Chapter 4 #2
Nothing having to do with Cassie Sinclair could be uttered, of course. So, Grant turned to the next most aggravating thing. “Is the marquess’s order that I find a new wife and issue a son not reason enough?”
“Plenty, I suppose.” James moved toward the leather Chesterfield. He fell backward onto the cushions and stretched out his legs again.
“Eight children,” Grant said. “Three sired by Lawrence, three by Harold, and two by you, and none of them could be a boy? What is wrong with the lot of you?”
He would not include their younger sister in his satirized scathing. She was heartbroken that she hadn’t conceived after three years of marriage, and besides, Penelope already received enough grief about it from their father.
James raised a brow, and as Grant had always been able to do, he read his brother’s thoughts easily. He was thinking of the child that Grant had sired himself. The one who’d never drawn breath. Also a girl. But James knew better than to mention her.
“Perhaps we are all cursed to sire females,” he said instead. He was being facetious. He adored his little girls, Letitia and Vivian.
“That is far too fatalistic an attitude for the marquess,” Grant replied, eyeing the decanter once more. He turned his back to it and faced his brother. “When is the new one due to arrive again? Next month?”
It was the one last glittering hope Grant clung to: that James’s wife, currently in confinement, would give birth to a boy.
The boy their father had slowly become obsessed with receiving.
The fact that primogeniture would safely see the Lindstrom title bestowed upon at least one of his four sons wasn’t enough for the old tyrant.
With no male offspring amongst those four sons, the title would eventually be shunted off to the next male heir.
Some distant cousin or nephew, all of whom may as well have been common laborers for how Lord Lindstrom spoke of them.
“About a month, yes,” James answered, but his tone held a warning, one he’d already illuminated before: that Grant should not hinge all his hope on the child being male.
But it seemed his optimism had a mind of its own.
Should Vera have a boy at the start of the new year, Grant would be off the hook.
Unfortunately, the marquess had given him only until the first of January to select a wife.
“I’ve come about Father’s dinner tonight,” James said to change the subject.
“I haven’t heard about any dinner.”
His brother rose to his feet, looking suddenly eager to depart. “This is you hearing. And you’re to be there. No excuses. Eight o’clock.”
He groaned. “I presume several unmarried ladies and their mothers will be in attendance,” Grant said, pushing off from the edge of his desk as James headed for the exit.
“Our father is a hard man, I’m not ignorant to that. But you are two and thirty, brother. You should marry.”
Thorns pricked the underside of his skin. “I was married. How is it that everyone constantly seems to forget that?”
James cocked his head. Then came forward and clasped Grant’s shoulder. “No one has forgotten. We all loved Sarah. But it has been eight years.” He gave a small shake of his head. “It is time to move on.”
It wasn’t a new sentiment. The first person to suggest it, just three months after Sarah’s death, had received a broken nose and a cracked front tooth.
He couldn’t even recall the man’s name. At that time, Grant had been visiting houses of vice nearly every night of the week to numb his incessant pain.
His practice had been a shambles, his patients withdrawing to allow him time to grieve.
But it was not acceptable for men to grieve for too long.
He would recover, he'd been told, and find a new wife.
Have more children. The comments had left him cold, and curious as to just how many men actually loved their wives.
He’d loved Sarah with blind passion. He’d worshipped her.
She’d been beautiful, of course, but that hadn’t been his sole reason.
There had been so many little things about her, like her subdued wit, her penchant for anything pink, and her truly awful singing voice.
It had been horrendously off key, and she’d known it, so she would abuse his ears with little songs whenever she felt the urge to annoy him.
Not that it ever truly did. And yet, eight years on, he found he couldn’t hear it anymore in his memory the way he once had.
James released his shoulder. “Besides, haven’t you grown tired of superficial liaisons?”
“No.” Not when they were the extent of what he was willing to risk.
Superficial rake. It was what Cassie had accused him of being when she’d walked in on Lady Brookfield showing him her mole.
It was mostly accurate. He was superficial in many ways.
He was a rake too, though he limited his number of bed partners to a healthy one-at-a-time—unlike many true rakes he knew.
Still, hearing Cassie accuse him of superficiality had struck with insult, while his brother’s acknowledgement of it had left nary a mark.
He straightened up and cleared his throat. “I’ll be at the damnable dinner, but I cannot promise I’ll be on my best behavior.”
He had a reputation to uphold, after all.
“You’d best try,” James said on his way out. “Just pick a wife and be done with it. Father is serious about this. He holds the power to reduce your income to a pittance—”
“As I well know,” he interjected, the threat like the nick of a blunted razor.
“Enough for you to get by on bread and ale alone,” James went on.
“Yes, yes, do shut up and leave.”
His brother winked and did just that.
Christ. Bread and ale. Had he received even a solitary display of affection from his father over the course of his life, Grant might doubt the veracity of the warning.
But the marquess did not make idle threats.
And should Grant’s income dry up, he’d be left with nothing but his physician earnings.
It wouldn’t be near enough to run this household and the free clinic.
One solution he’d considered had been to leave Thornton House and live in Whitechapel at the Church Street clinic.
He leased the entire building, which consisted of two floors and six rooms. But he’d already shoved that option into the rubbish.
He wanted to be philanthropic, not poor—which he would be, once his upper-class patients learned he was doctoring to the pestilence ridden masses.
It brought his mind back to Lady Cassandra.
She knew all about Dr. Brown now. Unlike Hannah, Hugh Marsden, and the few others who knew about the clinic, like his driver Merryton and of course, Goodwin, Grant didn’t fully trust that Cassie would stay mum about it.
Given her short temper and her impulsivity, he felt slightly precarious about the whole thing.
“Should I ready your bag?” Hannah asked as she entered the study. “It’s nearly noon, and I suspect you’ll want to check in on last night’s patient.”
She knew him well.
“Thank you,” he said as anticipation churned his stomach. As much as he hoped Cassie was not there, he couldn’t deny that it would be convenient. They needed to speak. And he would not shut up until he got the answer he wanted.