Chapter Eight
“Our brother is planning to marry again.”
Peter pinched the bridge of his nose. Meg had been in the house for less than thirty seconds. She hadn’t even sat down, and the tea had yet to arrive.
There were gasps from the other two. “This season?” Winnie asked. “This is supposed to be my season.”
“Hush now,” Meg said sternly, as she took an armchair opposite him. “No one gets an entire season to themselves. Peter is allowed to find himself a bride.”
“This season?” Jac echoed. “When I am crippled and unable to be part of it?”
Meg’s frown deepened. “Jacqueline Halie Montgomery.” “You are not crippled. You chose to have surgery and your eyesight will be perfectly fine in a few more weeks.”
“Yes,” Winnie added, “and to compare yourself to someone who is actually crippled is disrespectful.” There was a note of triumph in her tone—more likely because she’d gotten one over on Jac than because of any true objection to Jac’s language.
Peter raked a hand through his hair. “Thank you, Margaret,” he said with a false smile. “I appreciate your support of my marriage plans more than you could know.” There was no keeping the sarcasm from his tone, nor ignoring the smirk she gave in return.
“You’re welcome, brother.”
He turned to Winnie. “You can have all the attention in the world, sister. I hope that the search for a wife will be brief, fruitful, and over before anyone realizes it’s happening.” Certainly it should be over before his sisters became too invested in the process.
Jac snorted. “I hardly think that’s likely. Brother, would you be so kind as to read today’s social paper to me?”
“But I already—” Winnie dodged the cushion Jac threw in her direction, with what was extraordinary aim for someone who couldn’t see.
She’d set a trap; that was clear. But how devastating a trap? His stomach sank as Winnie failed to hold back a laugh. “Page four please, brother,” she said, handing the paper to him.
He snapped it open and then slammed it shut. “Oh, good Lord.”
“What does it say?” Jac asked sweetly, even though she clearly knew.
“Nothing of importance.”
She tsked. “You promised you would read me my correspondence while I was debilitated.”
“The gossip pages are not ‘correspondence.’”
“No? They’re written and delivered to me, and I intend to respond with a letter to the editor.”
A muscle ticked along his jaw. “That’s not correspondence.”
Both she and Winnie shook their heads. Margaret pressed her lips together but her mirth could not be disguised. “You read them to me yesterday,” Jac continued, “and the day before that. You have set the precedent.”
Lord save him from insufferable sisters.
He opened the paper with such force that the corner tore.
He tried to ignore the eighth-of-a-page likeness of him.
He should never have agreed to sit for that damned portrait.
He definitely should have read the document Winnie had presented before he’d signed it.
But he’d been preoccupied and she’d been clever with her words.
Exchanging his painted portrait with a photograph had seemed so fitting.
It had never occurred to him that the image would be printed en masse and sold to strangers.
It was a small mercy that Meg had caught wind of the carte de visite quickly.
With much frustration, he’d purchased the rights to his own likeness from the photographer before too many of the collecting cards had been sold.
But in doing so, he’d turned the ones in circulation into collectors’ items that were tightly held.
They were devilishly hard to track down and ended up in the most inconvenient of places.
Such as page four of the paper, whose editor would soon receive a stern letter.
Grinding his teeth, he turned his attention to the headline.
His day, which had started perfectly with a letter from Booklover, began to deteriorate.
“The Top Ten Most Eligible Bachelors of the Season.” Ack.
He gagged on the words. “This is ridiculous.” He closed the paper and folded it in half and then half again, as if he could minimize the damn pages out of existence.
All of London would eventually see this, Booklover included. Thank God for their anonymity.
The door opened, and a housemaid entered with the tea. “Thank you, Beatrice,” Meg said.
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you, Beatrice. Would you please dispose of this?” He handed her the paper, ignoring the loud objections from his sisters.
“Brother, you are overreacting,” Jac said. “Truly, they were very complimentary. You were described as having sterling intellect and unimpeachable honor.”
“There is beauty in your self-restraint.”
“You are steadfast in your convictions.”
Jac snickered. “Your countenance is comely.”
“Comely and curmudgeonly.”
“Winnie!” Meg snapped. She turned to Peter. “They did not say that.”
Winnie pouted. “They should have, don’t you think? Our new sister should be forewarned.”
Meg narrowed her eyes. “Young ladies are already aware that Peter is prickly with those he does not know well. We don’t need the newspapers suggesting such disposition runs any deeper than the surface.”
“Exactly, sister.” No one needed to see Jac’s full expression to know that it was smug. She turned to Winnie. “Which is why it must be Meg who calls on candidates to discuss the matter. You would likely bungle it.”
Winnie snatched another cushion and lobbed it. Peter intercepted it and made a mental note to have all throwable objects banished until Jac was able to defend herself. He stared them down.
“This period during which I search for the new duchess will be brief, and it will not involve any of you. In fact, I hope to have it done and dusted within the next few days.”
The room went unnervingly quiet. Meg and Winnie exchanged a look and then Meg poured the tea as though he hadn’t said anything. Winnie demurely folded her hands in front of her, and Jac neatened her skirts. They were the picture of propriety.
Cautiously optimistic that he had, in fact, been able to curtail their meddling before it began, Peter took the tea Meg handed him and passed it to Jac, wincing in anticipation of her dropping it, or spilling it, or hitting herself in the face with it.
He had ordered all food and drink to be served lukewarm for the duration of her recovery, but his sisters had kicked up such a fuss that he’d rescinded his direction and instead insisted she use a lap blanket to protect herself from a scalding.
“What are your plans for the rest of the day?” he asked, hopeful that it was safe to change the topic.
His optimism was unfounded. Jac tsked as she gingerly raised her tea cup. “Brother, you can hardly expect to fall in love in a single week.”
“He doesn’t plan to fall in love at all,” Meg interjected.
Peter quickly swooped to steady Jac’s hand as her mouth dropped open. Winnie’s nostrils flared. Damn Rhett and his over-the-top public declaration of love. It had set an impossible standard.
Love wasn’t for dukes, which is why he had accepted that his marriage was to be a business decision, one hashed out between him and his peers over a glass of port at White’s rather than formed in the chandelier-lit glow of a ballroom.
Margaret took a sip of tea and then leaned forward conspiratorially. “He won’t even dance with them anymore, apparently.”
Jac shook her head slowly and patronizingly, as if she were eighty years old and not a girl a full ten years younger than him. “What is he thinking?”
“We cannot tolerate his behavior,” Winnie said.
“I am in the room,” he snapped. “And you do not have a say in the matter. This is not a democracy.”
The room darkened, like an airship had appeared and blocked out the sun. All three of them looked at him in outrage. At least, two of them did. Jac snarled instead.
Blast. He rubbed his temples. “What I mean to say is that my personal life, or lack thereof, is not open for discussion. I welcome your opinion on all other aspects of our family.”
Meg smiled at him. With teeth. “Oh, do you now? You welcome our input in our own lives. How gracious of you.”
“That is not—” Damn. This was why he preferred to remain silent when faced with his siblings’ antics.
Now he needed to explain himself. “Last night simply confirmed what I already knew—that I will not get a single iota of authenticity among marriageable women. They say whatever they think I want to hear and agree with whatever opinion I offer in the hope that I’ll make them the Duchess of Strafford.
I don’t respect that. I could never love it. ”
What he would never tell them was that he’d lost all trust in women the day his brother’s heart had been broken.
It wasn’t Peter’s fault that a schemer had toyed with Rhett to get close to Peter, but he could still recall the twisted, ashen look on his brother’s face and the rending of his own heart at the sight of open dresser drawers, strewn clothing, and a missing portmanteau.
Her actions had driven Rhett abroad and torn the family apart.
For five years he’d had to bear his siblings’ suffering. It had not been his fault, but he had been the cause. He could not forgive himself. Nor would he forget.
In a perfect world, he’d be loved for who he was, not the position of his name on a page of Debrett’s Peerage. But the women of the ton wanted the blank space next to his on that page, and so they attempted to create the illusion they thought he wanted. Their trickery was plain.
Oblivious to the feelings that swirled beneath his facade, Winnie tsked. “You’re exaggerating, brother. Not every woman will pander to you because you’re a duke.”
He sighed. She was young. She would understand in time when people pandered to her as the sister of a duke.