Chapter Twenty-Six
“I plan to propose tomorrow.” Peter crossed his arms and steeled himself for their reaction. He wanted the engagement done and dusted.
“Hmmm.” Meg took another sip of tea.
“Very well,” Winnie added, rolling her eyes.
Only Jac displayed any enthusiasm, and even that was mild. “Which one is it, then?”
This tepid response was more unsettling than an interrogation could be. “Lady Anabelle Godley,” he said. “Wait. Blast. Lady Isabelle Grailly.”
A collective sigh washed past him. Meg shook her head. “Heavens, brother. You should at least know her name if you plan on making her your wife.”
He knew her damned name. Most of the time.
He’d considered writing it down before making his announcement, just in case, but then they would have made the same comment.
He gritted his teeth. “They are very similar sounding names,” he ground out.
“Anabelle. Isabelle. Surely I can be forgiven for the odd mix-up.”
Winnie snorted. “As long as you don’t mix it up at the altar.”
“Or in bed,” Jac muttered.
Peter flushed. “That is an entirely inappropriate comment for a young lady.”
“But not an untruthful one.”
“Jacqueline Halie Montgomery.” Her comment more closely resembled the response he’d been expecting. “I’ve told you all now. You’ve heard it from me. I hope that satisfies you. You won’t find out about it from a maid or a newspaper.”
“Will she?” Winnie asked with a smirk. “Or will you simply send off the betrothal announcement and let her discover the fact over tea and biscuits?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. Never. He would never, ever live that down. They would torment him with that misstep for the rest of his life. “I plan to visit her father this afternoon and make all the arrangements.”
“How romantic,” Meg muttered.
Winnie growled and threw a cushion at him. “But do you love her?”
The cushion was a boon. Crushing it stopped him from crushing something, someone, else. “She is an amiable enough woman. I’m sure I will come to like her.”
“You will come to like her?” Their collective shriek grated along his already drawn and fraying senses.
“Yes. That is enough. The decision is made.” For the next thirty-odd seconds his sisters ranted, all three at once, all three outraged, none them caring that the cacophony was unintelligible and their meaning had been completely lost.
“At least it’s not Lady Cecilia,” Jac said. That was the comment that drew their chaos into controlled, unified dissent. “Could you imagine having breakfast with her every morning?” she continued.
“I would go to live with Meg,” Winnie replied.
Meg shook her head. “No, you would not,” she said. “I love you, sister, and I especially love to visit you.”
“Then I shall get married.”
“Good,” Jac replied. “Then none of us will have to listen to your incessant chatter.”
Peter quietly placed the cushion beside Jac and began to back out of the room. The news had been delivered. If his sisters were arguing among themselves, then they weren’t arguing with him.
He’d not gotten four feet before Meg pinned him with a glare. “Forget it, brother.”
He sighed and reversed direction. “Lady Anabelle—”
“Isabelle,” all three sisters interjected.
Blast. “Yes. Regardless, Lady Isabelle seems perfectly amiable.” Amiable like mashed potatoes. “If you have any worthwhile objections to her, now is the time to speak them.”
“You’re not in love with her.”
“That is not a worthwhile objection,” he responded.
“She is dull.”
“You three are not. She will balance out the household.”
“She can barely hold a conversation.”
“I do not need a chatty wife.”
“But what of our needs for conversation?”
He sighed. “Edwina, you could have a sprightly conversation with a wall. You’ll survive.”
“You love Miss Wright,” Meg stated.
For the first time since he’d declared his intention, the room was silent. They waited for his confirmation or denial. That was fine. He could out-wait them. They wouldn’t last a—
“You have been stalking around like a bear with a sore tooth for weeks,” Winnie said, thumping the chaise longue. “You moon over Miss Wright like a lovesick adolescent.”
His heartbeat quickened. They were going to give him apoplexy if they insisted on carrying on this line of conversation. “I do not moon.”
Winnie pursed her lips. “Every time we enter a room, you scan it for her presence. If she is there, your entire body loosens, and if she is not, you look ready to strangle someone.”
Jac cocked her head, turning in Winnie’s direction. “That is surprisingly perceptive of you, sister.”
Winnie gave a gracious smile, looking as proud as Peter had ever seen her. “Thank you. I have a talent for observing things that others don’t.”
“Your observations are inaccurate,” he responded. The muscles along his jaw tightened.
Winnie paid no regard to his darkening mood. “Every time you dance, your head turns toward her as you spin, as though she is the point that grounds you.”
“Remarkably perceptive of you, sister,” Meg added.
Peter could do with a little less perception. “If I watch her, which I dispute, it is only to ensure that she is nowhere nearby.”
“Bollocks.”
“Edwina.”
“Winnie is right. That’s bollocks.”
“Jacqueline.”
He turned to Meg for help.
She shrugged. “They are correct, brother. You may have quit corresponding with her, but we see your face every time the mail comes. You are clearly smitten, though you refuse to admit it.” She patted the seat beside her. “Sit. Speak. You expect honesty from everyone, so you must give it in return.”
Sitting felt like acquiescing. Talking felt hazardous. He crossed his arms instead, rolling back and forth on his heels. “Miss Wright would be an inappropriate duchess. She has none of the experience or skill required.”
Jac tut-tutted. “You have repeatedly complimented her intelligence, and insisted that she has the ability to take on any career.”
Damn. “The circumstances of her birth cannot be overlooked.”
Winnie scoffed. “Just last year, you offered to marry Della, and she was a maid.”
He couldn’t stop his foot from tapping, and prayed that his suddenly perceptive sisters did not mark his anxiety. “Miss Wright would never be accepted by the ton. They will not tolerate a woman who spends her days working.”
Winnie snorted. “She doesn’t anymore. You saw to that.”
“Hush.” Meg slapped Winnie’s knee. Ignoring the yelp that followed, Meg rose and took hold of his arm, drawing him firmly to the seat beside her. “You. Talk.”
He tried to stand, but her vise-like grip and mutinous look trapped him. Without letting him go, she gestured for Winnie to pour tea.
Winnie’s narrowed eyes never left him, which was why tea sloshed across the tray and was how he managed to extract himself from Meg’s talons.
While she mopped up the spill and Winnie fussed, he assessed his options.
They would not relent. Thus, keeping them at arm’s length from this business would require active resistance, when usually he managed to achieve the distance simply by limiting what information he shared.
The alternative was to succumb, to open himself up and let them pick their way through his feelings, even if it meant they might find something in there that unsettled them. Even if it risked shaking their confidence in him and leaving them without a reliable pillar to lean on.
Even if he was deeply afraid of what they might see and how it might change the way they felt about him.
Very little of the tea was salvageable. Meg dried a saucer, poured what was left into a cup, and handed it to him.
It jogged a memory of their mother. Tea will fix almost every problem, she would say, ruffling his hair.
If the rest come to pass, then you might as well have a cup in hand because it can only improve an apocalypse.
His mother had been the second-to-last person he’d shared his fears with. His father’s steward had been the last, and then only once.
Meg looked so much like her. She’d aged and their mother hadn’t.
Her face had softened; her smile was less bright and more knowing.
Since her husband had absconded, she’d looked at everyone differently, with deeper empathy and tolerance born from life’s experiences.
His mother had had that same look. He assumed he had it too, just never when he looked in the mirror.
“She does not want me. She does not even like me. She thinks I am the root of all evil. To her, I am merely a title and not in an admirable, flattering way. She thinks I am cold and calculating and cruel.”
Winnie responded exactly as he’d expected. “What poppycock. If she thinks that she is not as intelligent as we thought.” Her confidence was kind, but it was not reassuring because it could not be trusted. She saw only what he’d shown her and the truth was far deeper than that.
“Are you all those things?” Meg ruffled his hair and his throat tightened.
That question had brewed in his belly for weeks. “Am I? I don’t know. Possibly. Society keeps its distance, because I have convinced them to with my churlishness. So I am certainly cold. I feel very little empathy when I am in London, so I am likely that as well.”
He couldn’t face his sisters as he made the admission.
He focused his attention on the ugly stag’s head his father had hung proudly.
As a child, he’d hated it. It had been a symbol of cruelty.
As he’d aged, he’d come to see it as a symbol of necessity.
Deer must be killed for people to eat. His preferences did not factor into the matter. That was calculating, was it not?
Lord, he hated that damned stag’s head.
Meg clasped his face, leaving him no choice but to look at her. “But, Peter, is that cold or have you been protecting yourself and I have not noticed? If that is the case, it was badly done of me.”
He closed his eyes, trying to rebuild the seawall that might have washed away for good. This was exactly what he’d been avoiding. Now that she’d seen his uncertainty, his fear, who could she rely on?
“I am perfectly fine.” He took her hands from his face and set them in her lap, patting them in a manner that was supposed to be reassuring.
“It will be all right. That was a momentary glitch. Forget it happened. I am not that affected.” The smile he gave was false and he prayed they couldn’t see it.
Winnie’s sudden, damnable perception could not be fooled, and the bit was beneath her teeth now. “You are not without feelings, brother. You may not share them openly and perhaps we’ve not demanded it of you before now, but you have feelings and they are worth something.”
A lump formed in his throat. “She doesn’t want me.”
Jac sighed. “She wanted the Captain, and you are him.”
He had been his most honest self as Captain O.T.N.
Eleanor had liked him. Even when the Captain had failed to meet her, she’d defended him.
She might, might, forgive the Captain for his absence, but no one could think that she would forgive Peter for his lie.
Wishing for forgiveness was pointless. It would simply drive him mad. Moving on was the only smart choice.
“You three gave me the list of potential brides. None of you included her.” Her current distaste for him was not the sole reason to shake her from his mind.
“Ugh.” It was Jac’s turn to throw a cushion at him. “We expected you to be intelligent enough to come to the realization on your own. We didn’t expect you to be so daft.”
“True,” Winnie said. “Jac, you should probably retract your comment about Peter’s intelligence. I think you give him too much credit.” Her moment of insight and compassion had passed, clearly.
He interlaced his fingers behind his neck to stop them from morphing into talons. “I don’t know what you expect of me.”
Meg rubbed her temples. “We expect you to follow your heart, not run away because she said mean things when you had taken her by surprise and had not given her all the context.”
His limbs turned leaden just thinking of the challenge they wanted him to tackle. Their lips were pressed in mutinous lines. Their tenacity was unmatched. “So, I am not to propose to Lady Anabelle? Damn. Lady Isabelle?”
Winnie threw the last cushion at him, and he swore to have every tossable item banished from the room. “You are a dunderhead,” she said. “Forget Lady Isabelle. Go show Miss Wright who you truly are.”