“The pink sky!”
“That’s right.” Genevieve took Frances’s hand, and the two skipped out of the music room and up to the nursery. But laterthat day, after they had laughed and sung, and read and even attempted some mathematics, Genevieve couldn’t help but feel a ball of dread sitting heavy in her belly.
Some of the dread was for the hard conversations coming with Frances.
And the rest of it was because her four days were ticking away, and soon Lord Emory would be home with the license, expecting to make her his wife.
*
By late afternoonof the second day, Rory had achieved his aims. He had the license safe in his pocket, and, all things considered, obtaining it had not been as difficult as he’d expected. Yes, the archbishop had given him a long lecture about marrying in haste. Rory had borne it in stony silence and then, when the archbishop had run out of admonitions, raised a brow, handed over the thirty pounds, and said, “Will you sign it now?”
As anxious as he was to return home to Lilacfall Abbey, he didn’t relish another twenty hours in his coach, and didn’t want to risk the horses or his outriders by starting out so late in the day. He gave orders to be ready to depart at dawn and made his way to the Clarendon Hotel. He’d sleep for a few hours then hie back to Devon. If the weather held and the posting houses supplied fast horses, he would be home for breakfast the day after tomorrow.
He’d been thinking about Genevieve and how she might look when he walked in the door and showed her the license. So deep in thought was he that he started when there was a tap on his shoulder in the lobby of the Clarendon. He turned and found Munro Notley.
“I say, didn’t you hear me call your name?”
Rory smiled and clapped his friend on the shoulder. “I’m like to fall over from exhaustion.”
“What brings you to London? I thought you were playing the perfect papa in Devon?”
Rory hesitated, and Notley’s eyes went wide.
“Oh, ho-ho! A secret? Have a drink with me and tell all.”
Rory secured a room then met Notley in the plush public room of the hotel. Notley had already ordered wine and poured two glasses. Rory sat and sipped his, then sipped again. It was excellent wine. “What’s the occasion?”
“You tell me. You look like a man who has had a fifty-pound weight taken off his shoulders.”
Rory took another sip. Notley knew him very well, almost as well as Henry and King. No point in pretending this trip to London was a lark. “I decided my daughter needs a mother.”
Notley almost choked on his wine. “You’re marrying again?” he sputtered when he could speak again.
“That is the best way to obtain a mother for a child,” Rory drawled.
“But you detest marriage. Every time we raised a glass on the Continent, you used it as an opportunity to curse marriage. To curse women. To curse—”
“I remember, Notley. Most of it anyway.”
“Then…why?”
“I told you, Frances needs a mother.”
“She has a perfectly capable governess. Why not—Oh,no.” Notley held up his hands as though to ward off the thought itself. “No. You don’t mean to say you are marrying the governess.”
“I’m aware it’s clichéd and bourgeois.”
“It is that.” Notley stared at him for an uncomfortably long moment. “Now that I think about it, she’s perfect for you.”
Now it was Rory’s turn to choke on his wine. “I beg your pardon. She’s not at all perfect for me. She’s dictatorial, interfering…”Smart, kind, calming.
“True. She did give me what for and convinced you to send me packing.”
“Exactly.” Rory pointed a finger at Notley.
“She’s not the usual sort to turn your head, either. I can’t remember your ever taking interest in a redhead.”
“Of course not.” But why had he never looked at a ginger before? How could he have failed to see the way Genevieve’s hair looked when the sun filtered through it? It was like a halo of fire. And her eyes… Why had he always thought blue eyes so lovely? He hadn’t known that green eyes could possess so much depth.
