F
or once, the fight had gone out of Ginny, and her mother’s incessant nagging rolled off her skin as if she’d coated herself with a thick layer of pomade. She wasn’t naive enough to believe her own amicableness would last long. She and the girls had arrived home late two nights before, in another downpour that hadn’t seen fit to ease one iota.
The gray skies matched her mood, leaving her to wonder if her dourness had anything to do with her meddling parents still underfoot. No. She had a sinking feeling that her low spirits had more to do with having left Brock standing on the portico as she’d ushered her and the girls inside and then watching him drive away. Her greatest desire in that moment had been to take him into her bedchamber and curl up in his capable arms. But it was one thing to sleep the night away in one’s lover’s arms as they had in Colchester, and quite another to do so with half of London watching.
She was nothing but a coward. Brock’s kiss, his innate goodness. She was truly unworthy. She knew she’d confused him. Her emotions were scattered from Scotland to the Americas. Her desire for him grew every moment he was near. It was too much to take in for someone so… so fidgety. That last night, she’d lost her nerve and skittered to her chamber like a startled rabbit confronted with a musket. And most disappointing of all was that he’d let her go.
He remained attentive, but something had shifted in him over the last few days. Something akin to stony determination. And she had no notion what it could be.
She meandered her way to the morning room. Strong tea usually had a fortifying effect. She crossed the threshold and pulled up short, her head suddenly beating with a relentless drumming.
The baroness threw up her hands, her strident tone grating. “I demand an audience with my granddaughters, Virginia.” Her frustration didn’t come close to Ginny’s, but Ginny was just too worn to battle.
Celia bounded through the door at that moment. “We could take coffee with her, Mama.”
“Mrs. Couch, please have tea and biscuits sent to the morning room.” Ginny shifted a stern gaze on Celia. “No coffee.”
Celia beamed her with a brilliant smile as Mrs. Couch hurried out in an effort to disguise her twitching lips.
“Before I forget, Virginia. I’ve accepted the Faulks’ soiree invite for this evening.” The baroness glided over to the settee and patted the seat next to her. Celia skipped over and dropped down beside her.
Ginny opened her mouth to refute the dictate, but snapped it shut again. She hadn’t left the house in two days. Clearly, she missed Brock’s self-assured arrogance. Surely he’d attend. But doubts crept in. She’d had no guarantees from him. For all she knew, he’d taken her up on her offer to leave her alone.
After the small, intimate service held for Corinne, there hadn’t been a single minute to speak with him. She wanted to wrap her arms about his neck, tell him… tell him… that he did belong in her life. In her daughters’ lives. Tell him that he was right all along. That she knew so now. Tell him he was the only man for her.
“Now, young lady, where is your sister?” the baroness asked Celia.
“I’m here, Grandmother. Mama.” Irene’s soft yellow muslin with its white sash was spring personified. With her presence, Ginny could already feel her muscles unbend. “I had no notion how tiring being with Nathan a full four days would wear on my person. I slept late.”
“Your mother sent for tea,” the baroness said. “Tell me, ladies, what have you been up to?”
Mrs. Couch entered with the tea tray, and Ginny let her mother pour while her own mind tuned them out and wandered in a rare moment of tranquility. She was still half in shock over having heard Irene’s childlike laughter in that cavernous, empty ballroom at Kimpton’s country house.
Common sense forced her to step back from the situation. Did she love Brock in that glorified moment? Yes. The love in her heart, fragile though it was, swelled to momentous proportions, her heart felt too big for her chest. But was she in love with him? Yes. Yes, a million times yes. And this sensation was nothing similar to that of a decade ago. Absolutely nothing. She dropped her head in her hands, rubbed her temples. She never wanted to lose him. She couldn’t lose him. Not again.
“Good heavens, Virginia. What is the matter with you?”
Ginny’s head snapped up so quickly, she felt faint. “No-nothing, Mother. Apologies,” she croaked out. “Please, carry on.”
“We’ve been learning to safeguard ourselves,” Celia said.
Ginny’s eyes whipped to her younger daughter. “Celia,” she said abruptly. She didn’t know whether to be angry or wish the floor would cave in and swallow her up.
The baroness’s hand paused in the midst of pouring a cup of tea. “You’re what?” Her eyes narrowed on Celia, then moved quickly to Ginny. “What on earth is she talking about?”
Ginny fought a surge of panic and searched her scrambled thoughts for an explanation that didn’t sound half-baked. Her mother would never understand. But then, these were Ginny’s children. No one could tell her how to raise them. She lifted her chin.
“Safeguarding lessons,” Celia said with great enthusiasm. “Lord Brock is teaching us to get away from hoodwinkers and mean people who might try to nab us right off the street.”
Celia’s blunt explanation didn’t curtail the heat in Ginny’s face, and did nothing for the lack of oxygen she attempted to purchase for a single breath.
Slowly, her mother lowered the cup and teapot back to the tray. She turned to Irene. “Is this true, Irene?”
“Yes, Grandmother,” she answered in her straight-backed, formal, crisp tones. “Lord Brockway has imparted some very valuable techniques and stratagems to assist us in the event that something nefarious should cross our paths or befall us.”
The baroness blessed Ginny with one of her carved-in-ice smiles for which she was so well known. “Is that so?”
The very sight ignited Ginny’s temper. “Leave it be, Mother. ’Tis none of your affair.” She spoke sharp enough to startle the baroness momentarily speechless.
Of course, it was a temporary status. “Safeguarding lessons. Why, the very idea. Are you out of your mind, Virginia? The notion is-is ludicrous. How will these girls ever contract a favorable marriage?”
Ginny took great pleasure in returning her mother’s glacial smile. “And how dower a prospect that is when a man is allowed to take a stick to his spouse so long as the circumference is no thicker than the width of his thumb. Who made these asinine rules?”
“If word gets around regarding such a scheme, you’ll be ruined. Your children will be ruined.”
“Then we must make certain word never goes outside these walls, mustn’t we?” she shot back.
Celia’s lips quivered as her thumb slowly crept its way past her lips. Irene took Celia’s free hand, her face cleared of expression in a blank mask that was all too telling.
Another sort of fury coursed Ginny’s veins. In as gentle a tone as she could muster, she said, “Girls, please excuse your grandmother and me. Go upstairs and find Miss Lambert. I’ll come for you in a few minutes.”
Irene nodded and led a somber Celia from the room.
“Don’t you ever question my methods for raising my children,” she told her mother with the deadly calm blanketing her.
“But, Virginia. You know how imperative it is for young women to marry well. They don’t have the options men have.”
As if she wasn’t aware of the hazards a woman faced with being forced to marry. Ginny jerked her sleeve up past her wrist, exposing several circular burn scars. She shoved her arm in front of her mother, making certain her mother understood exactly what a woman endured at the mercy of an “advantageous” match. “This is what marriage is when one has no other option, Mother.” She pushed the hair back from her forehead. The scar there was still deep. Her hair would never grow back in that particular spot. “Shall I show you more?”
Though her mother’s eyes filled with tears, Ginny had had enough. Sadly, she was not prone to forgiveness so easily. On shaking legs, she strode from the room and up the stairs.