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Page 9 of When the Marquess Needed Me (The Rake Chronicles #4)

Chapter Seven

H e returned to his home, Leith Manor, to prepare for the opera. In doing so, he had hoped to avoid his mother. He did not usually mind seeing her—in fact, he usually enjoyed it—but Miss Salisbury had disturbed his mind.

In that green dress, she had no longer seemed the inelegant rustic. When he debuted her at the opera tonight, there would be many men clambering for an introduction. The thought made him uncharacteristically possessive.

Probably because he had not bedded her yet, he reassured himself.

Tonight, he would get that act over with, and then he could be reasonable.

He might even be able to take pleasure—as he usually did—in the admiration his mistresses won from other men.

Unfortunately for his plans, as he crossed the entryway, he heard his mother’s voice.

“Thomas, is that you?”

“Yes, Mother.” He walked from the hall into the drawing room.

While he had hoped to avoid a run-in, when he saw her, he found it a comforting sight. She was sitting on her favorite sofa. Her corgi, Bonaparte, was curled at her feet.

His mother was known as a fearsome matron and, in many respects, she was. The Dowager Marchioness of Leith was one of the gatekeepers of Almack’s and so, in effect, his mother decided who was and was not good ton.

But that was not all there was to his mother, as he well knew. His father had died when he was a child and so it had been only the two of them for a long time. And while the world saw her as a rigid arbiter of propriety, at home, she was not what she appeared to everyone else. She wore her title and her reputation like armor around everyone but him and her closest friends. In private, though, she was much softer.

“Darling, are you going to the opera this evening?”

“I am.”

“Mm, are you taking a woman?”

Leith fought the urge to scoff. He would have much preferred if his mother feigned ignorance when it came to his mistresses. But that was not her way.

“Quite.”

He walked to the window, turning his back to her.

“Who is it this fortnight?”

“I am not responding to that question.”

“My, you are touchy this afternoon,” she said, softly. “I am merely curious, darling, and I’ll read it in the scandal sheets anyway.”

He turned. “Fine. A woman new to London. A Miss Beatrice Salisbury.”

“Do I have any chance of meeting her or will she go the way of all the others?”

“Mother,” he warned.

“I will take that as a denial. Well, I merely ask because I, too, will be at the opera tonight.”

He gritted his teeth. Of course, it sometimes happened this way. But he did not relish it. And not tonight of all nights.

“Very well. You know that the box is yours.”

While it was perfectly proper for a man to visit a courtesan’s opera box, gentlemen did not bring their mistresses into the boxes belonging to their families. Therefore, Leith always engaged a separate box for the exclusive use of himself and his mistresses, and which he kept under the name of his lady du jour.

“Yes, thank you. I will be using it. Lord Gresham is attending me.”

His mother’s best friend, the Countess of Gresham, had died last year. She still saw the earl and his children frequently, however. It was sweet, really. He knew she missed her Louisa. And doubtlessly her family appreciated her continued warm regard for her memory.

“I understand.”

“I did want to speak to you about that, my love.”

He sat on the divan across from the sofa. His mother was just over fifty, with a sweet, lined face that, nevertheless, still looked very youthful about the eyes and mouth. It comforted him to see her in her usual position in the drawing room. He made it sound to his friends that he lived largely in St. James’s, and some weeks he did, but the truth was that it was rare that a day went by that he did not come back to Leith Manor and see his mother.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, darling, it is a hard thing to say.”

“You are beginning to worry me. Is it your health? Should I call for Dr. Pembroke?”

“No, no,” she laughed. “I am making a hash of it. Oh, Benjamin will scold me when I tell him.”

Benjamin?

No, dear God. It couldn’t be.

“I am engaged to be married. Please do not expire from shock.”

Leith found that he could not move a muscle. Engaged to be married? What was the rage for matrimony lately? He had already had the misfortune of all three of his best friends marrying—that was bad enough.

But now his own mother ? It was an abomination.

“You are marrying? Lord Gresham? ”

“I am afraid so, darling.”

“But he is—you are—”

“I know I am not a young woman,” his mother said, a blush that he had not known her capable of dashing across her cheeks.

“That is not what I meant,” he snapped. Although, he had to admit, it wasn’t not what he had meant, either. “He is your best friend’s husband!”

“Believe me, Thomas, I already feel bad enough about it. But if it doesn’t bother Benjamin or the children—”

“The children! They already know about this?”

The Greshams had two children, both around his age: a son, the heir-long-in-waiting, and a daughter, who had for many years now been the wife of the honorable Mr. Blanchett.

“They have cheered the match. They want to see their father happy. He has been—He has suffered without Louisa. We both have. And if we’ve found comfort in each other—”

“Enough!” The idea of his mother finding comfort in the arms of anyone was too much for his delicate sensibilities. “That old satyr! Trying to seduce my mother!”

“Thomas, you are being far less reasonable than I supposed you would be! Do I say anything critical about your proclivities? A new woman every fortnight? No, I do not. I haven’t for years. And Benjamin hasn’t tried anything—”

“Well, that is a comfort.”

“No, he has done better than try, he has succeeded!”

“Mother!” Leith stood and paced to the window, pure horror propelling him upwards. “I should call the man out!”

“Don’t be absurd! I am a widow of five and fifty. Who has ever heard of anything so ridiculous?”

“The scoundrel should have asked for my permission! And to hear that he is—” Leith found that he could not go on. It was, in fact, impossible.

“ Ask for your permission? My darling, I am your mother, your parent, not some eligible young maiden. Really, you are beginning to upset me.”

Leith took a deep breath. Of course, no one enjoyed hearing such things about a parent, no matter how beloved. But he knew his mother was not wrong about one thing—she had let him carry on as he did for years with little complaint on her part. He supposed he owed her the same courtesy.

“Fine. I allow it.”

“You do not allow anything.”

He whirled around. His mother had not used this voice with him in some time. It was not her usual, gentle voice, the one that told him that she was different from how the world saw her. This voice belonged to the Dowager Marchioness of Leith. This voice was steel and scorn and no-you-may-not-wear-trousers-to-Almack’s .

She stepped towards him. Bonaparte had leapt off the couch now and was, comically, yapping at him , as if he, the purported master of this house, had offended the damned dog, too.

“I am marrying Benjamin and you will be happy for me. It is a rare thing to find this kind of joy at my time of life.”

“It only took your best friend dying for you to get it!”

His mother reeled back.

He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth.

But he could see it was too late to take them back.

He resisted the urge to recoil.

Because he knew what was coming.

He had provoked his mother to this extent only a few times in his four-and-thirty years on this earth.

Once, when he was six years old, and he had decided to use her crystal bowls to aid in making his mud pies.

On another occasion, at the age of thirteen, when he had slunk off to Covent Garden unattended to peep at the comely ladies there hawking their services.

The last time, he had been six-and-twenty, and she had attempted to get him to court the daughter of her friend. He had agreed to take the girl and her chaperone to the opera as a courtesy, but then his mistress of the moment, a Mrs. Kitty Williams, had thrown a fit at the prospect, and he had had to cancel with little notice. His mother had been furious.

“I do not know when you became such a cold-hearted man. I suppose it is my fault. I have kept silent too long.”

“Mother, please—”

“Absolutely not. You will hear me. As I have heard you. I do not know how you became so convinced that life can only be lived within your narrow parameters. But if you don’t abandon your rigidity, my boy, and allow yourself to live, then you are very likely to end up both alone and lonely. Your friends have grown up—but it appears that you are struggling to do the same.”

With one last, disgusted look at him, his mother swept from the room.

Leith stood there, completely at sea.

His mother was not one to make harsh speeches, especially to him, of all people. She thrived on power held in reserve. Furthermore, she usually, well…adored him.

“Absurd!” he fumed to the curtains.

He was the most grown-up person he knew.

His friends and now his mother apparently—they all believed in love . In happy endings. In the idea that one person could satisfy for a lifetime.

In his opinion, it was they who were the children.

And indeed, in that moment, he felt like the oldest man in the world.