Page 67 of The Meaning of Love
They spent a comfortable twenty minutes catching up with who had done what. It was evident that Jamie and George truly had been bitten by the archeological bug, and George planned to join Jamie at university with the intention of specializing in the study of antiquities.
“I hope to specialize in archeology,” Jamie said. “So George’s studies will complement mine.” He exchanged a glance with his brother. “Who knows? Eventually, we might go on digs together.”
Judging from George’s expression, that was a shared dream.
The other gentlemen had visited the castle often during their school and university days and, on leaving, would head toward London, stopping in nearby Derby for the night.
In releasing Julian and Melissa to the others waiting to speak with them, Thomas companionably bumped Julian’s shoulder. “You’re the first of us to fall, but once you met Melissa, we expected that. Mind you”—he exchanged a suddenly sober look with the others, which they all returned—“that’s not to say that any of us are lining up to follow your lead.”
Julian laughed. “Good luck with that and with any plans you might harbor regarding managing your future lives. If there’s one thing I’ve learned through our experience, it’s that when it comes to love and marriage, Fate goes her own way.”
George Wiley, now Lord Worth, grimaced. “I was afraid you’d say something like that.”
Julian and the others clapped him on the back and teased him over being the other titled one and, therefore, higher on the matchmakers’ lists than the others.
Mock frowning, George wagged a finger at Henry, Thomas, and Roger. “Titles are one thing, but you’re all wealthy enough and well-connected enough to be targets. Best keep your eyes open, gentlemen!”
On that note, with laughs and grins, the group broke up.
With Melissa, Julian turned and found two of his female cousins and their husbands waiting to pay their respects.
Although both cousins were younger than he was, they were in their later twenties and already the mothers of burgeoning broods. He introduced Melissa to the two couples and was pleased to note the honest welcome the others gave his new countess.
My new countess.
The thought put a faintly silly smile on his face. His cousins’ husbands noticed, but thankfully, all they did was smile understandingly. Julian decided he owed them the better brandy next time they visited.
After parting from the four, he and Melissa weathered a platoon of his relatives and connections. All were universally charming, and Melissa effortlessly charmed them back. She even engaged with Helen Delamere—and given Helen’s peripatetic attention, that was no mean feat—by returning to Helen’s comment when they’d met on the porch of St. George’s, regarding the romantic nature of a wedding at the castle.
“Once I reached here and saw the castle and the chapel and even this ballroom”—Melissa gestured to the high, painted ceiling and the many windows giving out onto the terrace and parterre beyond—“I completely understood what you meant.”
That set Helen off recounting all the specific moments of their wedding day that had struck her as particularly romantic, in the main forgetting that they had, in fact, experienced those moments themselves.
But while she might be frustrating and sometimes irritating, there was no harm in Helen, and Melissa seemed to have taken her measure.
As usual, Captain Findlay-Wright hovered at Helen’s elbow. Some in the ton viewed him as a hanger-on, but Julian exchanged polite nods with him and traded inconsequential comments about the latest news from the capital. When Helen, well away describing something, flung out her arms, while Findlay-Wright looked faintly pained, Julian gave the man credit for not rolling his eyes. Regardless of any other aspect of his character, in dealing with Helen and watching over her, the man was something of a saint.
Subsequently, Julian and Melissa were bailed up by his widowed aunts, Sophie and Gertrude. Through the ensuing conversation, he realized Melissa had put in the time to learn the details of the various branches of his family tree, saving him from having to tax his memory; she knew which offspring belonged to each aunt and what those offspring—all daughters—were currently doing.
When they finally moved on and, at last, had a moment to call their own, he teased her over having done her homework. She looked at him in a haughty manner that forcibly reminded him of her grandmother. “Of course, I asked about your family. I would be a ninny if I turned up to an event such as this without the slightest clue.”
He grinned and debated whether to inform her that he found her mock haughtiness arousing, but refrained; he’d sternly lectured his libido that it had to behave until they managed to escape and gain the earl’s apartments.
Then his new wife dipped her head closer and admitted, “However, there was one family issue I didn’t like to ask anyone else about.”
He guessed. “Findlay-Wright?”
“Yes.” She met his eyes. “He seems to be universally tolerated as Helen’s…well, cicisbeo if nothing else, yet I understand he lives under the same roof. On the face of it, that should be deemed scandalous, yet no one seems to react in that way.”
Smiling politely, he steered her clear of some distant connections they’d already spent time with and onto a route that led along the windows of the long room, angling his shoulders so it appeared he was directing her attention to sights within the gardens and park beyond. “In a nutshell, the story is this. Helen married my great-uncle Horace’s only son, Maurice Delamere. He was a colonel, and about ten years after Gordon—their only child—was born, Maurice was posted to India with our troops in support of the East India Company. A few years later, Maurice was shot and killed in the field, and Helen, who was in India at the time, fell apart. On the other side of the world, where none of us could reach her or easily arrange for help.
“Findlay-Wright had been a captain under Maurice’s command and, by all accounts, had become close friends with Maurice and Helen. He comes from a completely unremarkable family, a younger son of a lower gentry family sent into the army. As it happened, he was ready to sell out, and through various contacts, the family requested and Findlay-Wright agreed to accompany Helen and Maurice’s body on the journey back to England.”
“And by the time the pair reached London,” Melissa said, “Helen and the captain were inseparable.”
Still pacing slowly with their gazes trained unseeing outside, Julian inclined his head. “My uncle and aunts tell me that Helen was always a clingy, dependent female, and no one was really surprised that she turned to Findlay-Wright for support. It was she, not Findlay-Wright, who insisted he take rooms in the house Gordon has inherited, but that Helen has the use of for the rest of her life. She views it as the least she can do in gratitude for Findlay-Wright’s help through her most difficult time.” He paused, then added, “Having met Helen, you can imagine that coping with Maurice’s death would have prostrated her, and dealing with the inevitable tasks involved in organizing for Maurice’s return and all the rest would have been far beyond her.”
“So Findlay-Wright stepped in,” Melissa said, also looking out at the gardens.
