a child herself. “I don’t want to hear it. I wish Thomas was alive. I wish nothing had changed.”
“Nothing stays the same forever, Lucy.” And yet how many times over the past three years as he’d struggled to establish himself as an architect and engineer had he wished he was back in India where no one questioned his talent, his intelligence, or his connections.
She reached out to place a hand on his arm. “Please, pay her off. Do I have the money?”
“Enough. If you spend it here, then someplace else will suffer.”
“Do it.”
“Very well.”
