The Nightingale Legacy Read Free Page B

well, sir.”
    “Your humor lists like a sinking boat, dear Miss Derwent-Jones. I have noticed that you have even grown more fully into this humor of yours just in the past few days. Mrs. Tailstrop tells me you have become more amusing by the year, but I informed her that it was her duty to curtail this eccentric habit of yours. Young ladies are to be demure and modest. How else will they attach a husband?”
    “I managed it quite easily. Don’t forget Mr. Duncan.”
    “So you say, so you say. Now, I would that you strive to answer me cleanly and directly.”
    “A wit should be a wit for all occasions. I’m distressed that you disapprove. Very well, sir. What would you like to know?”
    “I would like to know about this Duncan fellow. I would like to meet him and ascertain his intentions toward you. You will be a rich young lady come tomorrow and I want to convince myself that he isn’t a fortune hunter. Indeed, I insist upon meeting him. This evening, for dinner. It is only fair to Owen, don’t you think? Even frivolous young ladies should strive for a modicum of sensitivity and goodwill toward young men who are truly in love with them.”
    Owen in love with her? She and Owen were like two bored dogs who would eye each other and yawn. Not only did her fatuous guardian dislike her humor—her only weapon against him—he believed her stupid and ineffectual, which perhaps she was, for after all there weren’t any firesin any of the fireplaces, were there?
    “I don’t know if Mr. Duncan will be free for dinner this evening.”
    “You know, dear Miss Derwent-Jones, I cannot, in good conscience, allow you to enter into an alliance that I haven’t approved. It would be against your best interests. I wouldn’t be fulfilling my responsibility toward you. Indeed, there is a clause in your father’s will that allows my discretion in the matter of your marriage. I naturally hadn’t thought of it until now since I believed you and Owen would make a match of it.”
    She stared at him. No, she couldn’t believe it, wouldn’t believe it. She managed to keep her outrage behind her tongue and said, “I didn’t know of any stipulations about my marriage, sir, or my lack of marriage. Actually, before I met Mr. Duncan, I hadn’t planned to marry at all. I would like to see my father’s will.”
    “Certainly, Miss Derwent-Jones.” There was no dear this time, which was an improvement. “However, I hardly expect a young lady to understand it. There are legal terms that would surely confound a lady’s faculties.”
    “I will contrive to raise my level of wit, sir, just for the occasion.”
    He looked at her as if he would like to strike her, and that pleased her, for surely she would like to stick a knife between his ribs. “Shall I read this part of my father’s will right now, sir?”
    “Unfortunately your father’s will is in my office, in London. It will require some time for me to write to my clerk and more time for him to send it here to Honeymead Manor.”
    “I see,” she said, and was very afraid that she did indeed see.
    “In brief, your father wanted my approval of any suitorto your hand, Miss Derwent-Jones. If I refuse my approval then I am to continue as your guardian until you reach twenty-five or find a gentleman of whom I do approve.”
    “Very well, sir, you force me to admit to another wretched jest. There is no Mr. Duncan. There is no man I wish to marry. Therefore, sir, tomorrow, on my nineteenth birthday, I come into my parents’ money—all of it—and you, sir, are no longer snapping the whip over my head.”
    “I thought as much,” Mr. Ffalkes said, and she knew then he’d outmaneuvered her. He’d lied about that stipulation in her father’s will, and she’d fallen for it. Then he struck a conciliatory pose, his palms upward. “You and I shouldn’t be adversaries, my dear. Indeed, I have much admired you since you became such a lovely young woman. As has my son. Now, it’s true