Page 72 of Miss Dauntless
“Don’t come near Tommie, and you will not impose your company upon us in Philadelphia.”
Harry shuddered. “Too many Quakers. I’ll keep to Boston or New York, if the wilderness doesn’t take my fancy. Is this good-bye, Tilly?”
“I dearly hope so.”
“That’s the spirit.” He winked, touched a finger to his hat brim, and bowed. “Do you know, of all the souls in this great metropolis, I believe you are the only one whom I’d trust to keep your word? If you say I’ll have that deed, then I’ll have it. Best of luck, Tilly, and give my regards to the City of Brotherly Love.”
He jaunted off on that grand exit line, and Matilda let him go. She’d never understood him and still didn’t, but he wasn’t all bad. Not nearly. Unlike Papa, Harry hadn’t lied to himself, and that alone took a sort of backhanded courage.
Though thank the heavenly intercessors, she would never see him again. “Harry!” she called.
He turned slowly.
“Best of luck to you too!”
He saluted, and Matilda went upon her way. Harry had not been bluffing about taking Tommie. He never bluffed, though he did cheat, steal, misrepresent, and lie. Matilda had learned to lie as well, and her future and Tommie’s depended on Harry believing the load of falsehoods she’d just served him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I do have a plan.” Matilda said, looking for all the world like a mulish schoolgirl.
“Which you refuse to share with me,” Tremont rejoined from his seat one wing chair and four universes of heartache away from her perch. “Matilda, have we no trust in each other?” She had come back to the house from some outing she would not disclose, but the men reported that she’d missed her usual half day with the MacKays.
And the reticule she’d deposited on the sideboard looked suspiciously full.
She gave him an unfathomable look, and that she would guard her feelings from the man who loved her nearly unhinged him.
“I will leave England for a time,” she said. “Harry’s schemes will result inevitably in his true demise, and when that happens, if you have not taken a proper wife, I will marry you.”
“No.” Tremont had nearly shouted the word, which would not do. They were in Matilda’s private parlor, and half a dozen men, two maids, Mrs. Winklebleck, and Cook wielding her rolling pin would all come running if they thought Matilda was getting the sharp edge of Tremont’s tongue.
“No, you will not marry me?” The question revealed a crack in Matilda’s towering dignity. “My mistake. I do apologize. I should not have presumed.”
She was once again the chilly, proper widow, and Tremont suspected that this time, she was not Harry Merri-dew-man-whatever’s widow, she was Tremont’s widow. Her grief was trussed up in propriety and determination, the twin pillars of her composure since she’d left her girlhood home.
“No,” Tremont said quietly. “No, I will not take a proper wife, if by that you mean some blushing flower whose parents covet my title. The only wife I will ever speak my vows with is you.”
Something bleak passed through Matilda’s eyes. “You must not say that. Any day, you could be run down by a passing coach. You could catch a lung fever or fall from your horse. A cousin you despise will inherit everything you and your father worked so hard to safeguard. Your mother will lose her home, and Marcus, it isn’t in you to let that happen.”
Oh, for the love of honking geese. “I survived years atwar, Matilda. I risked an ignominious death byfiring squad. I survived living in the damnedstews, where I should have been a lamb to slaughter. I’ve turned around a sizable estate my dear relations were sailing straight intoruin,and I’ve dodged London’s most determined matchmakers formonths. I will not succumb to a cold.”
Matilda offered him a slight, though genuine, smile. “Hardly the recitation of a gentrified cipher, is it, my lord?”
Well, no, which was neither here nor there. “Needs must, and you haring off to Nova Scotia won’t solve anything.”
Her smile faded to sadness. “We define the problem differently, my lord.”
Stop my-lording me.“Theproblemis how we can legally marry, such that our offspring are legitimate and you are notcommitting bigamy. I agree with you that Harry’s death—his actual death from natural causes—would facilitate those aims.”
When debating, always concede common ground to build good will with one’s opponent.
Matilda shook her head. “Theproblemis how to ensure that your honor is not compromised by devotion to a woman you haven’t known all that long. Suppose you do contract that lung fever? As you lay dying, no heir save your scurrilous cousin, will you be comforted to know that you could have ensured better for your mother, your dependents, and tenants?”
“Mama has been amply provided for by trusts I’ve established and by her dower portion. No scurrilous cousin can imperil her welfare.”
Matilda rose and went to the window, which looked out on a gray winter day. “Your mother pawned her jewelry before, Marcus. Dorcas shared that with me. Lady Tremont and Lady Lydia had to scheme and scrape to keep the estate afloat. Heirlooms that had been in the family for generations were discreetly sold on Ludgate Hill or given to your cousin to cover his debts. That estate is your mother’s link with your father’s memory, and you put it at risk with your loyalty to me.”
“Then Mama will have to do as many widows have done and cope with her grief. My father was a living, breathing man who loved her dearly. He was not a pile of granite and some rural vistas. She is welcome to bide with Lydia and Sir Dylan, and in winter, she often does just that.”
