Page 47 of Two Rogues Make a Right
“I’m not entirely certain I can invite them back,” Aunt Bermondsey said mildly after a disastrous lunch. “You know, you can just ask about the weather. Or the latest fashions in hats. Or whether they prefer cats or dogs. You don’t have to sit there sullenly.”
“I’m aware I don’thaveto sit there sullenly,” Martin snipped. “But I can’t think of anything to say. If I remark on the weather, and then they remark on the weather, then I’ll just have to say something else, and the very idea makes me want to run screaming out of the house.”
“Running screaming out of the house would have been more engaging than sitting there like a lump,” his aunt remarked. “My word. I’ll concentrate my efforts on balls and musicales and other engagements that don’t require much conversation.”
“I can’t dance.”
Aunt Bermondsey shot him a withering glance. “It is a skill that can be learned.”
He wrinkled his nose, then decided he had spent enough time acting like a petulant child. “I’m afraid I’m not in an agreeable mood.”
“No!” She pressed a hand to her heart. “I never would have guessed. What do you do to amuse yourself in the ordinary course of things? We’ll just have to find similar diversions.”
That question brought him up short. Left up to his own devices, Martin would live out the rest of his years sitting in a comfortable chair, reading anything he could get his hands on. He might have thought that after getting a taste of freedom, he’d want a go at something different than how he’d spent most of his first twenty years. But maybe he found comfort in the familiar, or maybe he just liked books and indolence. “I’m not entirely certain,” he said at length. “I haven’t had much of a chance to find out. There was very little opportunity for me to exercise my own preferences when my father was alive.” He watched his aunt’s face harden. “And after his death, I was preoccupied with caring for a friend who was in difficult circumstances.”
“And then with your own illness, I suppose?”
“I wouldn’t say that my illness preoccupied me. Perhaps it should have. I think I could have spared myself and my friend a good deal of trouble if I had stayed with you last autumn instead of leaving and making myself more ill.”
She regarded him levelly. “I don’t think you regret how it turned out, though.”
“You are correct, ma’am.” He didn’t know why he was being so honest with her. Maybe it was because sometimes when he looked at her he caught an occasional glimpse of a mother he knew only from a portrait. Maybe it was because her unconcealed hatred for his father endeared her to him. Or maybe it was just because he didn’t have anything to lose. “I can’t marry,” he said, trying to make his voice as firm and unyielding as he could. “I know it’s the logical solution to my predicament, but it’s out of the question.” He felt almost sick with the knowledge that he was going against her wishes. She had been kind: she bought him clothes and took him to the oculist for spectacles and now she would tell him that he had to do as she said for his own good. There was a part of him that expected his father or a nurse or tutor to materialize and lock him away until he was ready to be compliant.
She looked at him for another long moment and then poured him some tea. “Have it your way. I suppose I can get you a post as a secretary.”
Martin blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Secretary. You can read and write, can you not? Despite ignoring my letters for years and years?”
“Yes, of course, but—” He didn’t know how to say that he had expected her to fight him, to persuade him.
“Don’t tell me you look down your nose at work.”
“No! I just didn’t expect you to listen to me.”
Aunt Bermondsey regarded him curiously. “There are other ways you could make a living. Being a secretary is the most obvious, if only because certain men would feel extremely important if they had a titled secretary. But you could also get a post in the Home Office. Nothing too taxing.”
He spent a moment imagining this future in which he could earn a living. It was a fantasy—he would be sacked from any post after his first bout of illness, and any work in London or another city was out of the question. But even the theoretical possibility of being able to pay his own way made him feel... valuable, maybe, in a way he hadn’t conceived of. Then he gritted his teeth and returned to reality.
“I’m afraid, ma’am, that my health won’t permit me to hold a regular post, nor to stay in town.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I was under the impression that you were doing better.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever recover,” he said. It was the first time he had said it aloud to anyone but Will. “But some days are better than others.”
She was silent for a moment. “Tell me what I can do for you.”
“I would like to be able to pay my own way,” Martin said. “I don’t want to be a drain on my friend.” No, that wasn’t quite right. “I don’t want to need my friend. I want to be able to pay for whatever care I need the next time I fall ill. I don’t want the people who care for me to worry that I’ll repeat the events of last autumn.” He didn’t say that in an ideal world he’d like to be able to care for Will if he needed it; that seemed both unlikely and private, an impossible thought to hide safely away.
“I would not call these ambitions overly optimistic.”
“It is when you haven’t two farthings to rub together.”
She furrowed her brow. “There has to be something you could do. To hear my friends talk, young men seem to be forever getting posts and taking work that their relations consider beneath them—surely not all of them require a man to live in London.”
“I expect the young men your friends know all have skills that I do not. My education consisted of reading too many novels and little else. I read and write French, and a little German.”
“I’d offer you money—”
