Lyon's Gate (Sherbrooke Brides 9)

“Is that what you have become, my poor master? A guzzler?”

“That is quite enough, Petrie,” Angela said. “Trust me on this.”

Petrie wasn’t stupid. He saw the warning in the master’s eyes, knew he was dead serious, and gulped down the champagne. “Don’t let her rearrange the furniture in your bedchamber, Master Jason.”

Hallie said, “Oh goodness, I hadn’t thought about that.”

“Please, don’t, miss,” Petrie said.

“Not the furniture, you dolt, I hadn’t thought about sharing his bedchamber. I like mine better. Why can’t he move into mine? Why can’t we each keep our own bedchambers?”

Jason patted her hand. “Don’t worry about it now. We will figure things out.”

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Angela said comfortably as she accepted another glass of champagne from Lord Sherard, “Perhaps I can move to your bedchamber, Hallie, and we can tear down the wall between mine and Jason’s bedchambers. You’ll both have enough room and Jason can arrange the furniture. What do you think?”

Hallie looked like she might bolt. Jason himself wanted to bolt, but he said, “We will consider this. However, right at this moment, I believe we should stick to well-wishes and toasts.”

Petrie moaned again, and it wasn’t at all discreet. Martha rounded on him, waved her glass in his face. “You don’t amuse me, Mr. Petrie. Look at my mistress—a beautiful lady she is, nearly as beautiful a lady as Master Jason is a gentleman. It’s close. Maybe not really close—Yes, you’ve hurt her feelings with your sour little female slurs that smack of a female-having-blighted-your-heart, something that probably happened years ago.”

“Not that many years ago,” Angela said. “Petrie isn’t that old.”

Hallie said under her breath to her father, “I wonder if that can be true. Is Petrie’s dislike of women because his heart was broken?”

“No,” Jason said. “Petrie came into this world disliking the fair sex. His mother never chided him, never abused him. She adores him. She still does.”

“She doesn’t love me deep inside where it counts,” Petrie said and everyone looked at him.

“That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard, Mr. Petrie! Have you told your mama this?”

“Of course not. It would upset her and a female who’s upset does scurrilous things.”

Jason rolled his eyes. “I will tell your mother you feel this way, Petrie, so any curses she has are heaped on my head, not yours.”

Martha said right in his face, “You’re a petulant stick.”

Petrie opened his mouth to blast her. Angela said, “Goodness, all this excitement makes me hungry. Cook, why don’t you bring out your blancmange?”

Petrie said, “But I—”

Martha rounded on him again, this time her voice black with warning, “You say another word and I’ll stuff the blancmange up your nose.”

“Martha, you must show me proper respect, you—”

Angela said, “You don’t want to waste the blancmange on Petrie’s nose.”

As for Cook, she had seemed perfectly content to stand quietly and look from Jason to Alec Carrick, not a single aria bursting out of her mouth. “Petrie’s nose? My blancmange, Miss Angela? Oh goodness me, that’s a sort of food, isn’t it? How could I forget? Ah, two such lovely gentlemen. I must ease my parched gullet.” She drank down her glass of champagne, carefully set the glass on the sideboard, and went to the kitchen, saying over and over, “How can I make both lovely gentlemen stay right here so I can feed them until they swoon on my kitchen floor?”

“I’ll drink to that,” Hallie said. “Father, I’ve never seen you swoon.”

Alec’s eyes met his future son-in-law’s. “It happens,” he said. “Believe me, it happens.”

Petrie moaned.

CHAPTER 33

Jason and Hallie Sherbrooke spent their wedding night under the distinctive curved eaves of the master bedchamber of Dunsmore House, Georgian in mood if not in style, set gracefully on a broad tree-covered promontory just outside Ventnor on the southeastern coast of the Isle of Wight, the summer residence of the duke of Portsmouth. After a two-hour steamboat ride from the mainland, they’d arrived at Dunsmore House, windblown and sunburned, smiling from ear to ear at the housekeeper, Mrs. Spooner, and ready to tear each other’s clothes off.