“Well, brother? What are you going to do about it?” Winnie asked.
Reluctantly, frustrated, he dragged his attention back to the girls. “There is nothing to be done about it. She and I will continue to correspond without your interference.”
“But will you evermeet?” Jac’s indignation seemed tempered with curiosity now, her frustration falling second to her desire for gossip. “Now that the two of you are entangled,” she continued, “I must know who she is.”
He sighed. His sisters would not let him have even a soupçon of privacy in this matter. But what had happened,hadhappened.
“I have asked her if she would like to meet,” he admitted.
“And what did she say?” All three leaned forward, rapt.
“She has yet to respond.”
There was a moment of shocked silence. Then… “Howrude.”
“Maybe she is only interested in a long-distance relationship.”
“Maybe she has a good reason for not wanting to meet. Perhaps she is not at all how she described.”
“Perhaps ‘she’ is a ‘he’ and this was a con all along.”
“She can’t be a ‘he.’ I advertised for a pen pal inThe Lady. Men don’t read it.”
“The wrong men might readThe Lady, Jac. Men who wish to ensnare desperate women into a confidence trick.”
“Are you calling me desperate?”
“Oooh, maybe he was after your money, Jac.”
The conversation had devolved exactly as he would haveexpected. Peter rubbed his temples. “Enough. She is not after Jacqueline’s money, primarily because Jacqueline doesn’t have any. And I think I would know if I were conversing with a man.”
“Then why doesn’t she want to meet you?” Winnie asked pointedly.
“Perhaps Peter came on too strongly.Exactlywhat did you say, brother?”
He tapped his foot. Meg noticed. She rested a hand on his bouncing knee. Sitting had been a mistake. “I asked her to meet when I wrote to her last night. Surely you can give her a few more days to respond before assuming that I frightened her off.”
Winnie snorted. “You are good at frightening people off, brother.”
“He is a master, in fact.”
“Do you remember Erin Farnesworth, and howwealways had to visitherbecause she was convinced Peter hated her?”
“It’s because he doesn’t smile outside the four walls of whichever home we’re in.”
Winnie looked at him. “Is it a curse, brother? Does your face freeze the moment you cross the threshold? Does it take all you have to move your lips and that’s why the best you can manage outdoors is a grimace?”
She would marry. She would find a husband and leave the house and so long as she was happy, he’d have to endure her only a couple of times a week.
Meg waved a hand and Winnie quieted. “What is the plan, brother? What have you told her of yourself?”
More than he’d told anyone. “We have spoken of manythings—the places we’ve been and the places we’d like to go. The things that worry us and the things that bring us joy. We talk about history and the future, and the novels we read.”
Jac cocked her head. “You don’t read novels.”
There was no good reason for those words to sting. Of course she would say that. He’d never read fiction in her presence, so why would she assume that he did? Keeping that part of himself hidden had been deliberate, and so he had no right to be hurt that his sisters didn’t know about it.
“I read novels.” He tried not to sound defensive. He half expected the ghosts of his former stewards to manifest and clip him around the ears.
