Miss Dashing, page 19
The breakfast parlor acquired the sort of quiet that made the rain against the windows loud by contrast. Hecate did not confront Isaac in the usual course. If they had to communicate, they did so in writing, through the solicitors, or through other family members.
Hecate didn’t hate Isaac—he’d suffered significant disappointments in life—but she neither liked nor trusted him. He was cold-blooded in a way the rest of the family was not and driven by bitterness as much as greed.
“Tell me, Hecate. Will you try to lie your way out of your betrothal to Johnny?” Papa put the question almost pleasantly. “I would enjoy seeing you try. I, who watched you sign the settlement agreements just before I signed them myself. I, who know for a fact that Johnny will be more generous with that money than you have ever been.”
Hecate sipped her tea, feeling an old, rancid sense of betrayal. “Did you summon Johnny from Canada?”
Papa took a slice of toast from the rack and helped himself to the raspberry jam. “Why would you think such a thing? The man spent ten years making his fortune through luck, skill, and determination. Now he’s come home to you, just as he promised he would. Another woman would be touched by and grateful for such devotion, particularly a woman of plain appearance and few accomplishments.”
Eins, zwei, drei… “I begged Johnny to take me with him. He patted my shoulder and wished me luck. I cannot marry a man who has never proposed to me.”
“Your memory fails you. Johnny proposed very prettily. You accepted, but understood that he wanted to bring his own means to the union. You respect that about him. I do, too, and so will all of Society.”
Hecate picked up her fork and understood that Papa was at least partly justified in his anger. Mama might well have hoped to present him with a son, but she’d also capitulated to the lure of her sea captain out of sheer despair. To be Isaac Brompton’s daughter had been vexing and painful.
Mama must have suffered the torments of the damned as his supposedly barren wife.
“I am not marrying Johnny,” Hecate said, spearing a bite of eggs, “who never did me the courtesy of a proposal, much less seek permission to court me, much less send me a single billet-doux. Believe whatever other fancies you please, connive with Johnny however you wish, but know that I will not marry him.”
The silver lining in that declaration was that, but for Phillip, Hecate might be considering a negotiated truce with Johnny. Promises to Isaac notwithstanding, Johnny, as Hecate’s husband, would guard Hecate’s fortune for the simple reason that any settlements would make a part of that fortune his.
He would not champion her interests, but he would champion his own, and that could work to Hecate’s benefit.
In the same moment those thoughts flitted through her brain, she rejected them. Putting up with her family, she’d learned to be pragmatic to a fault, to think always of the long term and of the larger picture. The larger picture was, when Johnny had frittered away his portion of her money, he’d come after hers.
“Don’t marry him, then,” Papa said, biting off a corner of his toast. “Have your tantrum, show your ingratitude. Give the gossips yet more to titter and laugh about. Johnny will simply present the signed documents to a court of law and bring suit for breach of promise.”
Hecate took another bite of eggs, which needed salt. “He’ll look a fool if he takes that route. Men don’t sue for breach of promise.”
“Society expects the Bromptons to flout convention. Johnny can legally bring the claim and even prevail. You are not well liked, and more than one gossip will be delighted to see your reputation tarnished by scandal.”
Litigation, particularly between family members, was grist for gossip in itself. Johnny would make a convincing jilted suitor, and Papa would abet him every step of the way.
Hecate put down her fork. “You’d drag the whole family through the expense and spectacle of a lawsuit?”
Isaac dusted his hands over his plate. “Of course not. All I want, all I have ever wanted, is my daughter’s happiness. But she’s headstrong and misguided, unnaturally preoccupied with financial matters rather than raising a family. Along comes a handsome fellow of significant potential with the fortitude to court her, and she sees the error of her ways. Ten years on, though, and the situation has been left too late. She chooses money over the worthy man, even to the point of putting the family through litigation. One fears for her wits.”
The problem with the Bromptons was that they not only built castles in Spain, they described those edifices so convincingly, that others began to believe in them as well. Impressive fabrications of dishonesty and subterfuge, built on a foundation of lies.
Phillip, trying so hard to learn Society’s ways, would recoil from scandal.
But he would not recoil from Hecate herself, would he?
“Then I suppose we will entertain the gossips in the well-established Brompton tradition,” Hecate said, “but you can expect your allowance to cease the instant Johnny goes to the courts.”
“There, you see? My dear daughter can think only of money. An unnatural woman. Fortunately, I anticipated that response and have saved accordingly. I cannot say Edna and her brood or the others have shown similar foresight. Johnny tells me he’s prepared to deal generously with them. They are family, after all.”
To hate Isaac would only allow him purchase on Hecate’s soul he did not deserve, but she had underestimated him.
“You are saying that Johnny will claim my fortune through marriage or by an award of damages. Either way, I will lose control of a substantial part of my money.” And of her freedom. Marriage obliterated that freedom outright, but scandal circumscribed a single woman’s existence just as tightly. No invitations, every outing a gauntlet of stares and whispers, employees leaving without notice, merchants declining orders…
Hecate put another bite of eggs into her mouth. I am too tired for this. “Am I to be given any time to adjust to the potential change in my circumstances?” Either way, marriage or scandal, her circumstances would change.
“Time to pout, you mean? That is up to Johnny. I assume he’ll want to make a favorable impression at Horse Guards, look up some old friends, and generally take Town by storm before he resorts to any drastic measures. Reconcile yourself to a humbler existence, my girl, because you can sulk and fume all you want, but your tyranny over this family has ended.”
Johnny would spade the turf of public opinion, in other words. He hadn’t waited ten years for his chance only to bungle the race a few yards shy of the finish line.
“Excuse me,” Hecate said. “I have lost my appetite.”
“Making a sudden dash away from the breakfast table?” Papa mused. “I wonder what that could portend?”
Mean, vile, nasty man. Hecate left at a dignified walk and nearly plowed into Phillip two yards down the corridor.
He steadied her with a hand on each arm. “Hecate, good… What’s wrong?”
The concern, the immediate realization that something was amiss, undid her. She pitched herself against his chest as the first hot tear trickled down her cheek.
“They ruin everything,” she said, “and now they have found a way to ruin me.”
The ruddy blighters had driven his Hecate to tears. Phillip set aside his rage and ushered her into the nearest parlor, closing and locking the door behind them.
And to blazes with what Society would say about that. The Bromptons as a family were unlikely to be abroad much before noon, and several of them would start the day in beds other than their own.
“I’m sorry,” Hecate said, sinking onto a tufted sofa. “I’m tired, and I miss you, and I’m upset.”
Phillip passed over a handkerchief and sat beside her. “This has to do with Johnny?”
“And Papa. They’ve outmaneuvered me, Phillip. Stolen around my flank while I was planning horse races and menus.” She dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief, and Phillip was angry all over again.
“They are your family, the people to whom you should be able to turn for aid in all circumstances.” And they had reduced her to tears and apologies.
She folded up the linen and speared him with a look. “Like your family has been there for you?”
Lord, they’d upset her badly. “When Tavistock learned of my existence, he put matters right as quickly as possible. That is how family ought to behave. Who upset you at breakfast?”
“Papa. I don’t want to call him that. Isaac. He wouldn’t admit to colluding with Johnny, but he intends to support Johnny’s claim on me right up to the courts and beyond, if necessary.”
When dealing with a fractious beast, Phillip usually took the approach of first deducing what inspired the animal to bad manners and contrariness. Herd politics might play a role. A tummy ache, fear, inexperience, or a simple need for time to absorb new surroundings could all come to bear. Rarely was an animal difficult for no discernible reason.
The Bromptons were driven by money, the lack of it, the lust for it. Sorting out their motivation took no effort at all. “They are after your fortune.”
She nodded. “And I would wish them the joy of it, except that in their hands, the money won’t last five years. Charlie and Eglantine’s children will come of age as paupers, Uncle Nunn’s beautiful estate—his memorial to his lady wife—will collapse from dry rot, and Portia and Flavia will become spinsters.”
And Hecate cared for those people, even as she loathed the man her mother had married. “You are like a yeoman,” Phillip said. “Nature has dealt you blow after blow, but if you don’t get out of bed each morning and strike back against the incessant rain, falling markets, and crumbling pasture walls, your family will suffer, and all those folk in the cities will have no bread at any price. So you get up, face the day, and carry on, tending your patch.”
“They are my family, Phillip. If I marry Johnny, the money will be frittered away. If I don’t marry Johnny, he will bring suit for breach of promise and demand my fortune in damages. Papa apparently has some papers I unknowingly signed that qualify as settlement agreements. I can repudiate them, but I’ve had ten years to do that and haven’t. I’m sure Johnny will make that point to a very sympathetic jury.”
“And then Johnny will fritter away the funds without even marrying you.”
Phillip had dropped off to sleep last night the first time, anticipating shared pleasures with his beloved. In his worst imaginings, he could not have conjured waking to this mare’s nest of intrigue, greed, and arrogance.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You don’t deserve this, and it’s certainly not your fault.”
Hecate rested her forehead against his shoulder, bringing him a bracing whiff of her rosy scent. “Thank you. The words help.”
Words could make no difference, though, to the misery pressing in on her from all sides. Phillip put an arm around her shoulders.
“You could marry me. Spike their guns, steal a march on the invaders.” Not how he’d wanted to propose, but Hecate needed to know she had the option.
She straightened, staring hard at the rain dripping down the window. “Marry you.”
Phillip waited, his heart sinking when she shook her head.
“That would only embroil you in the whole mess,” she said. “Johnny can sue me just as easily if I’m married to you, more easily, in fact, because my perfidy—throwing him over for a marquess’s heir—would be obvious.”
Well, damn, but her logic was irrefutable. “Brompton said something last night about taking the matter to the court of public opinion. Said he’d ruin the young ladies, blacken Charlie’s and Isaac’s names, do worse to Edna’s and Eglantine’s reputations. Was he boasting, or can he achieve those ends?”
“He will turn on Isaac in an instant if he thinks that will support his objective, and Isaac will turn on him.” Hecate rose and went to the window. She made a lovely, sad picture in the watery morning light, and she’d done something different with her hair.
“I am afraid, Phillip. I have been afraid for most of my life. Afraid Papa was angry with me, afraid the other girls wouldn’t like me, afraid my family will create a scandal I cannot make go away with my money. I am so tired of being afraid, but Johnny is ruthless, and Isaac is mean. A word in the wrong ears, an innuendo in the clubs, a wager left for all the gents to see on the betting books… Johnny and Isaac can and will wreck the lives of innocents to get what they feel they deserve.”
And then they’d make those lives a misery anyway, in all likelihood. Hecate could limit the damage somewhat, but she’d need solicitors and bankers and endless guile to do so.
Phillip slipped his arms around her from behind. “My father wrote a codicil to his will. If I ventured away from Crosspatch Corners, if I set foot outside my rural backwater, I’d lose the home I dearly love. I convinced myself, eventually, that I wasn’t the venturing sort, because believing that of myself was the only way to preserve contentment.”
“I’m not the only person cursed with a vile wretch where a doting father should be?”
“No, but my point, Hecate, is that the codicil was unenforceable. The legal particulars hadn’t been observed, and the condition was vague, and so on. And yet, I let my entire life be limited by the fear of losing my home. I understand the burden placed on you, and I will share it any way you allow me to.”
Don’t send me away. Don’t banish me. Please not you too. Rather than beg—and burden her with importuning—he held her. She turned and wrapped her arms around him.
“It’s as if Johnny went away to Canada and came back a different man. I wanted to go with him. Wanted the simple solution of being an officer’s wife, far from polite society and grasping relations. He gently refused, and advised me to remain unwed as long as I could. I would have sworn he meant that advice kindly and not for his own purposes. But why refuse me then, only to demand my hand now?”
“Are you wealthier now?”
“Considerably. I am good at investing and not averse to an occasional risk.”
Had Phillip fallen into that category for her? A little deviation from good sense and decorum? Would she talk herself into believing that description if left to fret long enough over her perfidious cousin’s scheme?
“Johnny cannot file his suit tomorrow,” Phillip said, stroking Hecate’s hair. “He’ll have to ingratiate himself with Society first, spread the appropriate rumors, be seen to pine for you from afar. We have some time.”
Hecate burrowed closer. “Time for what?”
“I will acquaint Tavistock with the situation, and he is connected to half the peerage through his step-mother. If Johnny thinks to fire the first shot across Mayfair’s ballrooms, he will find himself late to the battle.”
Hecate drew back. “You’d do that?”
“I would beg in the street to aid your cause, my dear, and it’s my cause as well.” Why did she find it so difficult to grasp that others could be as loyal to her as she was to her blighted family?
“London is deserted for the nonce,” she said, resuming their embrace. “Everybody will have left for the grouse moors and the shires. Johnny can get to work, but Parliament sits, he’ll probably stick with that pining-from-afar bit. The whole business is ridiculous.”
“I agree, but the threat Johnny poses, to you and to your relatives, is all too real. What if I compromised you?”
Hecate again shook her head. “That doesn’t give me grounds to refuse Johnny. I suspect his ultimate strategy is to get me to hand over my fortune before the case is heard. To settle out of court.”
“Though scandal arises the instant suit is joined?”
“Precisely—scandal arises and attaches to me, while he is the wronged party sacrificing his dignity on an altar of last resort. He will back me into a corner, offer me a modest sum to subsist on, promise to look after our impecunious relations, and then break his word. I cannot recommend Canada to anybody if this is the effect it has on a man’s character.”
“Canada is unlikely to offer the Bromptons much of a character if darling Johnny is typical of the brood.”
Hecate offered a wan smile. “I love you. I love that I can talk to you, that you don’t fly into the boughs when serious thought is warranted, love that you don’t blame me. I should have seen this coming.”
For the love of gamboling lambs. “No, you should not. Johnny and Isaac counted on ambushing you. We have merely to devise a counter-ambush of equal effect.”
“I have no idea what that would even look like.”
“We will start with an alert to Tavistock and his bride. They might have some ideas. Until then, you comport yourself as a woman of means without marital impediments.”
She leaned into his embrace. “Thank you, Phillip. I want to hope this will all turn out to be another typical Brompton imbroglio, but Johnny is very determined, and Isaac is very bitter.”
Phillip wanted to ask her: What of your other father, the one who even now demands regular reports on your activities, who bides one long, hard day’s journey to the west? A sea captain could doubtless spirit Hecate out of the country with little fuss, and then how would Cousin Johnny react? Hard to sue a woman when you had no idea where she bided.
Could Phillip leave Lark’s Nest for Hecate’s sake?
The answer surprised him: Yes, and he could, in part, because Tavistock and the good folk of Crosspatch Corners would look after the property conscientiously in his absence. They’d find him a suitable buyer if need be, all the while claiming to have no notion of his whereabouts.
Though Tavistock was a sibling of short acquaintance, he was already family.
“The rain has let up,” Phillip said. “I will take that for a good omen.”
Hecate stepped back. “Some fool planned a horse race for today. Will you be among the competitors?”
“DeWitt’s colt will win. Roland has terrible form, but tremendous speed. I will take the opportunity for a hearty gallop anyway. I don’t want to talk about horse races, but I suppose we must carry on as best we can.”
“You won’t spend the morning clearing some ditch or mending wall?”
Hecate didn’t hate Isaac—he’d suffered significant disappointments in life—but she neither liked nor trusted him. He was cold-blooded in a way the rest of the family was not and driven by bitterness as much as greed.
“Tell me, Hecate. Will you try to lie your way out of your betrothal to Johnny?” Papa put the question almost pleasantly. “I would enjoy seeing you try. I, who watched you sign the settlement agreements just before I signed them myself. I, who know for a fact that Johnny will be more generous with that money than you have ever been.”
Hecate sipped her tea, feeling an old, rancid sense of betrayal. “Did you summon Johnny from Canada?”
Papa took a slice of toast from the rack and helped himself to the raspberry jam. “Why would you think such a thing? The man spent ten years making his fortune through luck, skill, and determination. Now he’s come home to you, just as he promised he would. Another woman would be touched by and grateful for such devotion, particularly a woman of plain appearance and few accomplishments.”
Eins, zwei, drei… “I begged Johnny to take me with him. He patted my shoulder and wished me luck. I cannot marry a man who has never proposed to me.”
“Your memory fails you. Johnny proposed very prettily. You accepted, but understood that he wanted to bring his own means to the union. You respect that about him. I do, too, and so will all of Society.”
Hecate picked up her fork and understood that Papa was at least partly justified in his anger. Mama might well have hoped to present him with a son, but she’d also capitulated to the lure of her sea captain out of sheer despair. To be Isaac Brompton’s daughter had been vexing and painful.
Mama must have suffered the torments of the damned as his supposedly barren wife.
“I am not marrying Johnny,” Hecate said, spearing a bite of eggs, “who never did me the courtesy of a proposal, much less seek permission to court me, much less send me a single billet-doux. Believe whatever other fancies you please, connive with Johnny however you wish, but know that I will not marry him.”
The silver lining in that declaration was that, but for Phillip, Hecate might be considering a negotiated truce with Johnny. Promises to Isaac notwithstanding, Johnny, as Hecate’s husband, would guard Hecate’s fortune for the simple reason that any settlements would make a part of that fortune his.
He would not champion her interests, but he would champion his own, and that could work to Hecate’s benefit.
In the same moment those thoughts flitted through her brain, she rejected them. Putting up with her family, she’d learned to be pragmatic to a fault, to think always of the long term and of the larger picture. The larger picture was, when Johnny had frittered away his portion of her money, he’d come after hers.
“Don’t marry him, then,” Papa said, biting off a corner of his toast. “Have your tantrum, show your ingratitude. Give the gossips yet more to titter and laugh about. Johnny will simply present the signed documents to a court of law and bring suit for breach of promise.”
Hecate took another bite of eggs, which needed salt. “He’ll look a fool if he takes that route. Men don’t sue for breach of promise.”
“Society expects the Bromptons to flout convention. Johnny can legally bring the claim and even prevail. You are not well liked, and more than one gossip will be delighted to see your reputation tarnished by scandal.”
Litigation, particularly between family members, was grist for gossip in itself. Johnny would make a convincing jilted suitor, and Papa would abet him every step of the way.
Hecate put down her fork. “You’d drag the whole family through the expense and spectacle of a lawsuit?”
Isaac dusted his hands over his plate. “Of course not. All I want, all I have ever wanted, is my daughter’s happiness. But she’s headstrong and misguided, unnaturally preoccupied with financial matters rather than raising a family. Along comes a handsome fellow of significant potential with the fortitude to court her, and she sees the error of her ways. Ten years on, though, and the situation has been left too late. She chooses money over the worthy man, even to the point of putting the family through litigation. One fears for her wits.”
The problem with the Bromptons was that they not only built castles in Spain, they described those edifices so convincingly, that others began to believe in them as well. Impressive fabrications of dishonesty and subterfuge, built on a foundation of lies.
Phillip, trying so hard to learn Society’s ways, would recoil from scandal.
But he would not recoil from Hecate herself, would he?
“Then I suppose we will entertain the gossips in the well-established Brompton tradition,” Hecate said, “but you can expect your allowance to cease the instant Johnny goes to the courts.”
“There, you see? My dear daughter can think only of money. An unnatural woman. Fortunately, I anticipated that response and have saved accordingly. I cannot say Edna and her brood or the others have shown similar foresight. Johnny tells me he’s prepared to deal generously with them. They are family, after all.”
To hate Isaac would only allow him purchase on Hecate’s soul he did not deserve, but she had underestimated him.
“You are saying that Johnny will claim my fortune through marriage or by an award of damages. Either way, I will lose control of a substantial part of my money.” And of her freedom. Marriage obliterated that freedom outright, but scandal circumscribed a single woman’s existence just as tightly. No invitations, every outing a gauntlet of stares and whispers, employees leaving without notice, merchants declining orders…
Hecate put another bite of eggs into her mouth. I am too tired for this. “Am I to be given any time to adjust to the potential change in my circumstances?” Either way, marriage or scandal, her circumstances would change.
“Time to pout, you mean? That is up to Johnny. I assume he’ll want to make a favorable impression at Horse Guards, look up some old friends, and generally take Town by storm before he resorts to any drastic measures. Reconcile yourself to a humbler existence, my girl, because you can sulk and fume all you want, but your tyranny over this family has ended.”
Johnny would spade the turf of public opinion, in other words. He hadn’t waited ten years for his chance only to bungle the race a few yards shy of the finish line.
“Excuse me,” Hecate said. “I have lost my appetite.”
“Making a sudden dash away from the breakfast table?” Papa mused. “I wonder what that could portend?”
Mean, vile, nasty man. Hecate left at a dignified walk and nearly plowed into Phillip two yards down the corridor.
He steadied her with a hand on each arm. “Hecate, good… What’s wrong?”
The concern, the immediate realization that something was amiss, undid her. She pitched herself against his chest as the first hot tear trickled down her cheek.
“They ruin everything,” she said, “and now they have found a way to ruin me.”
The ruddy blighters had driven his Hecate to tears. Phillip set aside his rage and ushered her into the nearest parlor, closing and locking the door behind them.
And to blazes with what Society would say about that. The Bromptons as a family were unlikely to be abroad much before noon, and several of them would start the day in beds other than their own.
“I’m sorry,” Hecate said, sinking onto a tufted sofa. “I’m tired, and I miss you, and I’m upset.”
Phillip passed over a handkerchief and sat beside her. “This has to do with Johnny?”
“And Papa. They’ve outmaneuvered me, Phillip. Stolen around my flank while I was planning horse races and menus.” She dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief, and Phillip was angry all over again.
“They are your family, the people to whom you should be able to turn for aid in all circumstances.” And they had reduced her to tears and apologies.
She folded up the linen and speared him with a look. “Like your family has been there for you?”
Lord, they’d upset her badly. “When Tavistock learned of my existence, he put matters right as quickly as possible. That is how family ought to behave. Who upset you at breakfast?”
“Papa. I don’t want to call him that. Isaac. He wouldn’t admit to colluding with Johnny, but he intends to support Johnny’s claim on me right up to the courts and beyond, if necessary.”
When dealing with a fractious beast, Phillip usually took the approach of first deducing what inspired the animal to bad manners and contrariness. Herd politics might play a role. A tummy ache, fear, inexperience, or a simple need for time to absorb new surroundings could all come to bear. Rarely was an animal difficult for no discernible reason.
The Bromptons were driven by money, the lack of it, the lust for it. Sorting out their motivation took no effort at all. “They are after your fortune.”
She nodded. “And I would wish them the joy of it, except that in their hands, the money won’t last five years. Charlie and Eglantine’s children will come of age as paupers, Uncle Nunn’s beautiful estate—his memorial to his lady wife—will collapse from dry rot, and Portia and Flavia will become spinsters.”
And Hecate cared for those people, even as she loathed the man her mother had married. “You are like a yeoman,” Phillip said. “Nature has dealt you blow after blow, but if you don’t get out of bed each morning and strike back against the incessant rain, falling markets, and crumbling pasture walls, your family will suffer, and all those folk in the cities will have no bread at any price. So you get up, face the day, and carry on, tending your patch.”
“They are my family, Phillip. If I marry Johnny, the money will be frittered away. If I don’t marry Johnny, he will bring suit for breach of promise and demand my fortune in damages. Papa apparently has some papers I unknowingly signed that qualify as settlement agreements. I can repudiate them, but I’ve had ten years to do that and haven’t. I’m sure Johnny will make that point to a very sympathetic jury.”
“And then Johnny will fritter away the funds without even marrying you.”
Phillip had dropped off to sleep last night the first time, anticipating shared pleasures with his beloved. In his worst imaginings, he could not have conjured waking to this mare’s nest of intrigue, greed, and arrogance.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You don’t deserve this, and it’s certainly not your fault.”
Hecate rested her forehead against his shoulder, bringing him a bracing whiff of her rosy scent. “Thank you. The words help.”
Words could make no difference, though, to the misery pressing in on her from all sides. Phillip put an arm around her shoulders.
“You could marry me. Spike their guns, steal a march on the invaders.” Not how he’d wanted to propose, but Hecate needed to know she had the option.
She straightened, staring hard at the rain dripping down the window. “Marry you.”
Phillip waited, his heart sinking when she shook her head.
“That would only embroil you in the whole mess,” she said. “Johnny can sue me just as easily if I’m married to you, more easily, in fact, because my perfidy—throwing him over for a marquess’s heir—would be obvious.”
Well, damn, but her logic was irrefutable. “Brompton said something last night about taking the matter to the court of public opinion. Said he’d ruin the young ladies, blacken Charlie’s and Isaac’s names, do worse to Edna’s and Eglantine’s reputations. Was he boasting, or can he achieve those ends?”
“He will turn on Isaac in an instant if he thinks that will support his objective, and Isaac will turn on him.” Hecate rose and went to the window. She made a lovely, sad picture in the watery morning light, and she’d done something different with her hair.
“I am afraid, Phillip. I have been afraid for most of my life. Afraid Papa was angry with me, afraid the other girls wouldn’t like me, afraid my family will create a scandal I cannot make go away with my money. I am so tired of being afraid, but Johnny is ruthless, and Isaac is mean. A word in the wrong ears, an innuendo in the clubs, a wager left for all the gents to see on the betting books… Johnny and Isaac can and will wreck the lives of innocents to get what they feel they deserve.”
And then they’d make those lives a misery anyway, in all likelihood. Hecate could limit the damage somewhat, but she’d need solicitors and bankers and endless guile to do so.
Phillip slipped his arms around her from behind. “My father wrote a codicil to his will. If I ventured away from Crosspatch Corners, if I set foot outside my rural backwater, I’d lose the home I dearly love. I convinced myself, eventually, that I wasn’t the venturing sort, because believing that of myself was the only way to preserve contentment.”
“I’m not the only person cursed with a vile wretch where a doting father should be?”
“No, but my point, Hecate, is that the codicil was unenforceable. The legal particulars hadn’t been observed, and the condition was vague, and so on. And yet, I let my entire life be limited by the fear of losing my home. I understand the burden placed on you, and I will share it any way you allow me to.”
Don’t send me away. Don’t banish me. Please not you too. Rather than beg—and burden her with importuning—he held her. She turned and wrapped her arms around him.
“It’s as if Johnny went away to Canada and came back a different man. I wanted to go with him. Wanted the simple solution of being an officer’s wife, far from polite society and grasping relations. He gently refused, and advised me to remain unwed as long as I could. I would have sworn he meant that advice kindly and not for his own purposes. But why refuse me then, only to demand my hand now?”
“Are you wealthier now?”
“Considerably. I am good at investing and not averse to an occasional risk.”
Had Phillip fallen into that category for her? A little deviation from good sense and decorum? Would she talk herself into believing that description if left to fret long enough over her perfidious cousin’s scheme?
“Johnny cannot file his suit tomorrow,” Phillip said, stroking Hecate’s hair. “He’ll have to ingratiate himself with Society first, spread the appropriate rumors, be seen to pine for you from afar. We have some time.”
Hecate burrowed closer. “Time for what?”
“I will acquaint Tavistock with the situation, and he is connected to half the peerage through his step-mother. If Johnny thinks to fire the first shot across Mayfair’s ballrooms, he will find himself late to the battle.”
Hecate drew back. “You’d do that?”
“I would beg in the street to aid your cause, my dear, and it’s my cause as well.” Why did she find it so difficult to grasp that others could be as loyal to her as she was to her blighted family?
“London is deserted for the nonce,” she said, resuming their embrace. “Everybody will have left for the grouse moors and the shires. Johnny can get to work, but Parliament sits, he’ll probably stick with that pining-from-afar bit. The whole business is ridiculous.”
“I agree, but the threat Johnny poses, to you and to your relatives, is all too real. What if I compromised you?”
Hecate again shook her head. “That doesn’t give me grounds to refuse Johnny. I suspect his ultimate strategy is to get me to hand over my fortune before the case is heard. To settle out of court.”
“Though scandal arises the instant suit is joined?”
“Precisely—scandal arises and attaches to me, while he is the wronged party sacrificing his dignity on an altar of last resort. He will back me into a corner, offer me a modest sum to subsist on, promise to look after our impecunious relations, and then break his word. I cannot recommend Canada to anybody if this is the effect it has on a man’s character.”
“Canada is unlikely to offer the Bromptons much of a character if darling Johnny is typical of the brood.”
Hecate offered a wan smile. “I love you. I love that I can talk to you, that you don’t fly into the boughs when serious thought is warranted, love that you don’t blame me. I should have seen this coming.”
For the love of gamboling lambs. “No, you should not. Johnny and Isaac counted on ambushing you. We have merely to devise a counter-ambush of equal effect.”
“I have no idea what that would even look like.”
“We will start with an alert to Tavistock and his bride. They might have some ideas. Until then, you comport yourself as a woman of means without marital impediments.”
She leaned into his embrace. “Thank you, Phillip. I want to hope this will all turn out to be another typical Brompton imbroglio, but Johnny is very determined, and Isaac is very bitter.”
Phillip wanted to ask her: What of your other father, the one who even now demands regular reports on your activities, who bides one long, hard day’s journey to the west? A sea captain could doubtless spirit Hecate out of the country with little fuss, and then how would Cousin Johnny react? Hard to sue a woman when you had no idea where she bided.
Could Phillip leave Lark’s Nest for Hecate’s sake?
The answer surprised him: Yes, and he could, in part, because Tavistock and the good folk of Crosspatch Corners would look after the property conscientiously in his absence. They’d find him a suitable buyer if need be, all the while claiming to have no notion of his whereabouts.
Though Tavistock was a sibling of short acquaintance, he was already family.
“The rain has let up,” Phillip said. “I will take that for a good omen.”
Hecate stepped back. “Some fool planned a horse race for today. Will you be among the competitors?”
“DeWitt’s colt will win. Roland has terrible form, but tremendous speed. I will take the opportunity for a hearty gallop anyway. I don’t want to talk about horse races, but I suppose we must carry on as best we can.”
“You won’t spend the morning clearing some ditch or mending wall?”
