Chapter 19 #2
Harold’s wife, Priscilla speared her father-in-law with a look of animosity.
It had never been much of a secret that she did not care for the marquess or his unrestricted ridicule.
Just as it had never been much of a secret that the marquess did not care for Priscilla.
Or Prissy as he tended to call her, both behind her back and to her face.
“Now, Lady Cassandra, what will you have? Peters, bring the lady a glass of wine.”
The footman stationed near the table of decanters leaped to his task.
“Perhaps you could allow the lady to choose her own drink,” Grant said, his jaw tight.
His father waved away the suggestion even as Cassie’s hand on his forearm flexed. Then, as if realizing that she still clung to him, she released him and stepped away.
“Ladies prefer wine, son. Or sherry. What of that, my lady, would you prefer sherry? Peters! Sherry.”
The footman had already poured the wine but now lowered the carafe and reached for the sherry.
“I’ll have a whisky,” Cassie said. The room silenced.
Instantly, Grant recalled the intoxicating taste of whisky on her tongue as it curled around his Friday night. He swallowed a groan.
The marquess did not say a word as Peters splashed a finger of the good single malt into a glass.
Penelope and her husband Alfred exchanged an amused look as Cassie took the whisky.
In contradiction, Lawrence and his wife, Mary, could not mask their matching sneers.
It was a rare thing for Lawrence or Mary to differ in opinion from the marquess, and right then Lindstrom was arching a brow in distaste.
“It isn’t often a lady in Lindstrom House partakes in uisge beatha,” James said, shifting his entertained grin toward Grant. Thought she was in confinement, James’s wife Vera was the luckiest of them all for getting to sit out this dinner party.
Grant was scowling at his brother when he felt Cassie’s hand glide against his. Startled, he stared at their joined hands, their fingers lacing together. He looked up and saw the glint of mischief shining in her eyes.
“I find that I prefer to toast good news with the water of life, Lord James,” she said with a fetching grin as she affected an adoring gaze on Grant.
“And what good news do you bring, my lady?” the marquess asked.
A prickle of premonition arrived too late. Grant could not open his mouth and deflect her answer fast enough.
“I have accepted your son’s offer of marriage, Lord Lindstrom,” Cassie said as she stared into Grant’s eyes, watching for his reaction.
He stopped breathing, but sound tolled through his ears—the rush of blood and shock and not a small amount of panic. Offer of marriage? The infuriating little hoyden! She’d promised to convince the marquess of her interest in his suit, and this is what she had settled on?
As he met her acerbic smile with a menacing grin of his own, voices began to feed back into his eardrums. His brothers’ stiff congratulations and Penelope’s genuine exclamation of surprise were pops of sound that grated on him.
But his father’s voice was the loudest. Even though Cassie had just shoved Grant one step closer to giving the old man what he wanted, he didn’t offer well wishes but more criticism.
“Glad to see you’ve finally drummed up some sense, boy. That perpetual keening over a woman, dead nigh on a decade, was becoming rather tiresome.”
The scornful remark was nothing new for Grant and so it did not lash at him as it had the first several times the marquess voiced it. However, Cassie’s triumphant gleam snapped off, and she jerked a look of horror toward the marquess.
“How could you say something so cruel?”
The pleased grins all around turned to stone and cracked. The pressure of Cassie’s fingers increased around his as she glared at his father. Grant gently squeezed her hand.
“Don’t pay him any mind. He says what he thinks without concern for how it might sound,” he told her.
She blinked, the color rising in her cheeks.
It wasn’t embarrassment. No, he knew this particular shade of pink.
It lit her face whenever she was provoked, and Cassie was truly appalled at Lord Lindstrom.
“You clearly do not know your future husband as well as the rest of us, Lady Cassandra. He’s a stubborn, melancholy profligate that I expect you to take in hand.”
She rocked back onto her heels, stunned anew. Grant should have warned her what his father was like. The threat to cut him off financially had not been a manipulative tool. It had been sincere as a bullet to the heart. Now at least she would believe him.
Coming through the drawing room doors, Harding announced dinner. Everyone leaped to flee the unexpected tension. Penelope came toward them, interest bowing her lips.
“Lady Cassandra, why don’t you walk with me?”
Cassie’s fingers loosened from Grant’s and fell away. He shouldn’t have felt the loss of them as keenly as he did, especially given the stunt she’d just pulled. It had been hasty and ill-judged, and she was going to regret it once her temper receded.
He followed Cassie and Penelope to the dining room, where the seating was arranged to make sure no one sat directly next to their spouse.
Cassie was placed to the marquess’s right, and to her right was James.
Grant took a chair across the table, diagonal to her.
While the wine was poured and the soup course delivered, her mouth remained a grim slash, her eyes furtively taking stock of Lord Lindstrom.
For once, she was directing her discontent toward another man, and Grant found he was rather enjoying the show.
“Lady Cassandra, has my brother ever told you the story of his first patient?” James asked after the serving of the roast and a rather dull monologue from Lawrence about a finance bill moving through the House.
Cassie lowered her glass of wine and tossed a droll glance toward Grant. “He has not.”
“It’s nearly as tedious as that finance bill,” Grant said with a shake of his head. This story never failed to amuse James, and every time he told the sodding thing, he injected more fanciful imaginings.
“The bill is an integral piece of legislation, Grant, though I don’t expect you to know or care,” Lawrence muttered.
“Monsieur Quack,” James began, affecting a French accent and ignoring their oldest brother.
Cassie arched a brow. “Who?”
“Grant’s first patient. Our pet duck.”
“James—” Grant sighed, but his brother held up a hand.
“He loved that duck.”
“I bloody hated the creature,” he said. But James continued as if he’d said nothing.
“And when Monsieur Quack received grave wounds while fending off an attack by a vicious dog—”
“It was a broken wing from our aunt’s decrepit poodle.”
“—he spent all night tending to it, doing everything he could to save the poor thing.”
Grant tossed back the rest of his wine. “I set the wing. It took ten minutes.”
“It was then that we all knew he would be a marvelous physician,” James concluded. Then with a wink toward Cassie, whose lips were pinned together against an amused grin, “Or perhaps just strangely attentive toward waterfowl.”
Groans from around the table followed the well-worn finish to James’s story. However, Cassie released a genuine laugh. The sound charged through Grant like a wallop of victory.
The marquess cleared his throat and put an end to the fragile good humor.
“Here is another story, Lady Cassandra. When my youngest son expressed an interest in medicine, I told him to do as he pleased. You see, I didn’t believe he had it in him to see through university let alone lower himself to actually work as a doctor. ”
Cassie’s smile slipped, as did everyone else’s.
“Imagine my surprise and horror when he hung out his shingle,” Lindstrom went on, fingers tapping the table—a signal of his mounting displeasure.
Cassie cut her gaze toward Grant, but he didn’t wish to meet it. No doubt it would be full of pity and disbelief at the marquess’s derisive remarks. Instead, he kept his attention on his father, whose forehead creased with an expectant look.
“It is high time you put all that nonsense behind you, son. A new marriage is a fresh start, and I doubt His Grace will approve of his sister marrying a man who takes his profession more seriously than he does his title.”
His father’s disapproval had become so engrained in him that it often felt like an extra layer of skin.
Not only did Lord Lindstrom despise the fact that his son worked, but he was also embarrassed by it.
While the boy in him longed for his father’s approval, the man in him did not require it.
Both parts of him took an indecent amount of pleasure in the marquess’s humiliation.
However, as he had not sufficiently warned Cassie of his father’s shortcomings, she once again balked at the old man. “Give up his profession?”
“Yes, quite right,” he said.
“Or at least give up Miss Matthews,” Mary said. “It is untoward for the young woman to be working alongside you, Grant, and well you know it.”
“The girl is ruined. No one will have her now,” the marquess went on, cutting his hand through the air dismissively. “But Lady Cassandra, surely, you do not desire to be the wife of a doctor. And well you shouldn’t!”
Cassie didn’t desire to be his wife at all, Grant thought, but she had just turned their courtship into a betrothal out of some fit of pique. Here was one such consequence—being subjected to his father’s edicts.
He was oddly curious as to how she would handle it.
“Being a physician is entirely respectable.” She brought her hands to the table, laying them flat on the lace cloth. “As is being the wife of one.”
Grant hitched his chin, unable to peel his eyes from her. By her solemn expression, Cassie was entirely serious. The marquess, though, bayed laughter.