Page 42 of Miss Determined
“No, thank you, dear. I’m at a good stopping point, and I do believe it’s time I had my lie-down.”
When had Grandmama taken to napping so much? She spent more time in slumber than an infant did.
“I’ll see you up to your room.”
“Don’t bother. I might forget my glasses, but I do know where I sleep.” She pushed to her feet and made a stiff progress toward the door. “Thank heavens Diana is taking an intermission. I don’t know which is worse, when she rushes through a passage and bungles it, or when she finally slows down enough to play it correctly—over and over.”
“We will applaud her newfound patience,” Lissa said, “though I suspect it will be short-lived. Pleasant dreams, Grandmama.”
“Cook says there’s another Dorning racketing about Crosspatch. One of the trees. The late Earl of Casriel named all his children for trees and shrubs and whatnot. Daft notion, but we can’t all be George, William, and Edward, can we?”
“His name is Sycamore Dorning,” Caroline said. “He’s out from Town.”
Grandmama put a hand on the door latch. “One of those Dorset Dornings married old Lord Tavistock’s widow, if I’m not mistaken. This would have been… oh, before your father died, certainly. Years ago. The poor woman wasn’t well liked, but then, she was married to a difficult man and was many years his junior. Society was quite surprised that she’d remarry and give up the title. Perhaps she wished it good riddance. That’s all getting to be ancient history, I suppose.”
She wafted out the door, muttering about Old George and a proper court and your grandpapa always said…
“She’s getting worse,” Caroline said.
“She’s getting older.” But Grandmama’s distant memories were still for the most part reliable. Lissa went to the window, where afternoon sunshine gave the oaks a pinkish cast. Green leaves would soon follow, and then…
If one of Trevor’s distant relations had married the former marchioness of Tavistock, Trevor might keep that to himself rather than get off on a bad foot with potential neighbors in Crosspatch. More likely, he had little idea to whom a distant cousin’s wife had been married to ten years ago.
Trevor would have been a schoolboy, and what schoolboy concerned himself with fashionable matches?
Lissa would nonetheless ask him about it, some fine day when she’d run out of other ways to spend time with him. Maybe.
And maybe not.
ChapterTen
Trevor spent a week pretending to school Roland while, in fact, lecturing himself on the folly of indulging impulses and the necessity of charting a deliberate, well-reasoned course in life.
Between lectures, he indulged in kisses with Amaryllis. She accompanied him on his hacks, though sometimes they spent more time walking the horses along the Twid, holding hands, and arguing—discussing, as Amaryllis put it—than they did in the saddle.
The weather moderated, the birds built their nests, and Trevor tried—inasmuch as a smitten man could—to make sense of his situation.
All to no avail.
“How much longer will you bide at the Arms?” Amaryllis asked as they walked their horses along the lane leading to Twidboro Hall.
“How long until you must remove to London?” Trevor replied. “I’m supposed to return to Town myself, Sycamore made that quite plain, but I’d rather bide here.”
“What pulls you to London?”
How to answer that? “My solicitors need at least a stern lecture, if not sacking.” One could sack solicitors by letter, and one probably should, though Trevor would still have to return to Town, so he offered the rest of the explanation. “My step-mother bides in London, and she has social ambitions for me. I have been traveling much in recent years, and she has missed me.”
Did the errant Gavin miss his family? Trevor had discussed a few ideas with Sycamore about Gavin’s possible whereabouts, because clearly, directions to the solicitors would yield no results.
“You care for your step-mother?”
“Very much. She was all that stood between me and my father’s worst tempers. He never beat me—he left the birchings to the tutors—but he could slice a boy to ribbons with a few well-placed insults, and his rejections cut worse than any lash. I learned to be a very good boy and to avoid his notice. My step-mother wasn’t as lucky.”
The Twidboro gateposts came into view, and Trevor’s heart sank. Another parting loomed, and one day soon, either he or Amaryllis would travel on to Town. There would be no avoiding the fact that he’d misled her as to his identity. Their paths would cross in some ballroom or on some Hyde Park bridle path, and with all of Mayfair looking on…
He could not risk the injury such an encounter would do to Amaryllis’s pride, of that he was certain.
“Spring is supposed to be a time of hope,” Amaryllis said. “When I’m not with you, I feel mostly dread. My father was the sweetest of men—cheerful, kindhearted, grateful for life’s many blessings—but he was determined that I should marry as well as possible, and thus my settlements are outlandishly generous. If my sisters are to have a future, I must try to make a good impression in Town.”
