Good. He’d see. Her parents would never force them to wed. They were different, yes, less constrained by usual social mores. But the reasons went deeper than that. If they insisted Mr. Blake marry Maggie, they would have to sign a marriage settlement, and then Mr. Blake would learn Maggie had no dowry. And then the world might learn the Marquess of Waneborough had very little money in general. Her father would prefer to take that secret to his grave.
Chapter 2
The Marchioness of Waneborough rose from her seated position at the spindly table and lunged for the pocket princess Tobias now knew to be her daughter while emitting a high-pitched shriek. A flurry of silk robes and chiffon scarves embraced the girl in a hug instead of tackling her to floor. Thank goodness for that. A tackle would have been bad news. The girl claimed her parents would not do what parents of compromised daughters had done since the beginning of time and force them to wed.
Tobias remained skeptical.
“Oof! Mama! Too tight!” The girl he’d save from death by wardrobe pushed out of her mother’s arms.
But the marchioness didn’t seem to mind. She clasped her hands behind her back and gave a sparkling smile. “Is it true what I’ve heard, my dear?”
“What, exactly, have you heard, Mama?”
“That you are to be married, of course!”
And there it was. He hated to say I told you so, but … no, never mind, he quite enjoyed saying I told you so. He leaned over to the girl who smelled like grass. “Told you so.”
She cut him a scathing glare. A jolly good glare, it was, too. Made his heart beat like she held a knife to his throat. Or lower.
“I thought,” Tobias said, “the whole marriage thing was not going to be an issue.”
She cut him another glare, and he’d be damned if it didn’t say, loud and clear,Mind your tongue, will you?
Fine. He could do that.
To her mother, she said, “No! No, Mama. Where have you heard such things?”
“And so quickly, too,” Tobias said.
Her mother looked up, wide-eyed, at the girl’s father who stood at a nearby sideboard, filling a glass with something amber. Was he a sharing kind of man?
The marchioness fluttered closer to her husband. “But Hilda said they were caught in flagrante delicto … in an impassioned embrace.”
Hardly. But—he investigated the young lady with a cautious side look—if he were that kind of man, he might be tempted to make Hilda’s account more accurate than it currently was. His Pocket Princess was tiny but delicious, lithe but an armful in unexpected ways. Odd, he’d never noticed her before. He’d been here for a fortnight, and all he could remember of Lord Waneborough’s daughter is that he had one. Possibly.
Definitely, he now knew.
Tobias clucked. “My, news does travel quick around here.”
Pocket Princess made an inarticulate sound, her arms stiffening at her sides. “Tales! Mama, nothing but tales. Hilda is embellishing the truth. We weren’t”—the girl’s cheeks set aflame—“we were not …”
“Naked?” Tobias supplied.
Pocket Princess nodded enthusiastically. “Yes!”
“Yes, you were naked?” her mother asked. She sighed. “Lovely.”
“No!” Pocket Princess huffed. “No, Mama, we were notthat, I swear!”
Her mother’s smile melted, and she returned to the table she’d sat at before. “But I had a dream, Maggie—”
“Oh no.” Maggie—good thing to learn the name of the lady one might marry—groaned. “Not another dream.” She looked to her father for help. “Papa, please tell Mama what happened.”
The marquess moved across the room and sat stiffly near his marchioness.
Tobias sauntered across the room and leaned against the fireplace mantle. “Are we going to share our dreams? I had one last night, but it’s not appropriate for mixed company.”
“No, we are not.” Maggie rushed to her mother’s table. “Dreams are just dreams, Mama. They do not have greater significance.”
