in such a fashion.”
“Lord Bartholomew Windham.”
That shut Anthony up for about half a block, but as they approached the Denning townhouse, Anthony started up again. “I am not sending my offspring to war when the succession is imperiled. Do you think I’m stupid?”
“Of course you aren’t stupid. His Grace, the Duke of Moreland, is not a stupid man, either, Anthony, but he lost one son to war and another to consumption. Other families have run through many more heirs than that and turned up without a title to show for it. I can’t allow you to meet an obligation that is squarely, properly, and completely my own.”
“Fine, then. Stick your foot in parson’s mousetrap, but what of the girl?”
“Eve?” Deene glanced at his cousin. This was a new tack, a different argument. “I will make her a doting and devoted husband.”
“For about two years at the most. Get some babies on her, and you’ll be back to those feats of libidinous excess that have characterized the Marquis of Deene since the title was elevated from an earldom and likely before.”
A nasty argument, one Deene would not entertain.
“How is it, Anthony, that you know better than I what sort of husband I shall be? My libidinous excesses, as you call them, date from five, even ten years ago—despite what gossip would inaccurately imply. I could dig into your past or the past of almost any man who came down from university with me and find similar excesses. What is your real objection to this match?”
While Deene waited for Anthony’s answer, the first few drops of a drizzling rain pattered onto the cobbled walk. The scent in the air became damp and dusty at the same time—a spring scent, a fragrance almost.
“You want my real objection?” Anthony glanced around, but the threatening weather had apparently cleared the streets. “All right: my real objection is that you’re forcing the girl into a union she neither sought nor wants. Bad enough when your sister was treated thus, and it ended tragically for Marie, didn’t it? Now you’re repeating history with your prospective bride, and that I cannot abide.”
Anthony fell silent, while Deene absorbed a significant blow to the conscience.
“I am not forcing Eve Windham to do anything.” Except… viewed from a certain angle, not that oblique an angle, perhaps he was.
“If you say so.” Oh, the worlds of righteousness the man could put into such a platitude. “Shall I accompany you to this meeting with Westhaven?”
Because it dealt with finances, the question was logical. Because it was a change from a very uncomfortable topic, Deene answered it.
“You shall not. For once, the transaction flows exclusively to our financial benefit, and that much I think I can handle on my own.”
“About the household books…”
In the flurry of wedding preparations, Deene’s focus on finances had slipped a bit—but only a bit. “I started on the ones you provided last week, Anthony, but with expenses one place and income another, I don’t see how you keep track.”
“One learns to, and that way, nobody else can take the measure of your worth with a single peek at the books. When this wedding business is behind you, we’ll muddle through it all, I assure you.”
This wedding business.
“I shall look forward to that. Don’t wait dinner for me. I’ll likely be dining with Eve and her family.”
“Of course.” Anthony looked like he might say more—apologize, perhaps, for his earlier broadside? “I will stand up with you at the wedding, Deene. Have no fear on that score.”
“My thanks.”
Grudging and belated, but perhaps that was an apology. Deene hurried into the house to change for his meeting with Westhaven—a negotiation Deene looked forward to. Yes, the settlements would benefit him, but they were also the last, necessary step to ensuring that the wedding actually happened.
Then too, it was not a crime for a man to profit from marrying a woman for whom he cared for a great deal. No crime at all. He had myriad uses for the money, not the least of which would be maintaining the kinds of establishments Eve deserved to have for her homes.
And he was
Likely thanks to Her Grace’s influence with the Deity, the day of the wedding brought the most glorious spring weather London could offer. The Windham family had gathered en masse, including even the Northern contingent, represented by St. Just and his increasing coterie of female dependents—two daughters and one countess, plus a happy gleam in the man’s eye that presaged further developments.
As His Grace eyed the packed pews of St. George’s on Hanover Square, he reflected that a father better versed in the essential parental art of self-deception might be telling himself he was relieved to be seeing his youngest, smallest daughter off into the keeping of an adoring swain.
The organist took his seat while the crowd in the pews and balconies exchanged their final tidbits of greeting and gossip.
His Grace was not relieved. He himself had been the most adoring of swains once upon a time, and yet Her Grace had had her hands quite full with him, for at least the first ten or twenty years of their union.
Possibly more.
Marriage—a good, loving union such as the Almighty contemplated and sensible people longed for—was a damned lot of work, and much was going to be asked of Evie and her swain before His Grace could aspire to anything approaching relief on his daughter’s behalf.
He turned back to the small chamber where Eve stood in her finery, and the sight caused something like a small seizure in his heart. Evie was so petite, but she’d been a fighter since she’d surprised them all by showing up several weeks prior to her expected birth date.
“Daughter, you are the most beautiful sight in the realm today.”
She glanced up from her bouquet, an odd little gathering of pink and white heather, orange blossoms, and a few sprigs of hawthorn—for solitude, loveliness, and hope, if His Grace’s memory served. Her expression was more anxious than radiant.
“Thank you, Papa. How much longer?”
He turned back toward the nave. “Not long. Your mother has taken her place.”
Her Grace had been subdued in the carriage, but the duke suspected he understood why: they’d lost Eve in some sense seven years ago. Losing her again today revived the old aches, old doubts, and guilt. Since that long- ago day, there had been a chasm of bewilderment between Eve and her parents, one they all possessed enough love to want to breach, and yet the chasm remained.
His Grace turned his back on Polite Society in all its spring finery and once again surveyed his daughter. “Tell me something, Evie.”
She set the bouquet aside and offered him a painfully brave smile. “Papa?”
“Why are you marrying Deene? Is it because I was wroth with him for trespassing on your… for taking liberties?”
She blinked, looking very like her mother after His Grace had made some inelegant remark before the children. “I was not comforted to think of either you, my brothers, or Deene coming to harm on your idiot field of honor, but that wasn’t the entire reason.”
His Grace closed the door to the chamber, signaling, he hoped, that he’d have an answer, and Polite Society could go hang until he did. “I should wish regard for your intended played some role. Deene’s not a bad fellow.”
“Lucas is a good man, and I esteem him greatly.”
He crossed his arms, as that little recitation wouldn’t fool the most dense of fathers.
“I’ve seen Deene’s racing stables in Surrey, you know.” She picked up her bouquet and started fussing the little sprigs of hawthorn. “It’s a lovely place, very peaceful. We’ll be there for the next few weeks, possibly through the Season.”
Which His Grace took for a bit of genius on Deene’s part. The newlyweds would get no peace in Kent or in
