Page 3

Long windows gave a view over the rose garden and the marble fountain in its center.

The curtains had recently been changed from the velvet used during the colder seasons to a cerulean blue watered silk trimmed with gold braid.

Even though they were experiencing one of their few warm days this spring, a log spat and popped in the fireplace.

In fact, the only disturbing part of the normally tranquil atmosphere was the conversation.

Doing her best to keep her jaw from dropping in shock, Mary stared at her grandmother.

The older woman’s thick silver hair was fashionably dressed, and even at more than seventy years of age, her face held few lines.

Her gaze seemed as sharp as ever. Generally she was the picture of health, except for this recent burst of incipient insanity, for that was all it could be.

Mary opened her mouth, then closed it again.

Several moments passed in silence as she struggled to make sense of what she thought she’d heard.

After rejecting retorts such as, Grandmamma, are you feeling quite well?

Or, are you sure you wouldn’t like a nice room in Bedlam?

And finally unable to come up with another way to ask her question, she simply voiced the nicest thought in her mind.

“Surely I have not understood you properly. You want me to do what ?”

“Well, I think it’s a wonderful idea.”

Mary shifted her gaze to her aunt. Perhaps madness had always run in the family and it had been kept a secret so as not to ruin them socially. After all, who would deliberately marry into a family where lunacy was rampant?

“He has a face like a fish.” Aunt Eunice opened her eyes wide and moved her lips in a fair imitation of a fish.

“Hake.” Grandmamma nodded decisively. “It’s the way his eyes protrude.”

Mary closed her eyes, repressing a shudder. “I agree, but surely there must be less drastic measures I can take.”

Grandmamma leaned forward and pounded her silver-headed cane on the floor. “He may look like a fool, my girl, but he’s canny, and, if what Cook told me is true”—Mary should have expected that—“which I have no doubt it is, he almost caught you a few days ago.”

“Yes, well.” Not the cleverest of replies. Surely, she could think of something more to say. “I got away from him,” she ended lamely.

“This time.” Grandmamma’s lips thinned. She rammed the cane into the thick Turkey rug again.

“And every other time previously.” Mary let out a frustrated huff. Unfortunately, her grandmother did have a point. It was becoming more and more difficult to evade her cousin. “Did Barham receive an answer to his last letter to Uncle Hector?”

After a few moments, during which Grandmamma turned so red it appeared as if she would have apoplexy, Aunt Eunice replied, “Yes. But it won’t serve.

Barham said Hector continues to insist your father promised you would marry Gawain, and he will not release your funds until either the marriage takes place— ”

“In which case that spendthrift, Gawain,” Mary almost growled, the anger in her voice surprising her, “would control everything.”

Thus far she’d been satisfied to allow her brother to handle the whole ridiculous situation.

Truth be known, she’d been so battered by her parents’ successive deaths, she hadn’t wanted to deal with it.

Yet when Gawain had followed her to London for her first Season in two years and tried to compromise her, she had been jolted out of her complacency.

“Or you turn five and twenty.”

Her aunt’s voice interrupted her silent railing. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

“When the trust ends,” Eunice replied patiently.

Another two years of trying to evade Gawain. “Has there been any movement in our Chancery suit to replace my uncle as trustee?”

Eunice shook her head.

“Unless you plan to spend the next two years inside the house,” Grandmamma said, emphasizing her speech with another loud thump of her cane, “you will do as your aunt and I advise.”

Mary eyed the silver headed stick. What would her grandmother do if she hid it? Still, what they were suggesting was complete insanity. “But I—”

“He’s found you everywhere we’ve tried to hide you, my dear.” Eunice stared at Mary, a compassionate look on her face. “Drastic times call for drastic measures.”

Mary slowly shook her head. “I don’t think I could pretend to be someone else for that long a time.”

“But you won’t have to pretend.” Her aunt beamed. “That is the brilliance of the plan! You can be yourself . . . with a slight change in your last name for the time being.”

This—they were impossible. Mary threw her hands up in frustration. “And what, pray tell, am I to do if the gentleman who owns the property discovers my deception? Anyone could find out, then I would be completely ruined and no one would want to marry me.”

“Don’t you trust me?” Grandmamma raised one brow in the way she always did when she wanted to badger others to her way of thinking.

Mary seriously considered answering in the negative, not that it would help. Grandmamma was a force of her own. Why else would Barham allow her to remain here when she had a perfectly good dower house of her own at Bridgewater ?

“Most of the time,” Mary answered, drawing the sentence out.

Though now wasn’t one of them.

“We’ve been very careful,” her grandmother said as calmly as if she were choosing a dinner menu, “to select a remote area where there are no important families.”

There was something very wrong about all of this. “May I ask who the owner is?”

Her grandmother waved her hand as if dismissing her question. “The less you know for time being, the safer you’ll be if Gawain comes sniffing around.”

“Besides”—Eunice’s already wide smile broadened—“I’ll be with you acting as your companion. It will be such a lark.”

Mary stifled a groan. All the cousins had heard about Eunice’s larks. She’d been the youngest and wildest of Grandmamma’s children, and had apparently not outgrown her previous tendencies. Mary had to find a way out of this harebrained scheme. “Won’t your children wonder where you are?”

“Oh, after a while, I suppose.” Eunice shrugged lightly.

“But they’ll think I’m with Mama and probably be happy I’m not around to corrupt their children.

” She took a sip of wine. “How Roger—the greatest rake in England and on the Continent, before our marriage of course—and I ever managed to produce such dullards, I shall never know.”

Those were also tales Mary and her brothers had grown up hearing, at least the ones mild enough to tell children. She never had understood how her aunt had been allowed to wed Uncle Roger. “I think that type of thing skips a generation.”

“One can only pray it is not gone forever.” Eunice sighed.

“So then.” Grandmamma tapped her cane for at least the fourth time. Mary’s fingers itched to grab the thing away and throw it in the fireplace. “It’s decided. We’ll leave early tomorrow morning.”

“That soon!” Mary had to stall them. Given just a little more time, she might be able to think of a better scheme. “It seems a little precipitous.”

“Better to get it done before you have a chance to change your mind.” Eunice rose, smoothing out her skirts. “I must see to my packing.”

Mary suppressed her frustration. It was as if she were bashing her head against a stone wall. That actually might be more productive than conversing with her aunt and grandmother .

She considered denying she had agreed to anything.

Not that it would matter. The problem was they’d want an alternative, and she couldn’t think of another course of action.

Yet she wasn’t stupid; certainly something would come to her before she and her aunt actually reached wherever they were going and the deception began.

If anything went wrong her life would be ruined. If only Grandmamma would see reason.