Chapter Fifteen #2
“His mother said he has the strongest gift for heart healing in the family, and it sounds like you have him to thank for the fact that you are alive right now.” His aunt opened her mouth to reply, but he cut her off. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”
His aunt gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “I can assure you, watching me be fussed over by the Ruteledges was far less entertaining than the regatta.” She paused, tilting her head. “Well? I’d heard Oriana and her brother were the odds-on favorites to win. Did they?”
Arden wondered if his aunt’s heart could handle the upset at the regatta, but bedbound or not, he knew better than to try to lie to her. “No, though if I’d had the foresight to bet on who would win, I very well might not have need of your fortune at all.”
His aunt’s eyebrows arched high. “Oh? Don’t tell me it was the Tiptons—Marjorie will be insufferably smug if it was.”
Arden didn’t know who Marjorie Tipton was, but he shook his head.
“Not a family at all, I don’t think. It was one of the Lack boats.”
For a moment, his aunt went so still Arden very nearly called Bertram Ruteledge back to see to her, but then she laughed, the sound surprisingly loud given her current frail state, and tried to sit up in bed.
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not,” Arden said, wondering if perhaps he should have lied to her after all. “It was quite the shock.”
“That’s putting it mildly.” Aunt Philomena settled back into her pillows with a heavy sigh. “Well, now I’ve truly lived through it all. I take it Miss Mayles was gracious in her defeat.”
“Of course,” Arden said automatically, even though he had only seen Oriana at a distance after the race.
Even from his vantage point on the bluff, though, he could see the fury emanating from Thaddeus.
He reminded Arden of a cranky toddler on the cusp of a tantrum.
“Far more gracious than her brother, I dare say.”
“Oh, that doesn’t surprise me.” Aunt Philomena clicked her tongue. “The first time I saw Thaddeus Mayles, he was three years old, kicking sand at a flock of seagulls on the beach. He was a brat then, and he’s a brat now, nearly thirty years later. Poor Miss Lindcourt.”
It took Arden a second to remember the alias Mavis was using. “Oh, I get the feeling she can handle him. I didn’t want to tell you until I was further along in case it proved a fool’s plan, but Miss Lindcourt has actually been helping me woo Miss Mayles.”
His aunt looked bemused. “And what makes Miss Lindcourt such an expert?”
Arden shrugged again. He couldn’t very well tell her the truth, but he thought up a half truth quickly enough that Mavis might have been impressed if she’d been there to see it.
“She’s a woman,” he said airily. “And she’s to be Oriana’s sister-in-law, so I presume she knows her well enough to provide more information about what she likes, what she wants in a husband. ”
“And Miss Lindcourt thinks it might be you?”
“Do try not to sound so skeptical,” he said, fighting the urge not to laugh. “I like to believe you wouldn’t have set me an impossible task.”
His aunt smiled, but that, too, was a thin thing, so unlike her usual smile. “It’s proving entertaining, if nothing else. And apparently I have very little time left to waste being bored.”
She tried to cling to her usual blasé tone, but her voice cracked on the word time.
He wanted to tell her that she had plenty of time, but he knew if he did, she would kick him out of her house that moment, illness be damned.
She had a fortnight, and it didn’t do either of them any good to pretend otherwise.
“Miss Lindcourt suggested a book that Miss Mayles is quite fond of. I’ve been reading it so I can discuss it with her, but since you’re on bed rest, perhaps I might read it aloud?”
His aunt snorted. “I don’t see why not. It isn’t as if I have many options in the way of entertainment, is it?”
Arden left to fetch the book from his bedroom, and when he returned, he showed his aunt the cover.
“Affair of the Darkest Heart.” Her eyes skimmed the title, and she clicked her tongue in disapproval. “I will never understand the appeal of fiction.”
“I read the first few chapters already, but I wasn’t paying much attention, so I don’t mind starting over.” Arden sat back down at her bedside.
His aunt pursed her lips. “At the first sign of a crumbling old manor or a ghost, I will demand that you throw the book out the window.”
Midday came and went with no more fanfare than a maid bringing a tray of lunch consisting of bowls of carrot soup and hunks of toasted bread—along with a foul-smelling tea that he had to bribe his aunt to drink by withholding the glass of sherry that usually accompanied her meal.
She did so, wrinkling her nose all the while, before downing the sherry in a single glass to, as she put it, wash away the taste.