Paulina?’ Lady Robina said with a lot more conviction than accuracy, and Tom stepped back and let his wife meet the woman on her own terms.
It was how she lived her life after all, and she had done such a fine job of it up to now he didn’t see any need to interfere, even if she would let him.
Tom watched and assisted his wife and brother-in-law whenever they needed it for the rest of the hour they had agreed to spend at the Trethayne ball before going on to another society ball to show the world they had come to town to do more than just challenge the old vulture at the head of his wife’s family tree on his home ground.
‘My thanks, Lady Chloe, Winterley,’ he said as soon as he’d handed his lady up into the vast old town chariot Virginia had insisted was far more comfortable than more modern and less accommodating vehicles.
‘Not at all. It was far better entertainment than I expected of my first appearance in London society,’ Chloe Winterley said, ‘and now I’m no longer the prime target of all the gossips. I swear I would like you for that, Polly, even if I didn’t love you already for marrying Tom and preventing my lord here from worrying himself to flinders about his well-being and peace of mind when I would far rather he was intent on mine instead.’
‘Then I’m pleased to have been of service,’ his Polly said lightly enough, but Tom knew she was a lot less relaxed than she was so gallantly pretending to be all the same.
‘I wonder who the next one is,’ he remarked to divert their attention from the strains of taking on the Earl of Trethayne and the most conservative part of polite society all in one evening.
‘What next one?’ Toby piped up, and Tom felt Polly’s interest stir despite her weariness with this whole wretched business of claiming back Toby’s fortune from the money-grabbing old villain who’d appropriated it as his own and blessed the topic of conversation he’d found so appallingly unamusing at the outset of his season at Virginia’s beck and call.
Satisfied? he asked silently, as if his godmother could somehow hear him.
You’ll do now seemed to come back to him as if she’d whispered it in his ear, but the laughter and satisfaction in it felt so much like her that his breath caught with love and loss. It was almost easy when you got the hang of it, this love business, and he realised he’d had a flying start at it by being taken in and loved despite himself by Virgil and Virginia all those years ago.
‘My godmother’s next victim,’ he explained with an apologetic nod at the corner of the carriage he knew very well only held Toby and a silk cushion, even if it had been her favourite seat when she was alive.
‘Victim?’ Toby asked sleepily, and Tom wondered if they really needed to drag him across London for another interminable party, but Luke and Peters had insisted and he suspected they knew more about staying on the right side of the dowagers than he did.
‘My great-aunt, being a great deal more fun and loving us as dearly as your own great-uncle clearly only loves himself, decreed four of her closest relatives and friends spend a quarter each of the year after her death carrying out errands on her behalf. This quarter was Tom’s and the next... Well, only my darling wife and Peters’ senior partner know who the next one on her list is and they are not telling us.’
‘First I had to inform the person who will be expected to carry out her wishes, Luke,’ Chloe told him, and Tom thought he knew what his friend had meant at the beginning of all this about enjoying watching the next on the list dance about at Virginia’s bidding because he knew his task was safely over.
He felt Polly next to him and the enormity of the changes in his own life caught him up in wonder, that he should be so other than how he had thought he was back then and that Polly should love him anyway.
‘So who is he?’
‘That is not for me to reveal.’
‘Me,’ Peters’s voice rasped from his own dark corner of the vast old vehicle as it rumbled to a stop, and the flares and noise of another great rout spilled out on to the streets around it. ‘Confound it, but she picked me for some reason best known to herself.’
‘I’m quite sure she had a good one,’ Chloe said soothingly, and Tom felt his Polly lean forward to ask more and ran a distracting hand over her pert derrière now shadows and the flurry of disembarking covered up his need to touch her as often as he could get away with it.
‘Enough, love, it’s his job to work through the next few months as best he can. We have our own lives to work on for our next fifty or sixty years together.’
‘True, but I can never thank your godmama enough for sending you back to Dayspring Castle this spring, Tom,’ Polly said with such certainty in her voice he had to swallow back an unmanly lump in his throat.
She had done so much damage to the Marquis of Mantaigne’s light-hearted indifference to the rest of the world he hardly recognised himself in Polly Trethayne’s besotted husband, but the very thought of having missed out on this new life of theirs made him realise how deeply indebted he was to Virginia for making him return to the castle he’d sworn never to set foot in again as long as he lived.
‘True, and if I hadn’t loved her before I would have to now, love, for she’s turned all I ever swore not to do on its head. If only I’d come back when I came of age instead of ordering the place to fall down without me, we could have been happy for years by now.’
‘If you hadn’t left Dayspring empty, we would never have gone to live there in your absence, you idiot,’ his loving wife chided as Tom sprang out of the carriage to hand down his lady before any other rogue could do it for him.
‘There you are, you see, Peters? I have a lifetime of scolds and humility to look forward to,’ he said smugly as he stood back for Luke to echo his own determination not to let any other man lay a hand on his wife tonight and hand Chloe down from the grand old coach.
‘I look forward to observing it from afar, my lord,’ the supposedly quiet young lawyer told him solemnly.
‘If you think you can get away from Farenze that easily you’re about to discover your error. Fellow’s like a limpet. Polly and I will call our first son after you, then you won’t be able to deny our acquaintance either.’
‘Frederick, wasn’t it?’ Polly asked, looking as if she was trying hard to like the idea, and Tom considered the notion with apparent seriousness.
‘Peter?’ he suggested, thinking that sounded a fair enough name for a future marquis and the son he’d once sworn never to have. He caressed Polly’s long fingers as they walked up the steps to the next grand town house on their list unashamedly hand-locked. ‘It would keep the boy’s feet on the ground to have a good solid name to remind him he’s not one of the lords of Creation.’
‘He will have me for that,’ Polly reminded him with a radiant smile as they joined the tail of guests waiting to be introduced to their host and hostess for the next hour or so and yet another blushing daughter recently launched on the marriage mart.
‘How true,’ Tom replied with a mock grimace at the idea of being humbled for his own good for the next fifty years or so. ‘Perhaps we’d best call him after a great warrior after all
