“My grandmother can be rather…difficult. Maybe your first meeting as my betrothed should be in a more traditional setting like a parlor or a drawing room.”Where you can run away more easily, she added silently.
“Not to worry,” Sterling said with every confidence. “Women of all ages adore me. The elderly ones especially. I’ll have her eating out of the palm of my hand before we’ve made the first loop.”
Lady Ellinwood didnot adore him.
But I’m a duke, Sterling felt like saying, for what was the point of the bloody title if he couldn’t use it to get him what he wanted when he wanted it? And at the moment, what he desired most of all was an eighty-two-year-old woman’s approval.
Approval that was, thus far, less than forthcoming.
Rosemaryhadtried to warn him, he acknowledged.
Difficult, she’d said.
Her grandmother could be “difficult”.
A horse that didn’t want to accept the bit was difficult.
A friend who didn’t want to leave the pub after one too many pints was difficult.
Lady Ellinwood wasn’t difficult.
She was a damned ice-breathing dragon disguised as an old woman whose thin lips hadn’t budged from their line of disapproval since he’d introduced himself. Several inches shorter than her granddaughter, her diminutive size made her no less intimidating. She was a brittle, dried willow branch that was just as likely to strike you across the face as it was to break in half. Another lifetime and she would have made a fine Spanish inquisitor.
“Tell me, Your Grace,” Lady Ellinwood began in her dry, crackling voice as their carriage passed beneath a row of English oaks whose leaves were beginning to carry a tint of orange as the seasons blurred together. “Do you consider yourself a religious man?”
“Ah…” He looked to Rosemary for assistance. Sitting beside her grandmother, she was as pretty as a spring daffodil in a yellow dress and matching bonnet. By contrast, Lady Ellinwood wore a dark burgundy gown and lace mob cap devoid of ruffles. Seeing them side by side, his cheerful, eternally optimistic fiancée and her glowering grandmother, he was struck by the strength Rosemary must have had to grow and thrive in spite of the dragon-shaped shadow constantly looming over her.
It reminded him of a flower he’d seen once on one of his nights coming home from the pub. Make that early morning, as the sky had been streaked through with shards of red and pink as the sun gradually rose from above the Thames. Weaving a staggering path along the middle of an empty street, he had stopped in his tracks when he came upon a single white daisy.
Daisies weren’t an unusual sight in and of themselves. The meadows surrounding Hanover Park were so overwhelmed by the common flower that the farmers considered it a weed. But here, in the midst of crowded shops and townhouses stacked on top of each other and hard-packed dirt and cobblestone as far as the eye could see, any type of plant growing outside of a garden was a rarity.
To this day, Sterling didn’t know why he’d bothered to stop at all, let alone crouch down in front of the daisy for a closer look. He was probably still drunk, and not in his sensible mind. But as he’d stared at the delicate white flower courageously sprouting out of a crack in the street where no flower ought to have been able to grow, he just remembered being filled with a sense of awe.
He’d been tempted to pick the flower and bring it to Eloise. But in the end, he had left it alone and bought her a necklace instead. Undoubtedly, the daisy would soon be crushed beneath a boot or a carriage wheel. It was only a matter of time. But he hadn’t wanted to be the one responsible for extinguishing a piece of beauty from the world. A piece of beauty that, by all laws of man and nature, never should have existed in the first place.
How fortunate, then, that no one had told the daisy that.
“Your Grace?” Lady Ellinwood pressed, drawing him into the present and reminding him that he’d yet to respond to her question.
“Ah, yes,” he said after Rosemary gave a tiny, barely perceptible nod. “Yes, I am religious. Very religious. Practically pious, really.”
A bald-faced lie, as he’d barely stepped foot in a church since Sebastian’s funeral. But his answer appeared to satisfy Lady Ellinwood, for her perpetual scowl softened ever-so-slightly.
“That is reassuring to hear,” she said. “These days, too many young people are turning away from the church. I shall look forward to having you attend Sunday service with us at St. George’s in Hanover Square. Thatiswhere you will be married, I presume, given that is where Rosemary’s parents were wed.”
Again, Sterling glanced at Rosemary, who shrugged.
“Indeed,” he said. “Naturally, that’s what we are planning to do. To clarify, are you looking forward to having me attend justthisSunday’s service, or every Sunday thereafter?”
Lady Ellinwood’s watery blue eyes bored into his. “As I am sure you are aware, that depends entirely on you, Your Grace, and how many sins you have committed during the course of your weekly endeavors that will require penance and forgiveness.”
He smiled weakly. “Every Sunday, then.”
Rosemary snorted.
“Sorry,” she said when her grandmother pointed that searing gaze in her direction. “Must have swallowed an insect.”
The corners of Lady Ellinwood’s mouth pinched. “We have not yet discussed the matter of my granddaughter’s dowry and inheritance. When she was born, my son had the foresight to set aside a reasonable sum for her future husband. A sum which grew considerably upon his death to include monies, gilts, and property, all of which have been held under my stewardship. Upon marriage to a husband that I, as her guardian, deem fit, they shall be released to him in their entirety. Excluding the house in Mayfair where I currently reside and a reasonable monthly allowance to be fairly determined.”
