Page 86 of The Siren of Sussex

How Ahmad hated the word. It was imbued with more rank masculine privilege than nearly any other appellation he’d ever encountered.

Any, perhaps, save Englishman.

“And that excuses it?” he asked.

“No,” she admitted, “but it explains it.”

Not to his satisfaction.

He recognized the gentry’s aversion to honest labor, but he didn’t accept it.

There was nothing shameful about doing whatever was necessary to look after one’s family. Those gentlemen who refused to do so—who shrank from work and instead chose to let their estates and their families fall into ruin—deserved his scorn, not his pity. And certainly not his understanding.

Miss Maltravers tightened her shawl around her shoulders. “One day, when I returned from riding, I found my aunt weeping over a letter she’d received from Fenny’s chaperone in London. It said that Fenny had run off with Anthony, to the Continent, she feared. Aunt Nora spent the next several months writing to all of her friends in search of news. She pleaded with Sir William for his assistance.” A frown passed over her face. “He was too angry to oblige her. Angry at Fenny. Angry at Aunt Nora. Even at me. Relations between our two families rapidly broke down.”

“He blamed your family rather than his own son?”

“Oh yes. He claimed that Fenny had cast out lures to Anthony. That she’d beguiled and entrapped him, all with a view to one day becoming Lady Connaught. As if Fenny had the wits to enact such a plan. But Sir William could not be told.”

“Where does Stephen Connaught come into this?”

She exhaled a heavy breath. “He was my riding companion and, I believed, my friend. But he soon came round to his father’s way of thinking. He never spoke to me again.”

“Until today?”

“Until today.” She fell quiet for several seconds before continuing. “It seems that my sister and his brother were never truly lost. Indeed, the Connaughts have heard from Anthony several times these past years, and have sent him money care of various banks on the Continent. All while my own family has been kept in the dark. And now Stephen says that Fenny and Anthony are here in London.”

“Married?”

“No,” she said. “It doesn’t appear so. For if Anthony had wed my sister, Sir William would never have agreed to send money for his support.”

“They might have married in secret,” Ahmad suggested.

“Perhaps.” She didn’t sound as if she had much faith in the possibility. “Stephen intends to find them. To convince his brother to abandon my sister and return home. In doing so, I fear he may remind society of what it has so far forgot.”

“And hurt your prospects in the process.” A surge of bitterness took Ahmad off his guard. “Is it so important to you that you marry a fortune?”

She stopped on the path. “Is that what you think?”

“I’m not judging you. It’s the whole purpose of the season, is it not? For ladies like you.”

Twin spots of color rose in her cheeks as she faced him. “Ladies like me,” she repeated in a voice of perilous calm.

“Gentlewomen,” he said. “Englishwomen.”

“You don’t approve of either, it seems.”

He shrugged. “I told you, I make no judgments.”

“But you do. I can see that you do. You can’t possibly understand—”

“Because I’m not an Englishman.”

“Because you’re a man! You don’t know what it’s like to be a woman. To have all of the burdens of life, but none of the power. My sisters and I depended on Fenny to marry well, so that we could have our chance at happiness and security. Whom do you think my sisters are depending on now?”

Ahmad stared down at her in dawning realization. “You’re doing this for them.”

“Of course I am.” She resumed walking.