Page 28 of A Delicate Deception
“Is she pretty?” Lex asked.
“That is not the point,” Sydney answered.
Lex hummed with interest. “It’s going to be terribly awkward at dinner. Frankly, I can’t wait.”
Sydney looked heavenward. “You can’t really mean for me to host that dinner now?”
“Please tell me where else in the nation I’m likely to find a wife who is not only conversant in the finer points of English history, but finds arguing about it amusing enough to write me meticulously researched twice-monthly letters?”
“They were making sport of you! And what on earth are you talking about? Wife?”
Lex waved a dismissive hand. “We were making sport of one another. I daresay my letters to them were even more objectionable than those they wrote me. My secretary did warn me I was only spurring her on, but that was the point of the game.”
“You call it a game,” Sydney protested. “This is rich people nonsense. Normal people don’t act like that.” He fiercely suppressed the possibility that Lex was correct, that Amelia had meant no harm—because if she hadn’t then he had gravely insulted her for no reason.
“Andrew did,” Lex pointed out.
Sydney bristled at the comparison. “He was an outlier.”
“You’re being exceptionally stupid about this. Do you want to know what I think?”
“Not especially, thank you.”
“I think you fell in love with this girl. And for whatever reason, she ignored you or thought you were ignoring her, and now you have it in your head that she’s some kind of harpy or jezebel.”
“She’s neither of those things!”
“Precisely,” said Lex, unreasonably smug. “You behaved like an ass, she slapped you, and any reasonable man would have already arrived at her house with flowers and an abject apology. The only reason you haven’t, is that you’re pretty sure she’d throw both the flowers and the apology back in your face.” His tone gentled, and that more than anything braced Sydney for what was to come. “Things do end, Syd, but that isn’t any reason not to start them in the first place.”
“You’re talking nonsense,” Sydney said.
“You really are a curmudgeon.” Lex’s voice returned to its usual acerbity, thank God. “Have you not smiled once since your brother died? I did worry about you. Ought to have made you visit me sooner. Poor Syd. I bet your eyebrows are doing that thing they do.”
“They’re doing nothing at all,” he snapped. Was Lex intent on discussing all Sydney’s least favorite topics? He didn’t want to think of the past two years since Andrew’s death. He had worked, and that was satisfying in its way. He hadn’t been particularly happy, but he had chalked that up to missing his brother. And he had missed Andrew, of course he had, but he saw now that he had been missing something else—joy, maybe. Something sweet and sharp that he felt when he saw Leontine tinkering with a clock, or when Lex ribbed him, or when—every minute he spent with Amelia, but he wouldn’t let himself think about that. Whatever it was, he didn’t need it, didn’t want it. It was something for other people. He cleared his throat and turned his attention to what Lex had been saying a minute earlier. “Why are you looking for a wife?” He knew that Lex was never attracted to women, but also that marriages had been formed without a basis of attraction. Perhaps now that Lex’s brothers had all died, he thought he needed an heir.
“Previously, I had always supposed that any woman I’d be fond enough of to endow with all my worldly goods and also endure at the breakfast table wouldn’t deserve a husband indifferent to her charms. But I’ve found a woman of good family and learning who enjoys arguing with me and may even be willing to exchange marital happiness for an obscene settlement. I intend to woo Miss Russell.”
“Of course,” Sydney said, burying his face in his hands. “Of course you don’t want to marry someone you like, and who likes you. How stupid of me to think otherwise. But there’s a flaw in your plan.” There were a dozen flaws, but Sydney would content himself with the one. “Georgiana didn’t write those letters. Amelia did. I’ve, ah, had occasion to see the lady’s writing.”
“You’re a master of euphemism, Sydney. I assume you mean you were exchanging billets-doux with the young lady. How roguish of you. Shocking. Besides, I daresay they did it together,” Lex said, unconcerned. “It’s precisely the sort of mischief young ladies would get up to. Sometimes I forget you don’t have sisters. I daresay, if participating in a jest about Plantagenet history is the sort of thing Miss Russell does for amusement, then we’ll get along splendidly. As for Miss Allenby, a woman of her predilections can be forgiven for enjoying a bit of a lark with regard to her area of expertise, such as it is.”
“Miss Allenby’s predilections?” he repeated.
“She is Amelia Allenby.” At Sydney’s uncomprehending stare, he continued. “The authoress of several exceptionally silly historical novels. Imagine Sir Walter Scott, but if every woman in English history dabbled in witchcraft or murder. You really didn’t know?”
“I knew she wrote but I haven’t read—I don’t read novels,” he finished stiffly.
“Lucky you, I’ve sent Carter out to get me her books. You can begin reading them to me tonight. It’s a pity I can’t marry Amelia Allenby herself. But, alas, the lady’s affections would appear to be engaged elsewhere,” he said pointedly. “Besides, I’m not here to litigate my marital intentions. I want to contract a marriage on as fair a basis as a man in my circumstances can. I want children.”
“You realize not all marriages result in children, don’t you?” Sydney managed when he had recovered his senses.
“Are you saying my lady wife will not effortlessly pluck a baby from the cabbage patch?” He flung a biscuit in the general direction of Sydney’s head. “Give me some credit, Sydney. I want to give myself a fighting chance to have a family. Surely you can understand that.”
Lex could not have come up with a word more suited to play upon Sydney’s sympathies. Family was precisely what had been lost in the fire—Andrew and Penny, their expected child. Both Lex and Sydney had lost their families that day. Maybe this was a way to make it right. Maybe he would remember this summer as the time he had met Leontine and helped Lex find happiness, rather than the time he had finally understood that he was not to have that sort of happiness for himself.
Chapter Twelve
By the next day, Amelia had progressed from confusion and sorrow to incandescent rage. When she heard a knock on the cottage door she was prepared to answer it for the mere satisfaction of slamming it shut again. When she flung open the door, her cheeks were already hot with anger, and only got hotter when she saw Mr. Goddard standing before her. He was composed of fifty percent shoulders and fifty percent stern disapproval and she didn’t want any of it.
