Finding his own eggs less appealing with the topic, Jackson pushed his plate away. He’d been granted a stay of execution yesterday with the Widows’ descent. That reprieve had come to an end.
“Miss Greene spent a good deal of her childhood staying with a close family friend in Widmore,” Jackson said. “It was upon visiting the town that we became acquainted.”The first time, anyway.
The glint in Figaro’s eye was dangerous. “So, you are old friends? One could saychildhood friends. And now betrothed. How serendipitous.”
Considering his younger brother knew everything about Jackson’s past with Anna, the meddlesome rascal must have been playing to their mother’s benefit.
“Widmore is little more than an honorary borough.” His mother’s gaze narrowed, still on the hunt to dismiss Anna’s merits. “What was the family friend’s name?”
Anna raised her chin. “Lady Crews.”
The dowager duchess’s expression opened, surprised, no doubt, by the prestigious connection. Suspicion soon pinched her lips together. “How would a common locksmith come to be on such friendly terms with a marchioness?”
“They were siblings,” Anna said.
Jackson frowned at her. As children, Anna had spoken of her connection to Widmore House only in terms of close friends. He hadn’t known Lady Crews was her aunt.
Why would she not tell me?
The dowager duchess looked similarly stumped. “Why did you not remain with your aunt when your father passed?”
Anna’s face blanked, a loss of expression that Jackson felt like a blow to the gut. Henry Greene’s suicide had been printed in every paper in England.
“Not long after I lost my father, my aunt succumbed to a disease of the lungs,” Anna said, her voice small.
His insides ached. She’d always described Lady Crews with the utmost respect and affection. To lose her father and her aunt in such quick succession... and he’d known nothing.
“An unfortunate occurrence,” the dowager duchess said. “Your aunt’s presence at the wedding would have gone a long way into stilling wagging tongues. And seeing as Lord Crews had passed previously, the connection is all but lost.”
Anna’s arm flexed at her side, and Jackson could only imagine the fisted fingers hidden in her lap under the table.
“An absolute travesty,” Anna said, her voice matching her cold glare.
“Do not take that tone with me,” his mother snapped. “As a future duchess, you will be scrutinized on your family, your comportment,everythingdown to those odious boots you wear.” She sighed. “I have my work cut out for me.”
Anna’s gaze darkened. “I am not a problem to be fixed.”
“No,” the dowager duchess said, her mouth curled into a sneer. “You are a commoner’s daughter thinking to snag herself a title.”
“Mother—”
“Wasn’t Lady Crews’s father the baronet of Greenhill?” Figaro asked, his cup raised to his lips, that same mischievous glint in his eye. “Sir William Greene, wasn’t it?”
The dowager’s tone hit a shrill note. “A baronet!”
Jackson pinched the bridge of his nose. Figaro had to know a connection to lesser nobility would do more harm than good in their mother’s eyes.
Low-born laborers had their uses, after all—the floorboards which the peerage walked across—while lesser nobility was a blight encroaching on the entitlements of their betters. Windows seated higher in the wall with the nerve to overlook nobler horizons.
“We’ll be ruined,” the dowager cried. “Unfit for afternoon tea with a baron’s housekeeper.”
“Mother, that is enough,” Jackson said. “You will not speak to my—”
The chair squealed as Anna stood, cutting off Jackson’s words.
Her gaze was locked with the dowager duchess’s, and the will behind her words was granite. “You can keep your title, youradvice, and your insults to yourself. I would sooner ask the sow in the barn how to survive the constant muck I’ll be expected to trudge through, and how to tolerate the constant squealing pigs.”
“H-Howdareyou?!” His mother raised her chin. “You will apologize this instant! Andsit down. A lady does not lord over everyone like some ghoulish Renaissance statue.”
