Chapter Five The Second Son’s Lament #3
Lady Matlock's eyes sharpened. "Your father hates bills more. He agrees with me."
Richard's hands opened, then closed. "She dresses like a warning."
"She dresses like a woman who refuses to disappear," Lady Matlock replied, and there was, in that, a note of approval so slight it might have been imagined. "Garish, yes. Bold, yes. Stupid, no."
Richard stared. "Mother."
Lady Matlock continued, utterly calm. "She attended the best school for ladies in England. Her manners are flawless. Her conversation is sharp. She knows the rules. She chooses which ones to obey."
Richard's throat tightened. The image of Miss Bingley in orange, rigid and proud, flickered again. He despised the way his mother's words slid into place around it, making it harder to dismiss.
"She would be a terrible wife," he muttered, meaning it with his whole soul.
"She would be an interesting one. And she would not require a tutor to hold her hand through a dinner party. Your father values competence. He pretends he values blood. He values competence, land, and the appearance of moral order."
Richard's mouth twisted. "You make it sound like a business arrangement."
Lady Matlock smiled. "Marriage often is."
Richard stood abruptly, the chair scraping. He paced once, then stopped, then turned back to her with contained fury, realising he was cornered by his own family.
"Mother, half the time I want to throttle her, and the only thing that keeps me from doing it is my impeccable breeding."
Lady Matlock reached out and patted his hand as if he were a child who had confessed a fear of thunder. Her touch was light, condescending, and affectionate in the most infuriating manner.
"I can see you have passionate feelings for her," she observed.
"Murderous feelings," he snapped.
Her smile widened. "Murder is passion."
Richard glared. "Mother."
She rose again, gliding around the table. She reached up and adjusted his cravat with a small tug, like a boy who had returned from war with his uniform misaligned.
"You are tired," she said softly. "It makes you dramatic."
"It makes me honest," he retorted.
Her eyes held his. They were sharp, amused, and far too perceptive. "It makes you frightened."
"I am not frightened."
"You are. You are frightened of being sent away, frightened of being poor, frightened of failing your father, frightened of wanting what you do not know how to control."
His hands clenched. "I want nothing."
Lady Matlock's thumb smoothed a crease in his sleeve. "Of course."
She moved towards the door, pausing at the threshold. She looked back once, and the look carried everything she refused to say aloud.
"Your father will press this matter with Miss Bingley," she said. "And do not mistake my calm for indifference."
Richard's laugh came out without humour. "I would not dare."
Lady Matlock inclined her head. "Good."
She stepped closer and gave him the second kiss on his cheek that night. It carried a lightness that felt almost foreign after the evening's dissection, and the gesture, absurdly, unsettled him more than the mention of dowries.
"Good night, Richard."
He stood rigid, letting the kiss land like a seal on a document.
"Good night."
Lady Matlock left. The door closed with quiet finality.
Richard remained by the fire, staring at the place where she had been, his mind roaring with outrage. His mother had betrayed him. His mother had allied with his father. His mother had smiled while doing it, as if matchmaking were a parlour amusement and his life a board game she intended to win.
He paced. He stopped. He paced again. Orange returned, brazen and bright, intruding with the persistence of a mosquito that refuses death out of spite.
He hated that his mind could summon her so easily.
He hated that his chest tightened with the memory of her looking at him as if he were both enemy and shield.
He hated most of all that his mother had named it passion and made it sound as though it belonged in the category of desire rather than irritation.
Richard stopped pacing. He faced the fire as if it were an adversary.
"No," he informed the flames, low and savage. "No. Not under any circumstances. Only over my extremely dead body."
The fire crackled, unimpressed.
He dragged a hand through his hair, then forced his posture straight again, because even alone, even furious, he could not entirely abandon propriety. It was welded into his bones. It was the inheritance he could not pawn.
"I will not," he said again, as if repetition could make it true. "I will not court her. I will not flatter her. I will not stand in her path and let her stab me with her wit while I nod politely. I will not marry Caroline Bingley."
He took the stairs two at a time and closed the door of his chambers behind him. He exhaled, slow and sharp, then lay back fully clothed on the bed, staring at the cracks of the ceiling as dawn threatened the edge of London's sky.
"No bloody way," he whispered to the empty room, and closed his eyes as if that might end the matter.
It did not.