He’d stepped in to take care of his family when his brother’s actions had forced them from society. Ambrose knew he would give his life for any one of them.
“Good day to you, Bram. Is there a particular reason you are standing in your front garden?”
“We have decided to extend the house, Ambrose. I was viewing it from this angle and envisioning. But as you have arrived, I shall leave that for now.”
They both turned as raised voices reached them.
“Excellent, Ram and Mungo are here also. The others are inside. We are merely waiting on Tilly.”
Just hearing her name made him tense. The woman occupied far too many of his thoughts, and he’d been a fool to kiss her, because now it was worse.
“Perhaps she is busy,” Ambrose said. Lord, he hoped that was the case because he blamed all the sudden uncertainty in his life entirely on her, and he wanted it to stop.
With three sisters, he’d had to learn control young, and he wasn’t about to let Matilda Wilson strip that away from him.
CHAPTER 8
Tilly entered the parlor to take her morning meal smiling. She still had much on her mind that was not resolved, but she had learned long ago to hide what she was feeling behind a pleasant facade.
“Good morning, Father, Mother,” she said, moving around the table to kiss their cheeks.
Short, round, and scholarly, Harrison Wilson was usually found reading or playing chess at his club. He was the best man Tilly knew.
Her mother was seated beside him, as she was anytime they sat down to eat a meal.
Mildred Wilson was taller than her husband, and where he was round, she was angular from her cheekbones to her ankles. Her days were spent attending lectures with her friends who shared her passion for philosophy and science and then debating the topic heatedly over tea after.
Neither of Tilly’s parents fit the normal constraints of how society thought they should behave. People saw them as eccentric because of their pursuits and believed they gave their only child too much freedom.
They’d raised her to have her own opinions and make them known when required, but she also knew which lines to never cross.
“A gentleman called on you yesterday, Tilly.”
She was pouring her tea and managed to not spill it at her father’s words. “Why would a gentleman call upon me?”
“The usual reasons, I suppose,” he said. “He is interested in you,” he added when she looked at him blankly.
“Who called?”
“Mr. Howard. He left his card,” her mother said before she took another bite of toast.
Tilly tried to place Mr. Howard and realized she’d danced with him two nights ago at the Bolton soiree. He was pleasant enough, but he had not led her to believe there was any interest there, which was likely because there rarely was after she’d turned down two proposals in her first season and received none in the years following.
“He seemed a nice young man,” her mother added.
Tilly didn’t say anything to that and took a crumpet from the plate before her.Why would he have called?
“How’s the club, darling?”
“Very well, thank you, Mother,” Tilly said, dismissing all thoughts of Mr. Howard. The Iris was going well, but when she’d approached the Metropolitan Board of Works for details about what she needed to do, as they had not been in the papers she’d been handed, as the man had suggested, they’d said they were too busy to discuss the matter with her.
Tilly knew when she was being toyed with and had then hired builders to look into the noncompliance issue. They could find nothing. It was extremely vexing, and she was unsure what her next move should be.
Then there was what she and Ambrose had found below. She had no idea what to do about it, so for now Tilly would not be mentioning that.
“Excellent,” her father said.
They were an odd couple who shouldn’t fit, but they did, and shared a deep love and respect for each other.
