Page 34 of Lady Willa's Divinely Wicked Vicar
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.”
“God rest him, yes, yes.” He searched his waistcoat pocket for his pipe. “But really, Madam. Willa as Lady Wittford Williams? A tongue-twister. Mouth full of mush. No, simply no.”
Wills did not object. In fact, those names were more commendable than many other monikers thetonascribed. LikeJumboto the Prince Regent. OrYelperto the Prime Minister.
“Ignore him, my sweet,” her mama advised in her stern-let-me-wrestle-him tone. “Continue to pack. Go to your party with your friends.”
There is no stopping me.
Mama repeated her wish each year for Wills to enjoy some gaiety. Ever since Wills’s first betrothed Wit had died in the battle of Albuera, Mama had become a parrot repeating injunctions to joy. Come to think of it, she’d also encouraged her to do so after her second fiancé, the Marquess of Dennybrook, Frederick Tipton, had passed away of an ague.
Her mother leaned toward her. “Do laugh and dance, my dear girl. You need it.”
Wills shivered in anticipation. Yes, she needed more than that. She needed to settle her future. In a way none of them could dispute.
“Enjoy yourself, dearest,” Mama went on, raising a defiant brow at her husband. “Find some pleasure.”
“I will,” she assured her doting mother.Not the way you want, but still.“Never doubt.”
“You see, Bark? Our girl recovers!”
Would that her father could find it in his heart to do more than recover. But repenting was not in his ability and so Wills would do what she must. She’d take the family coach to the Courtlands’ May Day Frolic and then, before they could blink, she would simply…disappear.
“As long as she does not encourage that clergyman.”
Wills glared at her father. How dare he speak of Charlie in that manner.
“She won’t. Will you, darling?”
Wills stood. “I’ll not discuss this.”
“Now the two of you,” he said, “know my view. Vicars should be perfectly godlike.”
