A Gentleman's Vow (Saints and Sinners 2)

Jessica blushed. “It is not so strange. People change their minds and their hearts all the time. You did.”

r /> Father slumped against the desk. “Indeed, but I was never opposed to marriage the way he had been.”

“I know.”

Her father frowned. “I insist you behave yourself.”

The knock came again on Father’s study door, startling them both to turn around, and she heard Lord Newfield call out impatiently. Father looked at her. “Do you know for a fact Lord James went back to London?”

“No, but that is where Lady Hannah usually resides.”

Father stared at the door as another knock came. “Damn rude fellow. I think I will send the father toward Cornwell instead.”

Father kissed her on the top of her head. “Return to your room, and we will talk again later. When Lord Newfield learns that his son has fled without proposing to you, I expect he will be quite surly.”

“I’m going,” she promised before she fled upstairs via the connecting library door.

Gideon glared at his tardy servants. “About time,” he snapped.

“Sorry, sir. I had to finish putting on a pot of stew for your supper,” Mrs. Mills admonished.

“I was just about done tallying up the housekeeping accounts,” Mrs. Harrow protested. “I always do it on Saturdays.”

He turned his attention to Mr. Lewis and raised one brow. “Well?”

The fellow shrugged. “Didn’t know it would be this urgent.”

“Well, now you do.” Gideon turned away. They were not to blame for his mood but their responses were not helping improve it. “I want the room across the hall cleared out completely today.”

“But sir, it were your mother’s room,” Mrs. Harrow cried out.

“And it will be my wife’s next.”

He wanted the work to start on clearing out his mother’s old sitting room today so that Jessica could arrange everything as she liked it, when her father finally approved him to be a husband.

Everything in there was covered in dust cloths, except for his mother’s old pianoforte, which he’d been practicing on. That was not good enough.

He turned around when his staff said not a word more.

Mrs. Harrow’s cheeks had turned pink, and Mrs. Mills had become pale. Mr. Lewis folded his arms over his chest and his stare was decidedly belligerent.

Lewis spoke first. “When?”

“When what?”

“When are you getting dragged to the altar?”

“I don’t know,” he confessed.

Mrs. Harrow took a pace forward, her smile was tentative. “Who are you going to marry, dearie?”

He smiled. “Lady Jessica, if her father lets me,” he told them, and then waited for them to point out his unsuitability.

The ladies shrieked and rushed to hug him. Since they never did that, or hadn’t since he’d been a boy, he found himself the shocked recipient of their boundless enthusiasm.

“Oh, sir!”

“Oh, my!”