The Importance of Being Wicked (Millworth Manor) (32 page)

My Dearest Cousin Beatrice,

Lord Stillwell and I have fixed on the fourteenth of September for ourmariageI will be celebrated at this family home of Fairborough Hall and will indeed be the happiest day

I cannot tell you how pleased I am to have found a man of the steadfast nature and stalwart character of Winfield Elliot I consider myself extremely fortunate and his feelings echo mine. We are agreed that we are well suited.

Our happiness will only be incresed if you will favor us with your presence at the ceremony I shall be salll and dignified as is appropriate for his station and mine. Do say you will come. Cousin, as your absence would surely cost a pall an what will certainly be the most important day of my life.

“You’ve come a long way, my boy.” Father closed the ledger book with a heavy
thunk
as befitted its serious nature. He had two such ledgers. In this one he kept an accounting of business endeavors and investments; the other was dedicated to matters regarding property including Fairborough Park and the house in London. Father was nothing if not well organized. He set the book aside on the desk. “I must confess, I wasn’t sure you would take to this as well as you have.”

“Were you afraid Gray had inherited all the business expertise in the family?” Win said with a wry smile. He sat in the chair positioned in front of the mahogany desk that had served any number of previous Earls of Fairborough and would, God willing, serve those yet to come. Win had sat in this precise position more times than he could count through the years, more often than not when he was being called to task for some infraction or other. Odd to be sitting here now not as recalcitrant offspring but as something more akin to an equal.

“Not at all.” Father shook his head. “I’ve never had any doubts as to your competence or intelligence. It was your desire that was in question. Grayson had something to prove, if only to himself. You do not.”

“True enough.” Win’s cousin, Gray, had lost his parents at an early age. Win’s family had taken him in and, to Win’s observation, had never treated him, or thought of him, as anything less than their own. But when the woman Gray loved threw him over for a man with a title and fortune, his cousin left England to build a fortune of his own. “You do realize he isn’t aware that I told you about that business with Miss Channing, or rather, Lady Lydingham now?”

Father nodded. “Nor shall I tell him that your mother and I know.” He paused. “Do you think he will return for this wedding of yours?”

“I doubt it.” Win shrugged. “I have asked him, but I am not counting on his presence. I suspect we will not see him until he has accomplished what he has set out to do.”

“Pity.” Father shook his head. “Your mother misses him.”

“As do we all.” Gray was more than a cousin to him. In every respect save blood, they were brothers and Gray was, as well, his closest friend. Regardless, Gray had always been his own man. “Still it would be good to have him here.”

“About this wedding . . .” Father began.

“Yes?”

Father pulled open his bottom drawer and withdrew his bottle of whisky and two glasses.

Win raised a brow. “So, this is to be one of those talks, is it?”

“Don’t be absurd.” Father scoffed and filled the glasses. “Can a man not celebrate the companionship of his only son with a glass of good whisky?” He slid a glass across the desk toward Win.

“What about the wedding?” Win hefted the glass and took an appreciative sip. His father did know his whisky.

“I assume, from what your mother has said, that the preparations are all in order,” Father said in an overly casual manner.

“In truth, I have no idea. It seems the groom is of little use in the planning of weddings. Therefore I have done the intelligent thing and stayed out of it.”

“Very wise.” Father paused. “While your mother and I have urged you to find a suitable bride, I do hope our encouragement has not pushed you in the wrong direction.”

Win frowned. “What do you mean?”

Father shifted uneasily in his chair. “After the last . . .”

“Failed engagement? Cancelled wedding? Embarrassing incident? Humiliating debacle?” Win cast his father a dry look. “Do feel free to stop me at any time.”

“I was going to simply say time, but I suppose all of those are fairly accurate.” Father shook his head. “I was quite proud of you, you know. I can’t imagine it was easy to keep the exact circumstances of the termination of the engagement to yourself. To allow the world to place the fault at your feet rather than hers, thus protecting her reputation.”

“If you recall, I have never had a reputation particularly worthy of protection.”

Father raised a shoulder as if it was of no consequence, yet another indication of their ever-changing relationship. There was a time when Win’s less than stellar past behavior would have prompted at the very least a stern lecture from his father and accompanying worried looks from his mother. The kind that suggested she feared he would come to a bad end and she could do nothing to prevent it save pray to a higher power. “Nor did I at your age.”

Win had long suspected as much.

“Pity your gallantry was undeserved.” Father snorted. “It would have gone far better for her had she been smart enough to have waited more than a few weeks to announce her engagement to another man.”

“Still, while I wasn’t at the time, I am grateful to her at this point. I could have married the wrong woman instead of biding my time and waiting for the right one.”

“I did think twenty-five was a bit young to marry at any rate.”

“And yet you never said a word.”

“It wasn’t easy.” Father chuckled. “Why, I didn’t wed until I had passed my thirty-first year.”

Win studied his father for a long moment. Very often what his father didn’t say was every bit as important as what he did say. He chose his own words with care. “But you think twenty-seven an acceptable age?”

“I’m not sure age truly matters when one is certain one has found the right woman.” Father had long been a master of evasive answers. He leaned back in his chair and considered his son over the rim of his glass. “As you have done.”

“Indeed I have,” Win said staunchly.

“And you are certain?”

“I haven’t a doubt in my mind.” Which wasn’t entirely the truth, but that was not something he wished to admit to his father or, for that matter, to himself. It was bad enough to have chosen the wrong woman once. Twice, well, he pushed the thought from his head. Lucy was definitely not the wrong woman.

They had arrived at Fairborough Hall nearly a week ago and the wedding was still a week away. Lucy had sensibly suggested they come to the country early so that she might better know his parents and his country house. It was an excellent idea and indeed the week had gone quite well for the most part. Lucy did have a tendency to comment on things that might be run more efficiently, both at the hall and in the gardens and the village, with the unsaid implication that when she was the Countess of Fairborough, changes would be made. He had noted a similar inclination in London to suggest changes on various aspects of the family house in Mayfair: furnishings, servants and whatever struck her as needing improvement. As well as occasionally on his attire, his selections at dinner or his fondness for brandy and cigars. He’d dismissed it in town; it was part and parcel of getting to know one another after all. Indeed he’d found it rather charming. But here in the country, the place he loved best in all the world, where he never felt so much himself, here . . .

“That’s all that matters then, isn’t it?”

Win’s attention jerked back to his father. “What?”

“That you haven’t any doubts about your impending nuptials.”

“Yes, of course,” Win murmured.

“It’s a big step, you know—marriage that is.”

“I am aware of that, Father.”

“Lady Eustice is, oh, a sensible, responsible choice.” He paused. “More so than your last fiancée.”

“I am aware of that as well. Indeed, no one is more aware of it than I.”

Father hesitated. “She’s not at all the type of woman I expected you to choose.”

Win chuckled. “Nor did I.”

“You are selecting the next Countess of Fairborough, the woman who will be your mother’s successor.” Father took a sip of his whisky. “It looks to me that Lady Eustice is well up to that challenge. She shall make an excellent countess.”

“I have no doubts about that whatsoever,” Win said firmly.

“She is quite cognizant of proper behavior. A very reserved sort. One might even say cold. But I’m sure, as we grow to know her better, she will warm to us,” he added quickly.

“I would think so.” Still, Lucy did have a tendency to be aloof. Yet another quality he hadn’t really noticed before.

“She will no doubt make an excellent wife.”

“Absolutely.”

“By your side for the rest of your days.”

“As it should be.”

“Exactly.” Father nodded in a sage manner. “Every day, every night for the rest of your life.”

“Most certainly.”

“Until the very moment you breathe your last.”

“Of course,” Win said, forcing a bit more enthusiasm than he felt. Could he be with Lucy for the rest of his days? Until he breathed his last was a very long time.

As much as he hated to acknowledge it, he hadn’t truly considered the unending permanence of marriage until this past week. But then he hadn’t spent as much continuous time with Lucy in London as he had since their arrival at Fairborough Hall. Even the fact that she preferred Lucille to Lucy had escaped his notice until now. There were other aspects of her nature as well. Minor things, really, that he had paid no attention to, discounting them as unimportant. He had always found a great deal of freedom in the country. He was beginning to suspect Lucy—Lucille—would much prefer to spend her days in town. He was starting to wonder as well if he had made yet another rash decision. He pushed the thought from his head. Lucy was a sensible match.

“There’s nothing dishonorable in honesty, you know,” his father said in an offhand manner. “In admitting one has perhaps made a mistake.”

Win met the earl’s gaze directly. “I shall remember that, Father, the next time I find myself in that position.”

Father blew a long breath. “Stubbornness is not the same as conviction, Winfield.”

Win tightened his jaw. It was one thing to admit his doubts to himself. Quite another to have them pointed out by his father. Not that Father had done that directly. Not that Win had any doubts. “I know that, Father.”

Father fell silent for a thoughtful moment, then heaved a resigned sigh. “As long as you are indeed certain of your path.”

“Quite certain, Father.” Win drew a deep breath. “But I do appreciate your concern.”

“I don’t doubt your judgment, Winfield, or your intelligence. You should know that.” He leaned forward and met his son’s gaze. “But even the cleverest of men can lose his way when a woman is involved. And a woman who is both rational and pretty . . .” He shook his head. “They appeal both to a man’s sense of duty, of doing what he should do, as well as to his more, oh, shall we say baser desires. Lady Eustice is a lovely woman.”

“Yes, she is.”

“She is a wise choice, Winfield,” Father said with a conviction that didn’t seem entirely genuine. Or perhaps Win was reading more into his father’s demeanor than was there.

“Thank you, Father,” Win murmured, even if his father’s comment struck him as more resigned than approving.