Page 28 of Lady Willa's Divinely Wicked Vicar
“I will not lower myself!” he’d yelled at her that afternoon when she confronted him minutes after Charlie had climbed into the Courtlands’ traveling coach.
“And I, sir, am ashamed of you!”
“What gall, you have, girl! I will bend you to my will. You will not see him. You will not wed him. But you will most certainly wed one man before the New Year!”
“Over my dead body!” She trembled when it came home to her what she uttered. Wasshethe one to die now over a failed proposal?
“You will wed or I will cut you off without a penny!”
“Do it!” She’d swung round to leave him where he stood.
Never had she been so appalled by her father. Never had she seen him so hateful toward others and toward her.
During the following weeks, she’d barely spoken to him. Instead she made plans for her escape and the means she would use to effect it. That began with her announcement that she would attend the Courtlands’ annual frolic and, too, Esme Harvey’s wedding on May second. The trip was a ruse, a camouflage, but the best she had to conceal her new endeavor.
When she finished stating her plans to leave for the party, her father virtually shook with exasperation as he pointed to the letter from Esme that Wills held in her hand.
“Gatherings like that?” her father blustered, his cheeks red with anger. “No! It’s meant for the riffraff to mingle with the toffs. Better to cultivate a refined set than tarnish one’s image with the ordinary.”
Of course, he knew that the man who had asked for her hand would not only attend this year’s house party, but also that the Reverend Charles Compton was the man who would officiate at Willa’s friend’s wedding.
“Why must you always attend this ridiculous party?” Her father continued his argument. “I see no point in it. You and I must finish charting the tenth generation of the de Courcy family before we return to Amboise in June. No use courting him! I will never approve of you with Southbourne’s son. A lady should marry well.”
Ah, yes. One of Papa’s Rules. Marry for position and money. A useful rule for most gels.Not this one.
“Bark, dearest.” Her mother removed her pince nez, yet pinned him to his spot with her sharp eyes. “A lady who marries the man her father wants for her gets what he wants for her. Not what she deserves.”
Her papa, a tall brusque fellow, wrapped himself in his rectitude. His imperious stance—long practiced and used successfully on many—was intended to sway his opponent to his cause. “And a lady who marries the man her mother wants for her gets a mama who visits too often.”
Unimpressed, her mother sniffed. “The man I want for our girl is oneshewants.”
Oh, Mama. Do give over. You cannot change his mind. And much will you rue the day you could not. But next week…yes, next week, much will change in this house.
“Willa could want any of the very fine men I have suggested in the past year!”
If I were blind or dumb, perhaps.
“Bark.” Mama shook her head. “A bookworm. A skinflint. And a snob.”
“You must look beyond their noses,” he insisted.
“I did, my darling man.” Her mother waved her tiny glasses at him. Poor dear, she tried to lure him back toward his sweeter self. “I saw a bore, a bully and a dandy dressed finer than I in my Season.”
In earlier days,Before Charlie, Wills called it—B.C.to be exact—she might have chuckled. Mama had been the Diamond of the Year she debuted. Beautiful, lavishly attiredandrichly endowed.
Before Charlie, her father had indulged in a sense of humor and could be cajoled.
Her mother was no longer successful at it. Ever intrepid, the countess wrinkled her nose. “Our Wills could not love any one of them.”
True.
“Rubbish!” he shot back. “She can! She’s done grieving for…for…what was his name? Wilfred?”
“Wit,” Willa supplied the name of her first betrothed, Wittford Williams, second son of the Earl of Dunford.
“Wit! That was it. Imagine! Wit and Wills! That’s what they termed the two!”
“Please, Bark!” Her mama settled her glasses back on her nose and glared at him over the rims. “The man is dead.”
