24

The sound of footsteps woke him. Usually he was one of the first people up in the house, so he missed the parade of siblings and attendant servants that made mornings chaotic in the Gray household. It must have been incredibly late in the morning, he realized, if all his sisters were awake.

But then again, he did have an unusually late night.

He stretched and smiled, thinking about it. Thinking about Margaret. About the giddy peace he’d known drifting to sleep in her bed, and the pang of regret he felt because she was not there now.

Although, it was better that she was not present. Other than the awkwardness of their unmarried state (something he planned to rectify as soon as possible), there was the fact that he had to have a very difficult conversation with his mother that morning.

He felt somewhat cowardly for having avoided it until now. And for having left poor Miss Morton to break the news to both their families that a proposal was not forthcoming.

Although, chances are she did not. She could have easily said that he’d had to leave due to a medical emergency—and it would be the truth, as far as she knew. Plus, it would delay an uncomfortable conversation with her father.

So, likely he would be walking downstairs to a parent who still expected him to propose.

And he fully intended to—just not to the woman she would prefer.

Yes, he’d done everything backward, he thought as he buttoned up his shirt and pulled on the boots that had been left out for him. But he intended to rectify it, and hoped to make up for it. Although regarding the latter, he had no idea how.

However, the former was his concern now, so he girded his loins and walked downstairs, fully expecting to find his mother in the sitting room. And she was. But he did not expect to see her surrounded by so many people.

Delilah stood on a footstool, with two dressmakers taking her measurements, while Eloisa supervised and Jubilee read the newspaper beside her. Bolts of fabric were laid out, carpenters and laborers were being directed by Mrs. Watson, who took notes from his mother as she did so.

“No, tell them it has to be a pergola—a beautiful outdoor island. Marble preferred, but granite will do in a pinch.”

“Her ladyship says that it must be a pergola—” Mrs. Watson said to the laborers, only to be interrupted again.

“With carved figures for the posts!” his mother exclaimed. “Female figures. If they need a model, I have a picture upstairs that—”

“Mother?” Rhys interrupted, utterly bewildered. “What is all this?”

“Oh, Rhys!” his mother cried, leaping out of her chair and rushing over to him. She embraced him with all the strength she had, which was a surprising amount. “I’m so very happy. And glad you are awake—oh, you can help us with the cake! Cook, excellent, here you are!”

Rhys turned around just in time to avoid jostling Cook as she entered, bearing a tray of small cakes, all in different colors and flavors.

“Where should I place this, my lady?”

“Just over there—oh, Watson, do remind the men that we will need some kind of structure to hang boughs of garland off of—I was thinking a vine of blooms twined with silk.” As Mrs. Watson turned to the men to relay those exact instructions, his mother once again spoke to him. “What do you think, Rhys?”

“About . . . what, precisely?”

“About the boughs . . . but also about the cake. Oh, I know it isn’t usually the man’s decision, but since I have you it would behoove us to cater to your tastes at least a little.”

“Mother,” he stated firmly, his gaze narrowing. “I have no idea what you are doing.”

“She’s rather obviously planning a party,” Eloisa said, unusually subdued, from her place beside Jubilee. “Even you can see that.”

“Yes . . . but what for?”

“For you, silly!” his mother exclaimed. “I know that it is uncommon for the groom’s family to arrange the celebration, but as Mrs. Morton is no longer with us, and Mr. Morton is not . . . as familiar with society’s ways as we are, I thought there would be no harm in taking the initiative.”

“And the best news,” Delilah said from her tuffet, “is that now that you are to marry, Mama says I can make my come-out! It’s a bit late in the season for a formal debut, but I already have invitations to three parties this week!”

“We are all agog with joy,” Jubilee replied, her head not moving from the pages of the Gazette-Post.

“You’re just mad Mama isn’t letting you come out too.”

“Yes she is,” Jubilee said.

“Mother—” Rhys tried to interject.

“She is?” Delilah started.

“Of course she is. I’m of age too. So I’ll be right beside you, ruining your shining moment.”

Delilah gasped and rounded on their parent. “Mama, that is not fair!”

“Darling, do be reasonable—”

“Mother!” Rhys ground out, bringing the room to a halt. “Am I to infer that you are planning a wedding party?”

“Yes.”

“For myself . . . and Sylvia Morton?”

“Well, yes, darling,” his mother said with a blissful smile. “Now, as for the cakes—are you a lover of chocolate? I can never remember which of you children disliked it.”

Holy hell, his mother was taking this worse than he had expected.

“Mother . . .” he said as gently—but sternly—as possible. “I’ve decided that there will not be a wedding between myself and Miss Morton.”

“Don’t be silly, dear,” she said as she inspected the tray of cakes. “I know you must be a bit nervous—I was when it came to my wedding too—but don’t let a case of cold feet get in the way of everyone’s happiness.”

Rhys felt as if he were in an insane asylum. “No, Mother. This is not cold feet. There will not be a wedding.”

His mother turned to him then and looked at him. Really, truly looked at him for the first time since he walked into the room that morning and the whole world had gone topsy-turvy. “Yes, there will, Rhys. It has been announced.”

Something in his body shifted. Some kind of sea change in his blood. While before, he had been bewildered, and trying to sort everything out . . . now he just felt fire.

“What do you mean, announced?” he said, his voice low and cold.

While his mother blinked and made fluttering noises, Eloisa slowly rose and took the newspaper from Jubilee’s hands. Silently, she flipped it to the right page, crossed the room, and handed it to him.

There it was, in stark black and white.

The Family of Lord and Lady Gray are pleased to announce the engagement of Dr. Rhys Gray to Miss Sylvia Morton, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. James Morton of Sussex. The wedding is to take place at the earliest possible convenience.

It was simple, straightforward. No cluttering details about whom the families were or how the couple had been introduced. It did not mince words, and therefore it brooked no opposition.

“We wish you quite happy,” Eloisa said quietly. Rhys looked up, surprised to see her still standing by his side.

“Nerves of this nature are unbecoming on a man,” his mother continued blithely. “It’s always best to simply buck up and move forward. Now, the wedding should be no later than three weeks from now, don’t you agree? I’ve already written to your father, and once he reads the letter I’m sure he will be on the first packet home and—”

“Mother, enough!” The words boomed out of him, rumbling like thunder across the sitting room. “I am not marrying Sylvia Morton, and Father isn’t coming back. Ever.”

Everyone went still. His mother looked as if he’d reached over and slapped her.

Watson proved her worth as a head of household, because she simply moved to the door and held it open, ushering out every day laborer, carpenter, cook, and dressmaker who littered the room. Leaving only silent, stricken Grays.

“He’s not coming back,” Rhys repeated, breaking the silence after the door clicked shut. “And he wouldn’t, even if I did marry Miss Morton. He or Francis. They’re in Italy, living high and not having to face any responsibilities. Why the hell would they come back?”

His mother’s lower lip began to tremble, but she kept her head high. “Because . . . because of his family . . . and his wife . . . we need him.”

“He’s been nonexistent in our lives for years. Why would he think of our needs now? Over his own pleasures?”

“How can you think that way about your own father?” she asked on a sob.

“Because that’s how he is, Mother,” came a voice from the breakfast room entryway.

“Daniel, you should not be out of bed,” Rhys said, unable to keep the doctor at bay, even in this most difficult of circumstances.

“Who can sleep with all this racket? Besides, I was hungry.” Daniel was leaning against the doorframe heavily, but he was upright and moving under his own power. He turned his eyes to their mother. “Father thinks that nothing and no one can touch him. And that’s what he taught the rest of us.” He winced and touched his side. “I’m proof of that.”

There was a newfound gravity in Daniel’s voice. The sober transition from boy to man. It had only taken being shot for him to grow up.

On the other hand, his mother seemed still to be firmly in denial. “Just because your father refused to let his name be raked through the mud, and fought in a duel . . .”

“He fought that duel because he thinks he’s always in the right. He presses his way forward and damned if he’ll let anyone or anything stop him,” Rhys replied, his voice a bit softer now. “Why on earth would he stay away so long unless it’s what he wanted to do?”

Daniel came to stand beside him, leaning heavily on the back of the sofa.

“Rhys is right, Mother. Father isn’t coming back, not even if there is a wedding.”

For one spare moment, their mother’s face fell, and Rhys could see everything. The pain, the anger she’d felt for years. The strength of will it took to keep on believing and working toward something . . . and the knowledge that what Rhys and Daniel said was true.

It made his heart ache. It made him want to wrap his frivolous, fluttering mother in his arms and not let go until she was safe and protected again. It made him furious at himself that he’d hurt her. And furious at his father for making him do it.

But just as quickly as it came, that glimpse into his mother’s mind fled, and she stiffened her spine and raised her chin.

“I . . . I think you are being spiteful,” she said. “Both of you. And you’re just saying this because you’re nervous about marrying a girl you don’t know. But you will in due time and—”

Rhys threw up his hands. “I know Miss Morton well enough that I know I don’t love her.”

His mother threw up her hands in a perfect mirror of him. “What does that signify?”

“It signifies greatly when I am in love with Margaret Babcock.”

His mother blinked. His two youngest sisters gasped—possibly a “really?” escaped from the unaffected Jubilee. But Eloisa . . . Eloisa just smiled.

“Well, if you felt that way about Miss Babcock,” his mother finally said after a few moments, “why did you ask the Morton girl to marry you?”

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Rhys replied. “I didn’t.”

His mother became still as a statue. Except for the single eyebrow—so like his own—that rose in a flying wing of dawning realization.

“You did not engage yourself to Miss Morton?”

“No.” He shook his head.

“But . . . you disappeared into the study with her, you were gone for some time . . . did you perhaps mislead Miss Morton?”

“In point of fact, I told her that I thought we would not suit,” Rhys replied. Then his brow came down. “What did she tell you?”

“Nothing,” Eloisa answered, the only one of his three sisters who could be moved beyond mute. “She said you had to leave on some kind of emergency, and that she and her father should likely end the evening. Her face was rather flushed, however, and her eyes were shining.”

“Indeed—I commented to Eloisa that I thought she was trying to hide her happiness,” his mother continued. “Then I made your excuses—although it was terribly rude of you to go; I can only hope someone was on death’s door to pull you away—and they left.”

Rhys turned narrowed eyes onto his mother. “And you just decided that there would be an engagement, no matter what, and sent it into the papers?”

She pulled back. “What? No!”

“Are you certain?” he asked. “Really? You’re the one who kept saying it was time.”

“Really, Rhys,” Eloisa answered, exasperated. “The family of the groom does not make that announcement. It’s simply not done.”

“I rather thought it was you,” his mother said imperiously. “I learned of the engagement from the papers. I thought you were being your usual recalcitrant self, not telling your family first. I had to run around like a madwoman this morning, trying to find dress fitters for your sisters for the wedding, and we were thinking of having it done here in London—” She stopped herself when she caught a glimpse of Rhys’s expression. “Of course, none of that is here nor there any longer. But it was in the Gazette-Post, for goodness’ sake—of course I believed it!”

“I suppose this means that Rhys will just have to marry Miss Morton,” Delilah said. “Oh well, do you think I should wear the blue silk?”

Rhys was about to say something snide to Delilah. As was, he was certain, Jubilee, Eloisa, and even Daniel. But it was his mother who jumped immediately to his defense.

“Delilah, don’t be stupid! Your brother has been greatly wronged in this matter!”

Rhys swelled with pride. He couldn’t hide his amazed smile. But Delilah wasn’t smiling.

“We have all been greatly wronged! Don’t you know what kind of scandal this will cause? To break an engagement that was printed in the papers? Mr. Morton could press charges against Father from afar—and against Rhys for breach of promise!” Delilah said.

“No promise was made.”

“The promise was made on your behalf, years ago,” his mother said weakly. “At least, the courts could see it that way.”

Delilah was right. The words and their implications hung in the room. This false announcement caused all sorts of new trouble for his family, and dug up some of the old.

“It could have come from Mr. Morton,” Daniel piped up from his observer’s seat, lying on the couch. “He could have announced it, trying to press the issue.”

Rhys looked down at the paper in his hands. Read the announcement again.

“But it didn’t. The phrasing. It says, ‘The family of Lord and Lady Gray are pleased to announce . . .’ ” he murmured. “The Gazette-Post is a reputable publication. They would not have published this without a note signed and sealed by one of us.”

A look was shared around the room.

“Well, don’t look at me,” Delilah said with a sniff. “Even though I cannot come out until the wedding and are you certain you do not wish to marry Sylvia?”

“It wasn’t her,” Jubilee remarked. “She cannot spell ‘at the earliest convenience.’ ” Delilah stuck her tongue out at Jubilee. “And I don’t care who you marry.”

“I’m hardly up to writing a letter,” Daniel said. “And I haven’t seen my signet seal since before the duel.”

“You lost your signet seal?” His mother tutted. “Those are irreplaceable!”

“It wasn’t any of us,” Eloisa said. “Really, Rhys. That just leaves you. Perhaps you sent it last night and forgot.”

“Hardly,” he said. But his hand went up to his lip. An idea forming in the back of his mind pushed its way to the front.

Eloisa cocked her head to one side. “Oh no? What were you up to?”

He wasn’t about to tell his sister his whereabouts the previous evening. Lest he wanted to kill them all with shock. Which previously, he would have thought as possibly nice. But now, all his family (all right, not Delilah, but give her time) was rallying to his side.

“It was not me,” Rhys said, chewing over the thought that entered his head. “But there is one other option.”

It was Jubilee who broke first.

“Well? Don’t leave us in suspense! Who?”