Chapter Fifteen
“Rebecca, I chatted with Mrs. Silbern during your rhyming lesson. I told you that. I apologized for Delilah, again, and she said she had nowhere to stable a mount, anyway, so there was no reason to apologize. And they couldn’t attend dinner night before last because her aunt had a party to attend.
” Beckett snapped the top of the newspaper down to view his daughter, but she continued sketching what he presumed to be a portrait of Edmund.
She remained silent, and he felt a twitch beginning in one eye. He’d been the target of her silences from time to time, but generally he could figure out the reason he’d fallen out of her good graces and resolve the issue. This was different.
“Very well,” he said, folding the newspaper up again. “If you won’t tell me what’s still upsetting you, there isn’t much I can do about it, is there? I am therefore going to White’s to meet Lord Nyfeld. You are in Mrs. Brubbins’s care. Do not go anywhere without her.”
Rising, he walked around the table to kiss her on the forehead, collected his hat and gloves, and left the house. And took an immediate step back from Charles Llewelyn Biscuits as a giant black coach racketed up the street and nearly bowled him over.
“You!” he shouted, jabbing a finger at the driver. “Stay right there!” Then he yanked open the coach’s door. “I don’t know what the devil you’re thinking, Mother, but Rebecca might have been out here with me.”
The dowager marchioness smiled at him from the interior of the coach. “I require a word with you, dear,” she said, patting the seat beside her.
“I’m not climbing in there with you,” he countered, sending a quick glance at the driver again to make certain the man wasn’t closing in on him with a stout stick. “I’ll never be seen again. Go away.”
“My son, this is important. Join me.”
“That is precisely what the devil would say, except that he would have offered me sweets. No.” Turning, he caught Charlie’s reins, swung into the saddle, and set off up the street.
He knew what it would be; his mother wanted to demand that he immediately propose to Lady Pauline.
The rumors were everywhere, and so he needed to stop wandering about London gawking at all the sights like some country clod, make all of this official, get on with making a son, and preserve the Raines family legacy.
The moment the street broadened, the coach drew even with him. “Propose to Lady Pauline,” his mother said, leaning out the open coach window.
And he’d thought Rebecca was relentless. She couldn’t hold a candle to her grandmother. “I am not bound by your calendar. Satisfy yourself with the knowledge that I intend to do my duty.”
“But when? She confided in me that she’s felt some resistance from Rebecca.
Do not be governed by that. Of course the girl doesn’t wish anything to change; you give her all of your time and attention, and she never lacks for a companion with whom she can hold tea parties.
That doesn’t mean she knows what will be best for herself. Or for you.”
“I had no idea Rebecca was resisting the match until you mentioned it just now,” he stated. That would explain her silence, he supposed, though she generally told him precisely what she was thinking. He had some more questions to ask, evidently.
“Then what is your blasted hesitation?”
“I hardly think being cautious is a poor strategy, given the misery of my last attempt. And now you’ve noted that Rebecca isn’t yet convinced, so I have even more reason to move slowly before I add someone to my household.
We must all be in agreement. That includes Rebecca. It does not, however, include you.”
“I’ve heard the whispers, you know, about you and Mrs. Silbern. It’s detestable that you’re courting Lady Pauline and doing God knows what with the widow.”
“Her son is Rebecca’s friend. The rest is just gossip.” And it would stay that way, for all of their sakes, because Iris wasn’t … proper. Rebecca was already talking about punching people. That would not make her successful in Society.
“If you feel the need to help Rebecca find playmates, then go to your married friends with daughters and spend time with them. And make your proposal before you’re labeled a rakeshame. Those with high connections do not keep low company.”
They parted as the coach and the horse overtook a milk wagon.
It gave Beckett a moment to consider that his own childhood had never been normal, even before his father’s death.
One parent had given him vague acknowledgments as if he’d been the family pet, and the other had needled his every word or thought or step.
And a normal mother and son would stop to chat rather than pursuing each other down the street.
Rebecca needed someone calm, collected, and proper in her life.
As they left the milk wagon behind, his mother leaned out the coach window again. “Y—”
“Firstly, Mrs. Silbern is sister-in-law to a viscount and granddaughter to an earl,” he interrupted. “She is not low company. Secondly, I’m very interested to know if Pauline asked you to speak with me today.”
“Of course not. She has come to see me several times, mostly to lament that while she finds you and Rebecca endearing, you continue to keep her at arm’s length and she can’t fathom what she’s done wrong.
You’re horrid to me, Beckett, but previously I’d always thought you ridiculously kind and caring to everyone else.
Evidently you are more like me than either of us realized. ”
“The hell you say.” She meant her words to cut, but then she’d always had a knife for a tongue.
“If Pauline has concerns about me,” he continued, “she can bring them to me. Your counsel I put in the same rubbish box where I put your good wishes, ill wishes, compliments, criticisms, and curses. Good day, Mother. No, not good day. Just day.”
He kneed Charlie into a trot as the coach had to slow in the increased Pall Mall traffic of riders, shoppers, vendors, and pickpockets.
Between Rebecca’s silence and his mother’s bombast his entire day felt like lemons.
And if Rebecca didn’t want this match to go forward, he needed to figure out why.
He dismounted at White’s, wrapping Charlie’s reins around a post and heading inside. “Has Lord Nyfeld arrived?” he asked the first footman he came across.
“No, my lord. I believe you have a message at the front, however.”
Inwardly sighing, seeing at least three former friends, one of whom abruptly found something remarkably interesting in the newspaper while the other two went momentarily blind until he passed, he returned to the front of the club. “You have a note for me?” he asked. “Hentrose.”
Another footman produced a folded note from a desk drawer. “Yes. Here you are, my lord.”
Beckett opened it. Nyfeld apologized, but a pressing personal matter had arisen and required his attention.
No doubt it involved Lord Nyfeld not wishing to spend an hour chatting either about dead spouses—which Beckett had long ago realized seemed to be firstly what every one of his married male friends thought would happen—or about girl children, which was even worse.
He hadn’t expected to arrange for their children to play together, as Nyfeld’s oldest was only five, but it would have been nice to be able to chat with an old friend.
To at least ask if the earl knew more about Pauline Grenedy and her family than he’d been able to discover on his own.
Perhaps he needed to begin a widowers’ club.
Evidently if he wanted his old friends back, he was going to have to remarry.
That hardly seemed a good reason to do anything, however, considering how most of them had abandoned him ten years ago, and how the ones he did still see on occasion, like Nyfeld, had no idea what to make of him.
Iris had said much the same thing about her own former friends.
Iris. To himself he could admit that she’d become the sticking point in his mother’s schemes.
She followed the rules of Society only up to the point where she disagreed with them.
And she refused to be walked over and ignored.
He admired that, admired her, and he certainly lusted after her, but on the list of requirements he’d made before deciding to remarry, he’d had two necessaries: his wife would have common sense, and she would be a woman who by practice and example would encourage Rebecca toward propriety and politeness.
Iris wasn’t even in the same book, much less on the same page.
Still, she’d become a friend, a confidante, and a lover, and after traveling across London with her and Edmund and Rebecca as they viewed wax heads and Egyptian mummies, balloonists and puppetry, he’d come to trust her opinion and her insight, and to appreciate her sharp, cynical sense of humor, and even her anger and frustration.
“Damnation.” If she’d been one of his male friends, he would likely have gone to find her, offered to purchase her breakfast, and chatted with her until his poor mood evaporated.
But she wasn’t a man. She was a woman. A very attractive woman, with a keen mind, a keen wit, a healthy skepticism about Society, and a kiss that made him want to rhyme things.
She claimed to be nothing but a mother now.
If that had been his only wish for Rebecca, she would have more than sufficed.
But when he looked at Iris, he didn’t see some matronly figure in a mob cap.
And no business partnership would suffice.
Even now, even very nearly engaged to another woman, he could barely keep his hands and his thoughts off her.
“My lord?”
Starting, he looked up. Hmm. One of the Grove House grooms stood by his foot, staring up at him. Evidently, he’d ridden past his own house and over to the neighbors’. “Yes?”
“Are you going inside? I can take your horse, or return it to your stable, if you prefer.”