Page 6 of The Trouble with a Dare

Though he knew he was killing time, putting off the inevitable, he took the long way around. He checked fences as he went, spoke a few words to some of his men and bided for a time at the hogpound talking to the duchess. She was a fine fat pig, a Gloucestershire Old Spot, and Sterling enjoyed conversing with her, reckoning her the most intelligent creature on the entire farm. The duchess huffed out a sigh, her vast belly quivering and one large ear twitching as she reclined in all her porcine majesty on a bed of clean straw.

“I know, I know,” Sterling grumbled. “There’s no need to nag me. I’m going.”

He took off his hat, tapping it against his thigh as he turned to look at the farm. It was a handsome building, very ancient in places, though his father had modernised it a good deal, extending it and making it grander. It had belonged to his mother’s family. Her father had been the local squire and father had courted her with high hopes, his ambitious eye on moving up in the world. Sterling laughed softly. The best laid schemes of mice and men.

He walked to the front door and pushed it open, setting his hat aside and ensuring his best boots weren’t mucky after his excursion through the yard. He made his way to the kitchen, knowing this was where he’d find his mother. His housekeeper and cook, Mrs Gladwish, looked up as he walked in, her pinched expression telling him that his mother had been there for some time.

“Ma, you’ve staff for that,” Sterling said, though he knew he was wasting his breath.

His mother looked up from the pot she was stirring, one chapped, work-worn hand fisted on her hip. “I can’t stop you wasting good money on help we don’t need, but I’ll earn my keep.”

Sterling bit back the words brewing on his tongue. It was as well to pick his battles, and there was a fine war to wage before dinnertime. He’d do well not to get distracted by the same old skirmishes.

“A word,” he said shortly, jerking his head towards the door.

His mother’s pale blue eyes narrowed upon him. “Out with it, then.”

Sterling sighed. She had to make every blasted conversation a battle of wills.

“In private,” he said, and walked out before she could find something else to say.

She made him wait, but Sterling had grown too used to having his patience tested to allow that to set up his bristles. Instead, he considered the parlour, with its large inglenook fireplace and low, timbered ceiling. This was the oldest part of the house and, even though they’d lowered the floor, Sterling could not stand without crooking his neck. He liked it all the same. It was familiar and cosy.

He tried to imagine Grace here. Grace, with her slender white hands and eyes full of clouds. Would she despise him? Gratitude could fester into loathing, and resentment for all she had lost might make her bitter. He’d been to university, been educated like a gentleman, and could pass in that world if he must, but he always felt an imposter, as if at any moment someone would point at him and turn him out for aping his betters. Not that he thought them his betters. He counted Henry Stanhope and Cassius Cadogan, Viscount Oakley, as friends. Sterling had been at Oxford with Cassius, and he’d never felt himself anything but his equal, but a woman might not look at him that way. Ladies—that fine breed of creature that his father had wished him to marry—did not look at him that way. If they looked hard, they saw his rough edges and heard the slight burr to his accent that crept in now and then, the words and phrases his father told him to forget, but that slipped out when he was either fully at ease or all on edge.

The door opened and his mother came in, still wiping her hands on a cloth she tucked under her apron strings. She folded her arms. It was all nicely calculated to remind him of what they were and their place in the pecking order. Once upon a time, his mother had been a handsome woman and might have married up. It had been her father’s ambition, but the old squire’s extravagance and folly had given her a disgust of anything she deemed unnecessary or frivolous. So here she was, in a gown that was years old and faded, still working in the kitchens, and wearing an apron as though Sterling needed her to work her fingers to the bone to keep bread on the table. Not now, he told himself.

“I’m to be married.”

Sterling did not consider himself a spiteful man, but there was a small part of him that enjoyed the jolt of shock that made her eyes grow wide and her mouth drop open. She had not expected that.

“Who?” she demanded.

“No one you know.”

“No. You’ve not thought to bring her to meet your mother. Ashamed, are you?”

There was a glint of satisfaction in her eyes at that.

Sterling sighed. “No. If I’d thought the meeting would bring either of you pleasure, I would have introduced her, but it won’t. Truth is, I did not expect to be marrying yet, but she’s breeding, so it’s sooner rather than later.”

His mother looked truly shocked now, and no wonder. Sterling had always despised men who took advantage, sowing their seed with neither care nor judgment. That his mother would believe him such a man rankled, but he was damned if she would judge Grace for her predicament. Things would be hard enough for his wife as it was.

His wife.

The word warmed him, steeling him against his mother’s disapproval, a fierce desire to protect Grace from her situation, from the world, motivating him to stand firm, as it had from the first.

His mother strode towards him, eyes flashing with anger, and raised her hand to strike him. Sterling caught her wrist, holding her off with ease. It was the first time she’d tried that in a long time. He’d not allowed her to strike him since he’d returned from university for the first time. His father had been so proud, glowing with it, and she had done her utmost to take the shine from the day.

“Stupid,” she spat at him. “What kind of slattern are you taking to wife?”

He tamped down the spark of anger at hearing Grace spoken of so. It was hardly a surprise that she would do her best to rile him.

“She’s no slattern, and I’ll not hear you speak of her so. You’ll treat her kindly, Ma, or else.”

“Or else,” she sneered, her colour high as she wrenched her wrist free of his grasp and turned away from him. “I’d thought you’d more sense but no, for all your fancy education and fine talk, you’ve been caught by the oldest trick in the book.”

Sterling snorted at that, unable to help the faint smile that tugged at his lips. “I doubt anyone else will see it that way. They’d believe it was me did the catching. Took some persuading before her father saw me as anything but a fortune hunter.”