Chapter 2 #2
The Countess gave Charlie a gimlet stare. “Only when her favorite granddaughters do not visit. And when you do, Charlotte, if you love your grandmother, try to wear something that doesn’t clash with her furniture and confuse her bees.”
Charlie grinned and spread her skirts a bit. “Yes, Aunt Arabella.”
The Countess’s sole comment was a muffled “Hmph,” as she sat to attack her usual pile of correspondence.
“Mama,” Georgie asked of a sudden.
The Countess did not look up. “Yes, dear?”
“Do you know anything about the new Marquess of Coleford?”
Her mother’s head snapped up as if she had heard angels sing. “Who, dear?”
Hope lived eternal in her mother’s breast. Georgie kept telling her that she had three more daughters who would eventually need her devoted guidance to look for husbands.
But her mother said quite clearly that all her varied accomplishments would mean nothing if she could not successfully marry off her favorite oldest daughter.
Considering the fact that in addition to providing an heir and spare to the Earl along with four other hopefuls, the Countess was not only one of the country’s leading political and diplomatic hostesses, but chair of several charitable boards that benefited everything from orphans to war widows, Georgie thought it should be enough for one woman. What was a daughter here or there?
Her mother obviously mistook Georgie’s interest and glowed.
“As a matter of fact,” she said, turning a bit in her seat, which just made her golden chignon glow in the sun that poured in.
“I was just hearing about him at the St. Pancras Orphanage meeting. Poor man. Quite a heroic soldier, one of Wellington’s favorites.
It’s not bad enough he was wounded, but he comes home to find that his two cousins have been lost to influenza.
Not that they were such a great loss themselves, may God forgive them.
The two of them ran the Marquessate right into the ground with sport, liquor, and… well….”
“Women,” Georgie and Charlie chimed in.
Eddie blushed.
Georgie’s mother blushed right alongside, which was charming at her age. She scowled. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you scamps.”
Charlie positively grinned. “You married my papa’s brother and inherited the whole lot of us. It is quite a good thing that you like us all so much.”
“Yes, dear.” The Countess was nothing if not diplomatic.
“The Marquess?” Georgie prompted. “What injury? I read nothing about it in the dispatches.”
Her mother huffed. “You and your brothers. Poor man was injured on the very last day of fighting. He might have lost his leg, I believe.”
Georgie felt as if she’d been punched. No. Not such a magnificent man.
“Well, that should put him in a better mood,” Charlie muttered.
Georgie and her mother both glared. Eddie just shook her head.
“The estate is bankrupt,” the Countess said, “with only the entail keeping it together. It simply isn’t fair that he must come home to that. I hope he can find a way out of it.”
All Georgie could offer was a faint, “Indeed.”
“Why do you ask?”
Georgie was no fool. She was an expert at diversion. “One of the girls from school mentioned him. Geoffrey followed him quite closely on the Peninsula, so I wondered.” She saw her mother’s brightening expression and held up a hand. “Casually.”
There was nothing for her mother to do but return to her correspondence.
There was more Georgie could do. She did it the next morning.
Peter Prentice Philpott Marsden Greyville, Marquess of Coleford, Earl Whitmore, Baron Llanthony, known to his friends as Grey, had the head from hell.
He hadn’t meant to overdo it the night before, but his old tentmate Rob Glenn had stopped in London on his way through to the family pile somewhere in the Midlands.
Not that Grey knew where that was. His branch of the family had never been invited to their own family pile, much less anyone else’s.
He was invited now, by damn. Amazing what a title could do for a chap.
Even if it came with no money. He imagined he would be quite the popular guest anywhere in the empire now.
But first he had to survive his first foray into epic debauchery since the night he’d bought his colors.
Hell, he’d felt better after Badajoz. And he’d been recovering from a bullet to the back.
This time it was merely his thigh. And it didn’t hurt unless Grey was forced to stand on it more than a few minutes.
“Here, sir,” a melodious voice interrupted his misery. “We thought we might need this.”
Grey opened one eye where he sat slumped over on the side of his bed to find a white-haired scarecrow clad in a black suit and red eyepatch bent before him, bearing a glass of something noxious on a silver tray. He could have sworn he saw the stuff smoking.
“Braxton,” he growled, “Only the King is allowed to use the royal we. On an ex-batman from Stepney, it sounds ridiculous.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Grey winced but grabbed the glass. “I don’t suppose we could go back to Colonel.”
“We could not, my lord.”
Grey squinted up at him. “I believe you have been working toward this position since I met you. You were never in the same place as my cousins, were you?”
“We were with you, my lord,” Braxton intoned piously, straightening to valet poise. “All the way across the Peninsula.”
Grey might have despaired of the man if he hadn’t caught the glint in the old poseur’s eye.
“Yes, Braxton,” Grey admitted, “you were.”
And if Braxton hadn’t slogged through every mile of mud alongside Grey the last six years and kept him alive after Badajoz, Grey might have been less genial.
And trusting. Taking a deep breath, he downed whatever Braxton had put in that glass.
When it didn’t take the top of his head off, he did his best to ignore the stench and handed the glass back.
“Major Glenn is a bad influence, Braxton. It is undoubtedly a good thing he is on his way north.”
“Perhaps tomorrow, my lord. Today he is collapsed in the Brown Guestroom.”
Grey prayed for his stomach to settle. “Serves him right. That wallpaper should give him nightmares. What time is it?”
“Ten. You have a visitor who wishes to speak to you.”
“Don’t be absurd. It’s too early.”
“She said she would wait.”
That got Grey’s eyes wide open. “She? Er, we didn’t bring her home last night as well, did we?”
That got an actual grin from his batman. “No, my lord. Nothing but Dragoons in the house ’til she arrived.” He scowled a bit. “Well, and the young people.”
That made Grey flinch. Another surprise inheritance he’d discovered upon arriving home. “And the young people are?”
“In the breakfast room trying to see if they can finish the cinnamon buns before you get down there.”
Grey bolted to his feet, his distress was so great. “Good God, man. Why didn’t you tell me? If I don’t save the bakery products, we’ll have a disaster all over the dining room table.”
“Yes, my lord.”
By the time Grey had managed to shave, dress, and brush his hair into some semblance of order, Braxton’s magic elixir had begun to work.
At least Grey could turn his head without feeling as if it would spin off across the floor, and his stomach mostly stayed in place.
His civilian attire still felt odd, especially since he was fifteen pounds shy of that long-ago day when he’d had it tailored.
The tobacco brown jacket hung loose, and he thought he’d need to move the buttons on his pantaloons.
He supposed that sooner or later he’d have to get into Weston for some new togs.
Especially since he would soon have the money to do so.
Ah, and there went his stomach again.
“Braxton,” he said, buttoning his coat. “I don’t suppose I had a nightmare where I agreed to marry a perfect stranger in order to save other perfect strangers.”
“No such luck, my lord. We believe congratulations are in order.”
Grey closed his eyes again for a moment.
The future suddenly looked far bleaker than the battlefields of Spain.
In another week, he would have to face the battlefields of Wales.
Wales, by God, which according to his mother’s description was more foreign a country than Spain.
And including, as Braxton put it, ‘the young people.’ And all that after he met with the eighteen-year-old virgin he was to take to wife. Why had he ever left the battlefield?
Sighing, he straightened his shoulders, as he did every time he went into battle, and strode from the bedroom that was as new to him as everything else in his life.
At least he hoped his imminent wife might have better taste than his cousins had. The master bedroom he had inherited with its heavy maroon flocked wallpaper, velvet hangings, and elk heads, for the love of all that was holy, was just as liable to give him nightmares as the Brown Guestroom.
“Where is the, uh, visitor?” he asked as he descended the stairs, Braxton following behind.
“The gold parlor, my lord. It seemed the least...”
“Distressing?”
“Indeed. Place to wait.”
“Well, I will be with her after I make sure the breakfast room is still in one piece. And Braxton?”
“My lord.”
“Please see to it that I do not see another dead animal head in this house. Or on the property, come to think of it. My digestion is perilous enough as it is.”
His first indication that more disasters lay in wait for him came as he stepped off the staircase.
“I cannot get down!” He heard a piping young voice protest, as if it were a grave injustice to her. Which, having gotten to know Sophie over the last few days, he was certain she felt it was.
“That,” a strange woman’s voice answered quite calmly, “is a problem.”
Grey stopped on the spot. Why was a strange woman in his breakfast room sounding very much like a governess? He turned to Braxton, who simply shrugged.
“You have to get me down!” Sophie insisted.
“As a matter of fact,” the voice responded. “No, I do not.”
There was a pause. “Then what shall I do?!”