Page 27 of His Lordship's True Lady
Oh, that was subtle, but then, Hessian preferred honesty to innuendo if the lady was intent on verbal pugilism.
“Lord and Lady Evers did me the honor of appointing me guardian of their children,” Hessian said. “Had I known you bided in Town, I would have paid a call on you in due course to appraise you of that fact.”
Whatever due course was.
Mrs. Braithwaite pulled off her gloves and laid them on the low table before the sofa. “My lord, I’m sure you did mean to pay me that courtesy, but my concern for the child will not allow me to wait upon your convenience. Her brothers will bide mostly at school, I’m sure, but she is the youngest and the only girl. I must know when you will allow her to join my household.”
Kendall, the first footman, appeared in the parlor door holding a laden silver tray.
“Kendall, if you’d set the tea before me?” Hessian gestured to the low table flanking the sofa.
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Braithwaite said. “Penelope will pour out. Set the tray before her.”
Kendall, who hailed from Martinique by way of Lisbon, maintained an impassive expression— and possession of the tray.
“I shall pour for my guests,” Hessian said, “and please get the door on the way out, Kendall.”
The footman bowed and withdrew, closing the door silently. Pray God that Bronwyn and Daisy didn’t shriek the house down upon catching sight of each other.
Hessian made a good, long production out of serving the ladies tea, while he wrestled with the question of what role Mrs. Braithwaite ought to play in Daisy’s life. He’d been preoccupied with managing Daisy herself and had frankly put off the question of what to do about the girl’s aunt.
He was a widower with little experience with children, but then, Mrs. Braithwaite apparently hadnoexperience with children.
She watched Hessian maneuver around the silver service as if China black, sugar, and milk were some arcane test of social acceptability, and she the judge qualified to eliminate those who failed the examination.
“You may speak freely before Miss Smythe,” Mrs. Braithwaite said. “She is entirely in my confidence.”
She is not in mine.“That is good to know, Mrs. Braithwaite. However, your visit today takes me by surprise. Had you written, I might have been better prepared to discuss Amy Marguerite’s situation with you, but your suggestion will require considerable thought. Amy Marguerite has endured a great loss, and I take seriously my responsibility to provide her with a safe, stable home where she can recover from the blow grief has dealt her. Do have some cake. Cook prides herself on a light hand with the sweets.”
Miss Smythe sat through this balderdash, gaze fixed on the window as if she were posing for a cameo.
Mrs. Braithwaite set her cup and saucer on the tray. “My household would be a perfect haven for a grieving child. Surely you must see that, my lord. I live the quiet life of a widow, barely socializing, while you maintain a peer’s bachelor establishment. I can raise Amy Marguerite in gentility and propriety, surrounding her with the love of a blood relation and sparing you the bother of a small child underfoot.”
Hessian for the most part ignored his title. When the Earl of Grampion was announced, part of him still expected his father to strut forth, though Papa hadn’t been much for pomp and ceremony either.
Hessian also rarely went to the bother of voting his seat, avoided London, and, for cards and socializing, preferred a humble club favored by Border families.
But sometimes, being the earl was necessary and useful.
He topped up Miss Smythe’s tea cup—leaving Mrs. Braithwaite’s empty—and set the silver pot on the tray.
“Mrs. Braithwaite, forgive my lack of delicacy, but do you imply that I, Lord and Lady Evers’s closest neighbor, who am in fact Amy Marguerite’s godfather, who has known her since birth, and was a frequent guest in her parents’ home, am somehow less capable of providing a haven for the girl than is an aunt whom she might not even recall?”
Mrs. Braithwaite sat very tall. “I am her only adult relation, my lord. Of course, she’ll recall me.”
“You visited your sister about four years ago, if I remember aright. Amy Marguerite would have been three. How often have you written to her since then?”
“One does not write to an illiterate child.”
“Perhaps you sent a gift on her birthday or at Yuletide?”
Mrs. Braithwaite maintained an affronted silence.
“Do you even know when her birthday falls?”
“What matters the date of a child’s birth, my lord, when she can’t be with family to celebrate the occasion?”
Lily Ferguson would know what to say to that. Hessian’s responses begged for a dusting of profanity, lest this presuming creature mistake his meaning.
