Once Upon a Marquess (The Worth Saga 1)

Her sister looked away. “Because they have to sit still and smile.”

Judith exhaled.

“Judith, do ladies make clockwork?”

“No.” They didn’t kiss men they weren’t married to, either.

“So.” Theresa pondered this. “Why do I have to be a lady if you don’t?”

“Because I didn’t have a choice,” Judith said. “I did what I had to, for us to survive. I did what was best for you and Benedict. The truth is, I doubt I could ever go back, even if I wanted to do so.”

“Oh.”

“If my little clockwork habit came out, I’d be a terrible scandal. I haven’t a choice.”

“Oh.” Theresa sounded a little too contemplative.

“I want you to have a choice,” Judith said. “Because you might have a chance at so much more, if I keep out of the way and don’t draw any scrutiny.”

“A choice means I can choose not to be a lady,” Theresa said.

“Yes. When you’re of age.”

Theresa inhaled. “I’m sorry, Judith,” she finally said. “You’re right. Is it…going to be dreadfully expensive to replace everything?”

“Dreadfully,” Judith said. “But don’t worry. You’re going to help.”

Theresa sat up. “How?”

“We’re not buying bread for two months,” Judith said. “You’ll be making it instead.”

Theresa fell bonelessly back against the covers, her pale hair spilling against the pillow. “Nooooo. I hate making bread.”

Judith looked up at the ceiling. “We all do, Tee. But if you make bread, I’ll have more time for my clockwork, and the money must come from somewhere.”

“Wait.” Theresa looked at her slyly. “Do ladies have to make bread?”

“Yes,” Judith said decisively. “When ladies make a big smashing mess, they make bread.”

“Damn.”

“Theresa?”

“I know,” Theresa said. “Ladies don’t swear.”

“Well. I’m glad you’re aware, at least.”

Theresa shrugged. “I’ll stop, if I decide to be a lady.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Judith said. “I started swearing on waterfowl when I was eleven, and now I can’t manage the real thing. Not even when I really, really need it.”

“Well, then,” Theresa said hopefully. “I definitely won’t copy you. I’ll swear on pig meat instead. What kind of fool wants to spend the rest of their life saying, ‘Duck you all!’ when you can say ‘Ham it!’ instead?”

“Goose.” Judith mussed her sister’s hair. “You shouldn’t be able to make that joke. By the way, what happened with your clothing?”

Theresa frowned, and then looked around the room, as if seeing her stockings strewn over chairs for the first time.

“Oh, that,” she said matter-of-factly. “I was going to run away from home because you didn’t want me, but I had no way to put all the cats on leads. And then I got tired trying to gather them up, because they will not stay in one place, and there wasn’t enough milk, and then I realized that I couldn’t carry enough potatoes for more than a single meal if I wanted to bring extra stockings. Which I did, because extra stockings are an absolute necessity. I accidentally fell asleep until I heard you come home. Then there was nothing to do but hide.”

Judith exhaled slowly. “Don’t run away,” she said, kissing the top of her sister’s head. “And if you do, please have a plan for the future beyond potatoes.”

“I would have brought salt.”

“Oh, well.” Judith shrugged. “That’s good then. Salt makes everything better. Now scoot over. You have to leave some room for me.”

Theresa moved over—nominally—as Judith dressed for bed.

But when Judith blew out her candle and climbed in bed, there was one last question.

“Judith,” Theresa said, “When you were gone, Benedict said Anthony wasn’t really…didn’t really…that he wasn’t…”

“Dead?” Judith asked.

“Yes.” Her sister’s voice was small.

No. Not another year of this. Judith rolled on her side and attempted to pat her sister’s shoulder.

“Ow!”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t worry. It’s dark. I shan’t need my eye until morning.”

Judith settled for a comforting noise rather than risk blinding her sister permanently. “Did Benedict say why he thought Anthony was alive?”

“Because he couldn’t be dead. He just couldn’t be.”

Judith inhaled. “Theresa. If you’re not going to be a lady, if you want to keep that as a choice, you’re going to have to be able to look reality face on. You can’t let what you want to believe influence you. Only ladies are allowed to believe comforting falsehoods. So tell me truly: do you think ‘he couldn’t be dead’ is a good enough reason to explain away eight years of silence?”

Theresa inhaled. “No,” she said in a small voice. “No, I don’t.” There was a longer pause. “Do I still have to make bread? I have just come to the conclusion that my elder brother has perished. I’m inconsolable.”

Judith let out a long, tortured breath. “Really, Tee? You couldn’t wait ten seconds before trying to mercilessly exploit Anthony’s death to get out of punishment?”

“Well, if you’re going to say it like that, of course I’ll look like a grasping hag. But…ugh. Bread. One ought to be allowed to grasp haglike when bread is on the line.”

Finding one nineteen-year-old woman should not have posed so great a difficulty.

For the third time that week, Christian told himself that he should have sent a man. That tramping about the streets of Bath on his own was a foolish waste of his efforts. But every time his rational mind offered this up—usually accompanied by a little footnote indicating that it was not too late to avoid the crowds, the invitations, and the incessant complaints over the waters, by the simple act of delegation—he imagined finding Lady Camilla. Perhaps she’d be attached to another elderly lady here in Bath. He knew her. He knew what she looked like. Nobody in his employ did.

It wasn’t rational, but he could hardly bring himself to delegate this task, however annoying it was. And today he was reminded of precisely how annoying it could be. He was ensconced in the grand pump room, of all places. In the time of George’s regency, the salon had been the height of grandeur. It had not changed since, and its age was beginning to show. A statue of some man who had died a century past, and whose greatest claim to fame had apparently been his fashion sense, stood in an alcove. Water came out of a serpent-headed pump that looked to be almost as old as the Roman empire.

Given the work recently done by John Snow and Louis Pasteur, Christian suspected that a central repository of aging water was more likely to be a hotbed of disease than health. But then, nobody had asked him.

“My granddaughter,” the elderly woman next to him was

saying, “Louise—after our dear Prince Consort’s mother—but of course he passed away. What was I saying? My dear Louise would be a charming lady for you to meet. I had been thinking of sending for her; perhaps you might be interested in the introduction? Will you still be here?”

“Perhaps,” Christian said, keeping his tone as politely noncommittal as he could manage. “Although I am here on business, and I may be called away just as swiftly.”

Mrs. Wallace tapped a finger against her glass. “A shame,” she said. “You know, it occurs to me that you could use someone competent to help you manage your schedule. My granddaughter—”

He couldn’t help himself. He laughed. “Madam, I think you could sell a carriage to a sea tortoise.”

Her eyes glinted. “Yes. Well. She is my seventeenth granddaughter, if you can believe such a thing, and I’ve popped all the others off. Three of them twice over. I can’t wait until she’s married and done with. When you’ve grandchildren to be married, you can scarcely take advantage of your dotage. No saying whatever you think; no shaking your fist and decrying all the things that are changing in the world. As soon as she’s properly tied up, I’ll be free to be the dragon I’ve always dreamed I could be.” She sighed wistfully. “Ah. To tell everyone what the world was like in my day! To bemoan every last mother-loving alteration as if it were the end of days. Trains! Postage stamps! Stockings from machines! Harrumph! Until then, I must pretend I won’t be the horrid relation by marriage you won’t be able to escape. It’s all smiles and ‘Would you like to meet my granddaughter? She’s a sweet girl.’”

“As an outside observer,” Christian said. “I honestly wish you every success.”

“She really is a sweet girl,” Mrs. Wallace persisted. “Nothing like me. And never mind all the girls in the family—there’s almost as many boys, too. We just produce and produce and produce. Like rabbits, but smarter and in smaller batches.” She considered this. “And less gamey, I would imagine, although I have not yet put this to the test.”

“Ah, well.” Christian shrugged. “If she’s not like you, I have no interest whatsoever.”