CHAPTER THREE
* * *
After a horrendous night’s sleep, Rathburn lumbered into the breakfast room. “Good morning, Mother,” he said on the tail end of a yawn.
On the way to the buffet, he squinted against the cruel sunlight streaming in through the diamond-paned windows. It was the second sunny day in a row. Quite an astounding occurrence. One he was trying hard to appreciate at the moment.
At least, it boded well for the laborers at Hawthorne Manor if he managed to convince them that their wages would be paid soon, no matter what Collingsford had told them.
At the far end of the polished oval table, his mother poured milk over a bowl of berries. “I’m surprised to see you still here.”
He picked up a plate and began with a neat pile of kippers. “When I am here breakfasting nearly each morning? That wounds me more than you’ll ever know,” he said with a dramatic sigh, teasing her as he added a slice of ham and a mound of buttery eggs. “I would prefer to put forth some effort in order to surprise you. Yet, clearly, all it takes is showing up for breakfast day after day. All these years wasted, I see.”
He glanced over his shoulder and caught her hiding a grin behind her napkin.
“You’re usually off on some errand for the length of the day by now.”
He shrugged before he set his plate down and slid into one of the fiddle-backed chairs that surrounded the table. “I slept later than usual.”
Ever so casually, she dusted her berries with sugar. “It wasn’t because you came in over-late last evening. So, then there must be a reason you still look tired this morning.”
He reached for the teapot and filled his cup with the steaming elixir that would make him feel human. “Mother, are you having Stewart inform you on the schedule I keep? Perhaps I should assist you both and begin to sign a ledger for each time I leave and then list the time I return.”
“As you will,” she said with a flip of her wrist. “I thought, perhaps, you were losing sleep because of your grandmother’s arrival this afternoon.”
Slicing into his kipper, he paused briefly. “I dearly love Grandmamma. There is no reason why her visit would cause me to lose sleep,” he lied smoothly. Or at least he thought he had until he saw the look his mother leveled at him.
Her pale brows lifted. “Nothing to do with your declaration of how you planned to prove yourself worthy of your inheritance, then?”
“An inheritance I should have received on the day of reaching my majority,” he answered with more calm than he felt. “That was years ago. Since then, Grandmamma has made the reason she altered the original contract quite clear. I have done my utmost to stay out of the scandal sheets. I keep schoolboy hours . . .” He was about to go on, but the scoff from his mother stopped him.
“You forget. I remember you as a schoolboy, and that statement certainly does you no credit.”
True enough. “Nevertheless, I have done nearly everything she’s asked of me. Yet, when I approached her last month, it was still not enough.”
“Then bringing Miss Danvers into the mix was an act of sheer desperation?” She dabbed the napkin to the corner of her mouth in a look which stated quite clearly that he should know, by now, he couldn’t keep secrets from her.
“You’ve said nothing.”
She smoothed the napkin over her lap. “I thought the matter would sort itself out.”
In place of his appetite, the heat of injustice and determination roiled in his stomach. “You know very well that if I confess the lie to your mother and the reason for it, she may never hand over my inheritance. She’ll simply add it to the heaps of money your brother already possesses.”
This earned him a sigh of exasperation. “Your uncle is a duke and a powerful man. If he wanted to add the money my father left you to his own fortune, he would have done so by now.”
“Then what is she waiting for?”
“You already know the answer.”
Yes. He would have to marry someone of excellent character. Someone of whom his grandmother approved. The trouble was, he knew only one person who fit both requirements.
His appetite left him and he pushed his plate away. He desperately needed a distraction from his thoughts. There had to be another solution, surely. That thought had plagued him the past two nights. Yet, each morning he awoke with the same conclusion.
“You’re whistling again,” Emma said to her brother as he stepped out of his chamber and into the hall. “Which can only mean you’re going on a trip.”
With Rafe’s lips pursed, it drew her attention to the fashionably angled cut of his side whiskers. The style emphasized the definition of his cheekbones and jaw, two things their mother had commented on repeatedly while imploring him to model for her. His dark, wavy hair was artfully unkempt and a tad too long, but it seemed to suit his devil-may-care manner.
He winked at her and touched the tip of her nose as if she were still in leading strings. “You think you know me so well, do you?”
As confirmation, his valet stepped out from behind him. Under each arm, he carried a satchel and proceeded down the hall to the servants’ stairs after a hasty nod of acknowledgment.
Rafe lifted his shoulders in a careless shrug. “No more than a month, I’d say. Are you going to miss me?”
Of course she would, but she wasn’t about to feed his ego by telling him so. “You promised to be here for the beginning of the Season.”
He’d missed all last year while away in the north of England, supposedly seeking a country estate. What he hadn’t realized was that she was old enough to know why he was really leaving town, and it had more to do with the widow Richardson than finding a place to hang his hat.
“You know very well that the idea of attending balls and parties, enduring the company of simpering debutants and their oppressive mothers, is the last place I want to be,” he said as he cast a glance over his shoulder to his room. “Which is precisely why I’ve arranged for Rathburn to look after you. Although, I pity him—his title puts him at a severe disadvantage and forces him to attend these tedious events all for the sake of—What? Why are you glaring at me with such contempt?”
His expression only displayed concern for an instant before he grinned, proving he wasn’t bothered by it. “I didn’t say you were a simpering debutante. However, I could hardly remain solely in your company. I can only presume you’ll want to dance, which will leave me with the obligation of either finding my own partner or enduring a conversation with one of those oppressive mothers I mentioned.” He touched the tip of her nose again, unaware of how close he was to losing that finger. “Surely, you would not wish such a fate on a most beloved brother.”
Emma expelled a breath and tried to keep the trace of hurt from her voice. Not that he would notice. He was too busy preparing for his journey. “Is a brother who would abandon his sister to the care of a gentleman—whose surly attitude frightened away every possible dance partner last Season—beloved? I think not.”
Apparently, Rafe thought she was joking, because he laughed. Draping an arm around her shoulders, he began to stroll companionably down the hall toward the stairs. “I had Rathburn give his word that he wouldn’t allow you to waste your time on unworthy candidates. After all, I don’t want to be saddled with a simpleton for a brother-in-law.”
“Because of him there have been no candidates.”
Of course, it went without saying that her father’s reputation might have had something to with it, as well. At one time, her father had been a respected portrait artist among the ton. Being a member of the peerage, and with most of society more comfortable sitting for one of their own, he’d been in high demand. Then, one day, that had all changed.
Her father had done the unthinkable. He’d begun painting portraits of the servants. And not the polished servants in their stately livery either, but groomsmen covered in muck from the stalls, and elderly kitchen maids in dirty aprons, with flour caked into their wrinkled faces. His portraits had been far too real for the ton.
When Lady Philomena Fitzherbert had allowed him one more chance to prove his worth by commissioning him to paint a portrait of her spaniels, Cuthbert Danvers agreed. However, he wasn’t interested in gaining her approval or going back to the way things were. He wanted freedom to create his art. So, instead of gracing her with a divine portrait of her precious angels, what she’d received was a painting of the spaniels biting the hands of the maid who groomed them, along with a sizeable bill. After that, her father was given the cut direct.
Neither he nor Emma’s mother received invitations to societal events any longer—none other than from the close friends who’d stood by them.
In fact, if it hadn’t been for Lady Rathburn and her support, Emma never would have had a Season.
While she admired her father’s work, part of her wished he’d kept those paintings a secret until after she had been married. But perhaps she was the only one who fully understood the vital importance of keeping secrets.
“No candidates?” Rafe teased with an overly dramatic gasp, which apparently gave him no end of amusement. His robust laughter echoed off the walls. “Perhaps this year’s crop will be different.”
Hmph! Or perhaps, this year, it was time to take matters into her own hands.