The Regency Season Collection: Part Two. Кэрол Мортимер

to notice when he scouted the French hussy’s brats out of his house and slammed the door behind them for the last time.

      ‘I very much wish you could not, but how could a boy of eight forget such a harsh dismissal from this very house and the life of beggary you condemned us all to seven years ago?’ his sister said as if all this was for the boy’s sake and not her own.

      ‘Come to force me to frank a Season for you, have you, m’dear?’ he made himself ask as if he was a genial uncle to a niece whom the very idea of a Season and presentation at court would make a hardened matchmaker blench. Make a joke out of the girl and the polite world would laugh with him and forget he’d rid himself of her so hastily last time she dared darken his doors.

      ‘I wouldn’t dream of asking you for anything, but my friends and my husband requested my company, so I agreed to come here tonight very much against my better judgement,’ Paulina the Pauper had the brass-faced cheek to drawl as if she’d been taking lessons in being elegantly annoying from Mantaigne.

      ‘Ah, so you persuaded some fool to wed a girl who will always make a fool out of him by overtopping him at every turn, have you?’ He forgot his audience long enough to gloat. If the awkward filly was already wed, there was nothing for him to do but shrug and make it obvious he pitied the poor idiot his mistake.

      ‘No, I laid siege so determinedly that in the end Miss Trethayne gave in and agreed to wed me out of sheer boredom at having to say me nay one more time,’ Tom lied with a smile for his gallant love that ignored the apoplectic-looking peer and everyone else in the room but her and their friends and family.

      ‘You?’ the old fool barked out at the top of his voice.

      ‘Me,’ Tom replied with infinite satisfaction and a long, hot look for his bride that made her blush delightfully, despite the presence of her brother and the small matter of around three hundred of his lordship’s closest acquaintances.

      ‘She’s a marchioness?’

      ‘My wife is a marchioness, something I expect she will forgive me for one day if we both live long enough. That’s what happens when a woman weds a marquis, you know, Trethayne? Whether she wants to or not, she becomes his marchioness.’

      ‘Wants to? Of course she wanted to, that’s why she married you, isn’t it? Can’t think any sane female would want to unless you had some strawberry leaves on your coronet.’

      ‘I do have one or two more of them than you, though, don’t I? Ah, well, never mind, I’m sure my lady will resign herself to them in time.’

      A titter or two greeted that outrageous piece of play-acting, except Tom knew they were wrong and he meant it. Had he been a commoner it would have been a lot easier to persuade Polly to marry him, then come to London and grasp her right to a certain position in the social world, if only for the sake of the boys. As he was thinking of that, his eyes hardened on the steely old bruiser in front of him.

      ‘My friend here acts for me on matters of delicate family business. You might have done well to employ him in your long and frustrating search for your nephews and niece after you let them think you would not help them upon their father’s death, Trethayne. I hate to imagine how hard you must have looked for them after Tobias’s godfather died and left most of his fortune to the boy, with you to hold it all in trust until he came of age. One can only imagine how ill at ease you must have felt at knowing you let them leave after one of those heated family arguments we’ve all heard so much about once you held such a fortune in hand for them and no heir anywhere in sight. Not being able to track them down to explain their abrupt change of fortunes must have galled you to your very soul.’

      ‘Er...yes, distraught, weren’t we, Robina?’ the old fox picked up his cue as Tom fixed him with a cold stare that dared him to refute Polly or Toby again.

      ‘I have often heard you speak of it with great sorrow for your loss of temper, Papa-in-law. Such a shame Miss Trethayne took your hasty words so much to heart that she and her brothers were gone before you could calm down and tell her you didn’t mean them,’ the lady said smoothly enough, but something about the glint in her eye told Tom a corner had been turned in her relationship with the miserly old hypocrite as well and he would not dominate the rest of his family so easily from now on.

      ‘Knowing you as we all do, I’m sure you will have taken the utmost care of Tobias’s fortune, Trethayne. Peters here will be visiting you tomorrow to discuss all the wise investments I’m sure you’ve made on the boy’s behalf while he was too young to manage his fortune for himself.’

      ‘That will be delightful, but tonight I’m sure you came here to renew your connections with your family, then dance and enjoy being with us on such a joyous occasion, Cousin Paulina?’ Lady Robina said with a lot more conviction than accuracy, and Tom stepped back and let his wife meet the woman on her own terms.

      It was how she lived her life after all, and she had done such a fine job of it up to now he didn’t see any need to interfere, even if she would let him.

       Chapter Fifteen

      Tom watched and assisted his wife and brother-in-law whenever they needed it for the rest of the hour they had agreed to spend at the Trethayne ball before going on to another society ball to show the world they had come to town to do more than just challenge the old vulture at the head of his wife’s family tree on his home ground.

      ‘My thanks, Lady Chloe, Winterley,’ he said as soon as he’d handed his lady up into the vast old town chariot Virginia had insisted was far more comfortable than more modern and less accommodating vehicles.

      ‘Not at all. It was far better entertainment than I expected of my first appearance in London society,’ Chloe Winterley said, ‘and now I’m no longer the prime target of all the gossips. I swear I would like you for that, Polly, even if I didn’t love you already for marrying Tom and preventing my lord here from worrying himself to flinders about his well-being and peace of mind when I would far rather he was intent on mine instead.’

      ‘Then I’m pleased to have been of service,’ his Polly said lightly enough, but Tom knew she was a lot less relaxed than she was so gallantly pretending to be all the same.

      ‘I wonder who the next one is,’ he remarked to divert their attention from the strains of taking on the Earl of Trethayne and the most conservative part of polite society all in one evening.

      ‘What next one?’ Toby piped up, and Tom felt Polly’s interest stir despite her weariness with this whole wretched business of claiming back Toby’s fortune from the money-grabbing old villain who’d appropriated it as his own and blessed the topic of conversation he’d found so appallingly unamusing at the outset of his season at Virginia’s beck and call.

      Satisfied? he asked silently, as if his godmother could somehow hear him.

      You’ll do now seemed to come back to him as if she’d whispered it in his ear, but the laughter and satisfaction in it felt so much like her that his breath caught with love and loss. It was almost easy when you got the hang of it, this love business, and he realised he’d had a flying start at it by being taken in and loved despite himself by Virgil and Virginia all those years ago.

      ‘My godmother’s next victim,’ he explained with an apologetic nod at the corner of the carriage he knew very well only held Toby and a silk cushion, even if it had been her favourite seat when she was alive.

      ‘Victim?’ Toby asked sleepily, and Tom wondered if they really needed to drag him across London for another interminable party, but Luke and Peters had insisted and he suspected they knew more about staying on the right side of the dowagers than he did.

      ‘My great-aunt, being a great deal more fun and loving us as dearly as your own great-uncle clearly only loves himself, decreed four of her closest relatives and friends spend a quarter each of the year after her death carrying out errands on her behalf. This quarter was Tom’s and the next... Well,