July in the city, and it was still hot. Sutton ran a finger around the inside of his collar. It seemed unfair the world had not changed in the hour he’d spent in the solicitor’s office. His life had changed. Shouldn’t the world have changed as well? Sutton headed towards Ludgate Circus, pausing at the public urinals to relieve himself before he caught a hansom cab to Mayfair. Too much damn tea. Too much to think about, all of it circling back to focus on one critical issue: a bride. Without a bride, it wouldn’t matter how willing he was to make the sacrifice.
Perhaps that was what he hated most about the whole arrangement. It required him to rely on someone beyond himself. It was not something he did easily or often, even with friends. To do so now with a woman he didn’t know was preposterous. He liked to be the one who controlled the variables of any given experiment. Now, the critical variable was beyond him. Everything hinged on her, whoever she might be.
Sutton shook his head. No. He would not be the victim here. He would not focus on what he didn’t control, but on what he did. He might not know a woman to marry, but he did know a woman who could help him: his mother. Before he could approach her, however, he needed a moment or two to think. He had the cab stop and let him out a few streets before he reached South Audley Street. By the time he reached number 71A a plan was forming. He would solve this situation as he solved every other puzzle placed before him—with logic and reason.
‘This is the most ridiculous, most scandalous thing your uncle has ever done. Wherever will you find a bride in four weeks and at the back end of the Season? People are thinking of leaving London, not lingering.’ Catherine Keynes gave voice to the very thoughts that had plagued him from the ice-blue sofa in the drawing room where her at-home had just concluded.
‘Those were my thoughts, exactly.’ Sutton gave a wry chuckle. ‘But you look well, Mother. Between the two of us, I am sure we’re up to the task. I have a plan, but I will need an able assistant.’ He studied his mother—a strong, shrewd woman who loved her family fiercely, if not maternally. He’d always thought, growing up, that she would have made a formidable queen in bygone years. He could imagine her navigating the dangerous intricacies of medieval court politics. His mother was the ablest person he knew for what he intended. Well connected, well experienced in society after thirty-two years among its ranks.
‘I should have known you’d have a strategy.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t suppose that strategy involves walking away from the fortune. You don’t need it and I don’t need it, in case you were thinking of taking it for my sake. I am comfortable enough with what your father left me. Who knows? I might even remarry at some point should the right man present himself, then you wouldn’t need to worry over me at all.’ It was a distinct possibility. His mother was still a handsome woman at fifty. This afternoon, she was dressed in a blue-and-silver gown of summer cotton that matched the drawing room decor, her still-dark honey hair coiffed in an intricate collection of braids. Her posture straight.
Sutton stopped pacing and leaned against the white Carrara marble mantel, imported from Italy and expensive, a further reminder that the Keyneses didn’t need the money. They lived well enough on their own, Sutton’s own father having made a fortune in the south-east Asian trade. Sutton shook his head. ‘You know I can’t just turn that money over to Bax.’
‘It’s not your job to save the world from him,’ his mother argued the temptation that had crossed his mind in Barnes’s office. He could walk away and it certainly made things easier. He could forgo a hasty, dramatic bridal search and retreat to the comfort of life as he knew it. But that was neither socially responsible, nor was it the honourable thing to do.
‘“All it takes for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing,”’ he quoted. ‘I have to do my part.’ Sutton paced the length of his mother’s drawing room, pushing a hand through his thick hair. He blew out a breath. ‘The last girl Bax “importuned” killed herself last week. She washed up on the shores of the Thames with stones in her pockets.’
‘Good lord.’ His mother blanched. ‘Will no one stop him?’
‘He’s too powerful. He owns too many secrets. But we can mitigate him and, in time, I can work against him and others like him. He’s not alone in his corruption or his brand of it. For now, I can rob him of excess funds.’
‘By making a scandal of a marriage?’ his mother scolded, a furrow creasing her brow. ‘A race to the altar can be nothing less than a spectacle.’
‘Certainly it can’t be less than a spectacle, but it can be more.’ That was the plan anyway.
‘I like the sound of that.’ His mother held up the Wedgwood teapot in question. ‘Tea, darling? While you lay out your grand plan?’
‘No, no tea.’ Sutton quickly waved away the pot. He’d had enough tea today to last him all week. ‘Here’s what I am thinking. If my marriage must be a spectacle, I want to make it one worth watching. I control if it becomes a scandal or not. I want to make it a grand event, create the perception of a whirlwind romance, love at first sight.’ But it would be quite the exacting experiment beneath that frothy surface.
His mother smiled. ‘You want to make it a fairy tale. I like the idea. It certainly softens the edge of scandal. You invite all the eligible girls to a house party at the Newmarket estate. Let them have a taste of the luxury that could be theirs. We’ll put out the best china and polish the good silver to impress the mothers. We’ll lay in champagne and French wine to impress the fathers. Hartswood always shows at its best in the summer. The girls can stroll and pose in their pretty dresses for you in the gardens while their fathers fish the river.’
Sutton laughed. ‘You make it sound so easy.’ He wished he had his mother’s confidence when it came to his marriage. Some of the burden eased with the relief of having a partner in this. His mother did not challenge his decision, she simply got behind him and lent her considerable energies. ‘I’m afraid it needs to be a bit more involved than pretty poses in the garden. I don’t want to select a wife based on how she looks in a dress. I tried that once, a deviation from the norm, and a failure of an experiment, if you recall.’ The disaster of Miss Anabeth Morely had been years ago in his youth, but he had no desire to repeat it.
Sutton moved on, refusing to dwell on the memory. ‘We’ll need a full slate of a variety of activities. I want to arrange to have time with each of the girls, to observe them in different settings, with different people, and with me. At the end of the house party, we’ll hold a ball and I will announce my choice at midnight, the perfect ending to the fairy tale we’ll create.’
‘So, the party is to be your microscope? You’ll be putting them under the lens of your scrutiny,’ his mother surmised aptly.
‘Yes. I suppose it is. But I am not the first to use a house party to such ends. There is no scandal in the setting I propose. It’s quite traditional, really.’ And it was efficient. He could gather everyone in a single space for his consideration.
‘A setting and a task torn straight from the pages of a fairy tale,’ his mother agreed. ‘When is the party to be?’
‘In five days. I don’t think I can spare any more time than that if I’m to meet my uncle’s deadline. Can you do it?’ It wasn’t the idea of the party that he doubted, it was the implementation. They had to act quickly, but extravagant entertainments took time. ‘Can you arrange the activities, the details, the guests?’ He was counting on her for this. His days would be taken up with paperwork and other legal details.
