Free Miss Delacourt Has Her Day by Heidi Ashworth Page B

don’t understand!” He wanted to take her and turn her into his arms, but the rigidity of her stance said, “Touch me not” “That is, you didn’t agree to that, did you? You do still wish to marry me?”
    Turning to face him, she cried, “Of course! You know I do! It’s only that everyone and everything seems against us, and I have to wonder if perhaps there is a reason. Perhaps they are all right. What if Lady Derby should do her worst? Perhaps people will cut me dead in the street and refuse all our invitations. What if our sons won’t be allowed to attend Oxford or Harrow, and our daughters remain unwed, all because you married the vicar’s daughter, no better than a guttersnipe!” Then she burst into gusty tears.

    Anthony thought perhaps even Grandmama could not object when he pulled Ginny against his shoulder and wrapped her up in his arms. If Grandmama dared to try, she could very well go to the devil. What’s more, she ought to go for making Ginny cry. His mother could go along, sooner rather than later. It would be a pity if she missed the wedding, but if it meant Ginny would be more comfortable, so be it. While he was at it, his uncle, the duke, should be added to the list of those consigned to hellfire. As things were, he hadn’t the heart to tell Ginny what the duke had said in the course of their most recent conversation earlier that morning. Better for Anthony to share it all with her at a later date, though never was sounding better with each sob.
    “Anthony?” Ginny asked when she was all cried out. “I do not think it is true that a duchess never weeps”
    He laughed in spite of the knot of woe that bound up his chest. “Of course they do, my darling, and you shall make a splendid one someday,” he soothed, drawing the green ribbon from the pocket of his coat and tying it into her hair. “There, now, you see? You are the very picture of a proper duchess!”
    Ginny laughed. No doubt she was thinking her still-bare feet and shapeless dress were sadly at odds with his words, yet he most heartily meant every one.

Mother, I would have a word with you!” Anthony bellowed through Lady Crenshaw’s chamber door. He preferred that she had come down to the parlor when he first requested her presence, but her abigail had inferred that Lady Crenshaw was not at home, upon which he had charged up the stairs to rap on her door. She failed to open it, but he felt sure he heard a whimper of dismay on the other side. “I know you are in there. If you do not open this door, I shall set fire to it!”
    The door swung open as if it had been lent wings. “Anthony, how dare you? I am your mother!”
    “And I am the next Duke of Marcross, or have you forgotten?” he barked, hating to invoke his title but allowing anger to win out over integrity.
    “Of course not!” she said, all the while avoiding his gaze. “It’s only that I am persuaded you were once possessed of some manners. I do not know what that girl has done to you, Tony, but I do not like it.”
    “I do not see as how I should be a slave to manners when you, Mother, are not” It was Ginny who had helped him learn that manners were for mankind, not the other way around. “Now, do we stay in the hall, or shall we retire to somewhere more private?” Without waiting for her reply, he took her firmly by the elbow, steered her into the sitting area of her chamber, and closed the door with a loud snick.

    He was dismayed when she wrested free of him and disposed herself on a small sofa, arranging her skirts around her in the artifice he despised.
    “Mother, tell me it wasn’t you who taught Ginny to do that,” he begged. “You will be the ruin of her. Perhaps I should cry off.”
    “But of course you should, Anthony! Have I not been saying so all week? As if I could ruin her. Why, there is nothing left to ruin!” she exclaimed, spreading her hands wide. “Your grandmother has seen to that. She could have been passable, even unexceptionable