need a whole new wardrobe as the Countess of Skylar. Think of the estates you’ll be mistress over. I imagine Lord Skylar will be purchasing his own residence in town and not expect you to live with Lord Caulfield, although his mansion on Park Lane is quite stupendous.”
As her mother talked on, flipping through the pages of the magazine, Gillian managed to forget her initial encounter with the cold, rude Lord Skylar and focus on the advantages of life as a young society matron.
The rest didn’t bear thinking on. Her mother wanted her married by the end of the year. A good six months away. There was plenty of time to enjoy being betrothed to one of the most illustrious names in the ton without dwelling too much on the wedding night.
“What the deuce were you thinking of, Tertius?” His father paced the confines of Sky’s dressing room as Sky finished his toilette. “From what the duchess tells me, the girl is balking at the marriage. Don’t you know how to woo a lady? Who were you living among, a bunch of wild savages in the Indies?”
Sky opened his eyes and glanced at Nigel, his valet, who was shaving him. “No, there was your usual small, tight coterie of the well-bred. I wouldn’t call them all savages, would you, Nigel?” He arched an eyebrow at his valet as the man wiped his jaw clean and handed him a glass.
“No, sir,” the black man answered, holding out a starched muslin square of cloth for his approval.
Sky lifted his chin as the man wrapped it around his neck and began the intricate work of folding it.
“Well, whatever they were, you’re back among the civilized and grateful you should be. You at last have a purpose in life, thanks to poor Edmund’s demise.”
Tertius frowned at his father’s waistcoat. “You know, I never liked puce on you. It makes you look bilious.”
His father looked down at his middle, momentarily distracted. “No? Weston himself made it up for me.” He walked to Sky’s full-length mirror and stood in front of it, his head tilted to one side, his hands pulling the waistcoat straight. He moved his body this way and that before turning back to Sky. “The color of my waistcoat is neither here nor there. To get back to the point, all I want is for you to exert yourself, make yourself tolerably agreeable to a lovely young lady of irreproachable pedigree—”
Tertius snorted. “Who has been thrust upon me as soon as I set foot on British soil, my newly inherited title not even having a chance to settle on me.”
His father sputtered. “That’s gratitude! I find you a perfectly suitable young lady to wed. I’ve already lost one son. I’ll not let the other go without issue. You’re five-and-thirty, Tertius. You look closer to the grave than Edmund ever did.”
“I said I’d marry the chit,” Tertius returned in an even voice. “What more do you want?”
“A little cooperation. You appeared long after Edmund’s funeral,” Caulfield retorted. “You come back surly and disagreeable and looking like a victim of typhus. You can’t make me believe it was such a sacrifice for you to pull yourself away from the Indies. It certainly hasn’t done anything for you.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” His cravat finished, Sky stood and eyed it in the glass. “I had quite a comfortable life on my sugar plantation.”
His father harrumphed. “Tending a plantation in the backwater of the kingdom, a job any good steward could do?”
Tertius’s glance crossed Nigel’s before his valet began silently putting away the morning’s toilet articles.
“Well, what do you think, Father? Has Nigel mastered the trone d’amour?” He turned for his father to inspect the white neck cloth.
His father stepped closer and peered at his neck. “Not bad. Nigel, is it?” For the first time since entering his rooms, his father gave his attention to the manservant. “Got him in the Indies?”
“It would appear so,” Sky replied.
“Don’t be impertinent. Almost everyone these days in London has a blackamoor footman—but this is the first time I’ve seen one for a valet. Did it take you long to train him?”
“Nigel was an amazingly quick study,” Tertius drawled. “From the cane fields to the intricacies of folding white linen, in what? Six months, Nigel?”
His valet’s muddy green eyes met his. “Yes, sir, that would be about the time.”
“What a fine specimen,” his father remarked, as he took a turn around the West Indian. “Look at that brawn. He’d make a fine boxer. He reminds me of Cribb. I saw him spar it out with Tom Molineaux back in “10.” Lord Caulfield stood in front of Nigel and eyed the breadth of his chest. “Your man makes ‘the Black Diamond’ look like a dwarf. Sure you wouldn’t want to put him in the ring?”
“He’s played Apollo for me at an evening’s festivities, but I haven’t as yet had him take up pugilism. It’s an idea…” Sky mused.
“Apollo? Why not Atlas?” Caulfield asked, continuing to admire the valet’s physique. “I imagine he looked splendid draped in a white toga.”
“Splendid indeed. I chose Apollo because of the loftiness of his thoughts. Atlas represents brute strength, and I believe Nigel has a bit more than that in his skull, eh?” he asked his valet with a smile before turning to shrug on the coat Nigel held out to him. He took his watch and fobs from him, along with a pocket-handkerchief.
“Thank you. You may go,” he told Nigel.
Lord Caulfield waited until the servant had left the room carrying an armful of linen. “Now, back to your affianced. You must make yourself agreeable. Take her out for a nice ride in Hyde Park. There are a dozen victory celebrations planned with Wellington’s arrival. The first thing you can do is meet her at Almack’s tonight and pay her court.”
Tertius stopped listening to his father’s instructions. Instead he thought about the young lady’s angry tone and frosty green eyes. He admitted how deliberately unflattering his remarks had been. She’d had a right to take offense. He had nothing against her personally. If he was easily irritated, it wasn’t due to Lady Gillian Edwards.
“Very well, Father, I shall see her tonight and endeavor to ‘woo’ her as you so quaintly put it.”
Tertius scanned the company assembled in Almack’s ballroom. Things hadn’t changed much in his ten-year absence, he concluded as he took in the assortment of muslin-clad young ladies, most in white bedecked with pastel ribbons and flowers, standing amidst the gilt columns, their mamas and chaperones closely in attendance. The young misses simpered at the young gentlemen hovering around them. His attention went to the dancers and he finally spotted Lady Gillian. She was in the middle of executing a tour de main with her partner in the quadrille.
“She’s a dandy little filly,” his longtime friend, Lord Delaney, opined, quizzing her through his glass.
“She’s accomplished in the quadrille, at any rate,” observed Tertius dryly.
“From what I hear, she’ll bring you ten thousand per annum. It makes little difference, in that light, I suppose, how well she dances,” Lane added with a chuckle.
“She strikes me as a bit lively.” Tertius narrowed
