Page 360 of From Rakes to Riches

Victoria sighed. “That’s all you know? I always thought you were withholding something due to my young age.”

“No, miss. But the servants’ silence made me realize something scandalous had to be going on there. Are you sure marrying the viscount is the correct decision?”

“How could I say no, Mrs. Wayneflete? We’ll have a place to live, food to eat. And I’m marrying the viscount, not the earl himself. We can’t blame a man for his father’s actions.”

“But we don’t know what those actionswere.”

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Wayneflete. This is the best I could do. Will it bother you if I try to find a position for you in the Banstead household? But of course if you’d rather not work there?—”

“Oh no, miss, it would be a great relief for me to be able to look after you and Mrs. Shelby,” she said, dabbing her tears with her apron. “I am relieved that you’ve found a man who wants to marry you.”

“He has taken pity on me,” Victoria correctly her dryly. “And I sense that we will be helping him as well.” She couldn’t put her suspicions into words.

“We have so much to do,” Mrs. Wayneflete said, leading Victoria and her mother into the library. “Let’s make our lists. When will the wedding take place?”

“In one month.”

“Heavens, Miss Victoria, that will barely be enough time!”

“The first wedding in the family.” Mama suddenly smiled.

When a tear slid down her mother’s cheek, Victoria wanted to melt.

“It is what your father and I always wanted for you,” her mother said softly.

But it wasn’t what Victoria had wanted for herself.

When David arrived backat Banstead House, he had already decided to face the most difficult task first: telling his father about the upcoming marriage.

He walked down the hall on the ground floor to his father’s bedroom. He knocked briskly on the door, and his father called for him to enter.

Alfred Thurlow, the Earl of Banstead, was sitting in his wheelchair in his usual place, staring out the window at the garden. There was a book beside him on a table, but David knew he seldom read—he seldom did anything but brood on his illness and ever progressing infirmity.

And take out his misery on the entire household. The maids were often crying from his verbal abuse when they were only trying to clean his room. David had finally given strict orders that no one was to even attempt to clean unless his father was somewhere else. But that was less and less often. The man’s greatest joy seemed to be making housekeepers quit.

The earl looked up at David with flashing blue eyes, obviously ready to yell at the intrusion. But he caught his breath when he saw who it was and only grumbled something before looking back out the window. His white hair was longer than it should be, but the earl didn’t care about such things anymore. It was hard enough to get him to bathe regularly. His face was lined more with anger and bitterness than age, and those once broad, imposing shoulders were bony and bent. But the earl had made sure by his intolerable behavior that no one offered him pity anymore.

“Good afternoon, Father.”

“Not so good here” was all the earl said.

David clenched one fist behind his back. “I won’t disturb you for long. I wanted to tell you that I’m to be married in a month’s time.”

That brought the old man’s head around. “You negotiated such a thing without consulting me?”

“I’m twenty-six years old, Father. I am quite capable of procuring a bride.”

“You hadn’t been able to provethatbefore.”

And whose fault is that?David barely stopped himself in time. Too often, he sank to his father’s level, but not today. Today he would wallow in the satisfaction of his accomplishments.

After a length of silence David refused to break, the earl glanced at him—showing no remorse or guilt, naturally.

His father said, “It’s about time you provided the earldom with an heir besides that useless cousin of yours.”

David stiffened. His father’s endless quest for children had been what killed his mother. She’d endured pregnancy after pregnancy, all ending early or with a stillborn child. The town house had always been draped in black crepe, and David had worn mourning clothes for much of each year.

But still the old man had spent David’s adulthood hounding him about an heir. Was Father oblivious to what he’d done?

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