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Sanford still called her Stepmama, but that was a huge concession for the stuffy bore.

“You are looking very well, Ronan,” Corrina declared, giving him a cheeky smile before rucking up her ocean blue gown and draping her calves over the arm of the chair she sat in. Toying with a tendril of pale blond hair, she swung her legs back and forth, revealing her prettily embroidered white stockings and not so dainty slippers.

The Brockman women had rather large feet.

So accustomed were his family to Corinna’s hoydenish behavior—is hoydenish even a word?—no one remarked upon her unladylike conduct. Forcing social constraints upon Corrina was as impractical and unfeasible as netting a shark, a teacup containing the ocean, or holding the wind in one’s hand.

Foolhardy and pointless.

And, in point of fact, someone was bound to get hurt.

Probably multiple someones.

After giving his precocious sister and his stepmother dutiful pecks upon their cheeks, Ronan shook Sanford’s and Benjamin’s hands.

As always, Sanford looked as if he’d swallowed a whole sour pickle, and the vegetable had become wedged sideways in his throat. Or he’d overindulged in dates again and was suffering severe bowel cramps.

On the other hand, Benjamin, looking particularly dashing in a snug-fitting, claret-colored jacket and buff pantaloons, appeared as if he were on the brink of laughter.

Corrina observed them with eyes too wise and cynical for her two-and-twenty-years.

Ronan looked at each of his siblings in turn.

Why did he have the peculiar feeling they were assembled to present a united front with their parents for whatever this matter was?

With each passing moment, he became more convinced that whatever was afoot was no trivial issue.

“Well,” he put forth when no one initiated the conversation. “What is so deuced urgent I was forced to leave my bed after a mere three hours sleep?”

He didn’t bother to conceal his ungentlemanly gaping yawn. He was bloody exhausted to his marrow and didn’t care who knew it.

Still, the unsettling silence prevailed for another fifteen tick-tocks of the mahogany longcase clock standing unobtrusively in the far corner, its brass face as expressionless as Pillington’s.

Once again, Ronan interrupted the interminable quiet which hung like a heavy shroud in the room. “Couldn’t whatever this problem is have waited until this afternoon when I’d rested a few hours?” he ventured, a trifle impatiently.

A problem so very crucial that his entire family except Marissa was assembled?

“No, it cannot,” Sanford put in, all starchy somberness as was his wont. Not a raven hair out of place, his mahogany brown eyes brooding, he contemplated Ronan.

When was the last time he’d spontaneously smiled or laughed with unfettered joy?

Not since he’d been three or four years old, surely. Nay two.

How boring and dissatisfying it must be to take oneself so bloody seriously all of the time.

God help his future bride.

Ronan cocked a sardonic brow, knowing full well his elder brother would elucidate further but had simply paused for dramatic effect. Sanford had proven himself a brilliant speaker in Parliament because of his flair for theatrical intonations.

“It has already been delayed for several weeks as it is.” Sanford gave their father a pointed look.

“Weeks, you say? As in more than one?” Ronan couldn’t help but goad, earning him a steely stare from his elder brother.

The unspoken censure that Ronan had been in America instead of with his feet solidly planted on good ol’ British soil might not have been verbalized but was apparent for all to hear.

His eldest brother disapproved of Ronan’s business ventures in the United States. Neither had he forgiven the “bloody ungrateful, rebellious colonists” for the War of 1812.

Sanford epitomized the traditional British aristocrat who believed the British superior in every way in everything. Such draconian thinking would eventually see the peerage destroyed. Only forward-thinking aristocrats would survive the changes asserting themselves upon the nobility, whether the upper ten thousand wanted to accept those changes or not.