Page 56 of Tutoring a Lady into Sin
“Oh,” Miss Fitzroy groaned. “But how can that be possible? The duke must have asked for your hand. He must have…”
“He did not,” Christianna whispered. Her eyes lingered on the token from Her Grace. The whole matter was so muddled now, what had seemed firmly fixed in Christianna’s mind a few moments before now seemed a jumbled mess. As she continued gazing at the jewellery box, she wondered if Miss Fitzroy and even the dowager duchess were right.
If Phineas wants me…if he means to make good on the words he whispered while we made love…where is he?
Chapter 24
“May I join you, my son?”
Phineas had spent most of the morning wandering through the garden. He lingered down by the pond so that he could skip stones across the surface of the water, but he was doing an abysmal job of it. No matter how much finesse he put on the throw, each pebble sunk straight to the bottom of the pool without ever gaining any real momentum.
“I suppose so,” Phineas replied glumly. As his mother came to his side, he held out a fistful of stones to her.
She took several, then tossed them all into the water at once, which made Phineas laugh. “Well,” she said lightly, “I never was very good at skipping rocks. I always just wanted to watch the water ripple.” She stooped and dipped her fingertips in the water, then gave a refreshed sigh. “I am surprised to find you out here, dearest. I would have thought…”
“You thought I would be inside mingling with the other wedding guests?” Phineas snorted. “I am sorry to disappoint you again, Mama, but I have no stomach for such a gathering. It is as if they do not realise Felton has—”
“Yes,” his mother whispered. She stood and flicked her fingertips through the air, drying them quickly. “Felton has left us, and yet the party ensues.” She turned to look at him. “You must remember that this was the way he wanted it to be.”
“Did he, though?” Phineas countered. “He could not have known that he only had a few weeks left to live. He would not have anticipated reaching his end just before Percival’s wedding. So, I fail to see why we must carry on as if nothing has happened, just so Percy can have the grandest wedding imaginable.”
His mother took a step nearer to him. “Are you upset about losing Felton, or are you thinking of how you are on the verge of losing Lady Christianna?”
As his mother had just done, Phineas threw all the remaining stones in his hand directly into the pond. He watched as they plopped against the surface of the water, and then disappeared. “There is nothing I can do about Felton,” Phineas said bitterly. “The two of you made sure that I could not offer my help, expend my expertise. I could not…”
“Phineas,” his mother interrupted, “there was nothing anyone could do. We were aware of that much. Felton simply did not want to set an impossible task in front of you, only to know how you would wallow in your grief once you failed, as you inevitably would. He loved you too much to spend his last days with you, watching you suffer.”
“And yet…here I am.” Phineas spread his arms wide and spun in a circle. “I have been tasked with what some would call an impossibility. I must either ruin the reputation of the only family members I have left, or I must give away the woman that I cherish most dearly. How am I ever to make such a decision?”
“Love is a complicated thing,” his mother said quietly, “much more so than many may allow. In our society, we hear tales all the time of gentlemen and ladies who become married because they have made a suitable match, one that will be advantageous for their families.
And there are also quite a few in which a young lady and her dashing gentleman find each other and fall in love, but we rarely hear of the cases in which a lady and gentleman fall in love and yet cannot be together. And do you know why that is?”
Phineas shook his head. “Because it is not all that common?”
His mother gave him a dubious look. “No, no, people fall in and out of love all the time. But when they embark upon these affairs of the heart, they also understand that discretion is to be valued. One must not be carried away by their emotions.”
“I do not understand how you can say as much, Mama,” Phineas said, allowing a hint of accusation to colour his words. “You loved Felton. You laid with him, bore his son, and continued to spend all your days by his side. But when it came time to acknowledge your affections for him, you chose a comfortable life, one that was securely fixed with another man over the one you fancied.”
She shrugged. “For me, that was the right thing to do.”
“But what should I do?” Phineas asked.
“What do you want to do, my son?” his mother returned.
“I wish to claim my birthright,” Phineas answered without hesitation. “I loved Felton unfailingly, and now that I understand why the connection between us was always so strong, I do not just wish to inherit his land or receive the dividends from his bank account. I want to be his one true heir and carry on the name of Linfield with a sense of pride.”
“I see,” his mother whispered. “And what of our family? What of your brother?”
“There’s the rub,” Phineas said as he reached down, grabbed another handful of rocks, and flung them at the pool of water. “I thought that if I acted quickly and spoke to Christianna about my wishes, she and I might be able to call off this whole mess with Percy and retreat to London.”
His mother coughed, making an almost distressed sound as she tried to mask her surprise at his words. She gave up on the attempt and simply said, “You thought it would be that easy?”
“Of course not,” Phineas said as he sighed reluctantly. “I knew doing as much would cause Percy a great deal of embarrassment, but I figured if the three of us put our heads together, we might come up with a way to soften the blow. If we collaborated, we could figure out a way to live peacefully.”
“That is a fine dream, my son,” his mother murmured, “but you sound as though you have discarded this idea without ever even trying to put it into action. If you are so persuaded that becoming the Earl of Linfield and taking Lady Christianna with you as your wife is the way forward, why have you not acted on these feelings?”
“I meant to,” Phineas replied. He tipped his head to the side and regarded his mother. As he had just learned, if everyone was capable of nurturing a secret for an extended period, it was her.
