It would be the medicine man. The duke had to win the bet and gain the family he’d been deprived.
Chapter 37
MARK—A VISITORCOMESKNOCKING
Standing in my Jermyn Street lodgings, I tied my cravat, a formal crisp white knot, in preparation for tonight’s ball. The Duke of Torrance had the ton ablaze with talk of his first formal ball of the season.
Lent was done and hearty decadent celebrations were desired by all. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that the duke would offer a spectacle that would be the talk of London. I hoped the fanfare and grandeur were so overwhelming that the ton would no longer talk of my supposed secret faux alliance with Miss Wilcox.
The papers should have lost interest, but they reprinted Gilroy’s cartoon of Georgina and me on the pianoforte. Someone from theGlobeor thePostwould be at the ball tonight looking for trouble.
Yet, I was spoiling for a fight. My family might not ever accept Georgie, but if we loved each other, it shouldn’t matter. I could be my own man and stand up to the Sebastians. I had a finished sonata, a winning sonata. I had a future. Now I merely needed the woman.
A rare knock on my door made me pause my useless introspection. Livingston, I presumed. Didn’t he know I intended to drive so that I could leave when Georgie rejected me a final time?
I charged to the door, flung it open and saw Chancey.
Grimacing, haggard-looking Chancey, my mother’s butler.
“Sir, why have you come? Is all well?”
“Your mother. She’s downstairs. She wishes to speak to you.”
The longtime butler, who’d seen all manner of circumstances, even scandal in the Prahmn household, looked ashen, shaken.
“Chancey, what’s the matter?”
“The marquess has returned. He’s very unhappy with the circumstances of your rushed courtship.”
Locking my arms behind my back to prevent myself from grabbing the butler’s lapels and shaking out answers, I stayed still. “He should take his anger out on me.”
“The marquess is a beast. Marchioness is leaving London for the country.”
This indeed was a punishment for her. At the beginning of the season, unable to go to parties and dinners and gossip with the ton’s mothers about their sons’ and daughters’ prospects was a horrendous torture.
“Tell her I’ll be down, and I’ll take her back to Grosvenor and reason with my father.”
“No, my lord. She’s been banished tonight. The Marchioness of Prahmn had to leave Grosvenor immediately. She barely packed two trunks.”
“Two.” Well, that was a way to flee. “I’ll come now.”
Dousing a candle, I grabbed my satchel, locked up the flat, and followed Chancey out to the street.
The sun had set. The sky was purple and indigo, hanging over a lone stately carriage.
“She’s distraught. Be gentle,” Chancey said, then opened the ebony door with our gold family crest.
I climbed inside.
A beautiful shadow clothed in a burgundy silk carriage gown sat opposite me. Silent in the low carriage light, I heard Mama sobbing.
Turning up the lantern, I witnessed the sad evidence of tears strewn across her face. My throat tightened. I couldn’t get my tongue to ask what I always feared.
Did the man finally yell so much, say things with such venom, that he lost control and struck my mother? Did he hurt her?
I filled my frozen lungs. I worked my jaw. “Did he hit you?”
“What, Mark?”
