Page 70 of The Best Marquess

Evangeline’s head jerked up. “Pinehurst! Was I too noisy? Forgive me, I should have closed the door. I couldn’t face embroidery or reading, so decided to toddle downstairs…wait. Have you just returned home? Where have you been? Visiting?”

He raised an eyebrow at the barrage of questions, and she flushed. But instead of chiding her that as the marquess he could come and go as he pleased, Finn gestured at the pianoforte. “I’m glad to see you out of your chamber and dressed, even if it is freezing in here. Shall we play something?”

A shy smile spread across her face. “Like when you were a boy. I so enjoyed our duets, even if your father…well, you know.”

Yes. He did know. Father had eventually deemed his laughter and enthusiastic rather than skilled pianoforte playing too loud, not to mention unbecoming of an heir, so had banned the lessons. The instrument—and this room—had sat gathering dust for years, another symbol of thwarted fun.

“I will be quite, quite awful,” Finn warned, as he continued across the bare wooden floor and slid onto the rectangular cushioned leather stool beside her.

“I don’t mind.”

They began to play a simple childhood tune. His fingers were clumsy, and he couldn’t help wincing at his many mistakes. “Ghastly.”

“Stop thinking. Just play.”

Finn flexed his fingers and rolled his shoulders, then tried again. Ah, now this was starting to sound more like music rather than the pianoforte being pushed down a staircase. “Well. I do remember something.”

Evangeline flicked through the pages of her music book and pointed to another tune. They played that, and two more, before she abruptly halted and turned to him. “I know she came here last week. Your father’s illegitimate daughter, I mean.”

Finn froze. Like a twit, he’d thought his mother and Pippa so occupied bathing and dressing his father’s body, that a short visit from Abby and Nessie wouldn’t matter. Someone had obviously told her. Or perhaps she’d seen out the window and recognized the flaming red hair. “Abby is my half-sister,” he said gently. “You don’t ever have to meet her or see her, but I like her a great deal and she may visit again.”

“I blamed her for the longest time,” Evangeline whispered. “I thought she and her mother were the reason your father didn’t love me back. I was so young. Such a fool to think a marriage proposal meant love. But your father never felt anything for me; he wasn’t capable of it and day by day it killed my soul. No matter what I did, he found fault. It is a strange thing to both love someone and hate them as well.”

Finn rubbed a hand across his stubble-roughened chin. “I know. I’ve shed tears and it made me angry because he was such a bad father. But Abby said something that resonated, that I wasn’t mourning him, but what might have been.”

“That makes sense,” said his mother grudgingly, as she closed the pianoforte lid. “However, I am worried about you traveling down the same path. Loving someone who doesn’t love you back and it twisting you into a person you don’t want to be. I fell in love with your father with all the haste and strength of a starry-eyed young lady who knew nothing of the world. But that was courtship. You’ve loved Pippa for sixteen years. What will you do if she never returns your ardent affection?”

And there it was, his greatest fear articulated.

Perhaps it was just his weariness, but all his doubts suddenly crushed him from every side. In the past, his unrequited love for Pippa had been so unremarkable, so natural in his day-to-day life, that he didn’t examine it overmuch. Like bandaging a wound and leaving it be. The pretend betrothal had been an unexpected turn in the road, and he’d seized on it as an opportunity for courting, to eventually prove they could be much more than friends. And it had started so well with the kiss at the soiree then the lusty outing to Hyde Park.

But instead of having months to develop the romantic and sexual side of their relationship then proposing for real, they were married. The past week had been glorious, and the hopeful, romance novel-reader part of him believed one day that his love would be returned. But what if friendship was all Pippa would ever feel for him?

“Don’t worry about me, all will be well,” he replied briskly. “More to the point, what do you wish to do? Stay in London? Retire to the country or the seaside? Travel abroad? I know society demands you wear black and stay at home for at least six months, but there are choices to make.”

Evangeline blinked. “Really?”

Finn nodded. “You’re my mother, not my prisoner. Whatever you wish to do next, I can arrange. And provide funding for.”

“That is a kind offer. Very kind. I wondered how I was going to broach the topic, because I feel like a third curricle wheel here. Not that you or Pippa have done or said anything to make me feel that way, quite the contrary. But this house isn’t home for me anymore. Actually…old friends of mine have a cottage in Tuscany. They invited me so many times to go and stay for a summer, to paint and drink wine, but I never could because your father said it was unbecoming to traipse around the continent like the harlot Princess of Wales.”

“I think you should write to them and say you will come this year.”

“Perhaps I shall. Although if the rumors are true, our Princess Charlotte may soon be announcing her engagement to Prince Leopold, and I would certainly hate to miss a royal wedding where the couple truly liked one another.”

“You could do both,” he said easily.

His mother tapped her cheek, a kind of dawning wonder on her face. “I could. Oh, Pinehurst. The possibilities.”

“Finlay. Just Finlay. But there is a condition…no married men. Find yourself a nice widower or bachelor. Someone who is free to love you properly and could be your travel companion.”

“I do so swear. That friend I had was becoming tiresome, anyway,” she said, her cheeks pink. “Affairs aren’t nearly as satisfying as I thought they might be.”

“Then it’s settled. When your summer plans are in place, I will provide a bank draft to cover your expenses.”

Evangeline patted his hand and rose to her feet. “The world feels brighter already. I also promise no more pianoforte with the door open.”

“I think that is a promise I need to make more than you, Mother. Although really, at any time of the day or night. Will you come down for supper?”