Free Incognita (Fairchild Book 2) by Jaima Fixsen

ones.”
    She frowned for a moment, setting down her cup. “Anthony Morris died some years ago—’09 I think. It was after you wrote us about Corunna.”
    He didn’t care to remember that battle, or the subsequent retreat, so he kept his face still and waited for his aunt to continue.
    “He was what your father terms a loose screw.”
    Alistair snorted. “If my father calls him that, he must have been loose indeed.”
    “Yes, one gathers they had difficulties. His father lost heavily in a canal scheme about twenty years ago and I think the family only managed to limp along since. It didn’t look as if they’d be able to bring out the daughter at all.”
    “Oh?” Without realizing, Alistair took another tart.
    “They did in the end, of course. Five or six years ago it was. Lucinda—I think that was her name—did quite well. Married someone from the north. Quite a bit older, as I recall, but she wasn’t especially handsome. Burlington? Beauchamp? I can’t recall his name. Haven’t seen either since the marriage, but the rest of the Morrises come to London every year.”
    “I gather the family succeeded in putting their difficulties behind them.”
    “One assumes so.”
    “How?”
    “The usual way.” She lowered her voice. “Marrying into money. I think they said it came from the colonies. Furs and timber. Never saw her though, so she must have been dreadful. Anthony Morris died of course, but there was a child, so the money and estate passed to him. Frederick Morris, Anthony’s younger brother looks to be holding the reins now.”
    “Until the child is of age?”
    “One assumes so.”
    “You know nothing of Mrs. Morris?”
    “Why should I? The veriest nobody. I may have heard she was tolerable to look upon, nothing more.”
    Alistair flattened the crumbs of pastry littering his plate with the back of his fork. “I’ve seen her.” He smiled at his aunt. “She’s a good deal better than that.”
    Lady Fairchild shook her head. “My dear boy, she’d do you no good at all. I expect her money is tied to Morris’s child. You wouldn’t want that, pretty face or no.”
    “Who said I was interested?”
    “You mentioned her. That means you’ve thought it, if only for a moment. If she’s as lovely as you say, no doubt you couldn’t help it, but man was blessed with reason for a purpose. I’m in favor of any course that sees you respectably established, but she isn’t it.”
    “You’re very definite,” Alistair said.
    “Isn’t that why you came to me? I know what I’m about.”
    Nine times out of ten, she did, but he couldn’t help remembering how they’d both erred with Sophy. But on that point, he suspected it was best to keep his own counsel.  
    *****
    William Rushford, Lord Fairchild, left his club in an unhappy mood. An hour in his favorite chair, deep in a brown study, hadn’t made him better, or eased his mind about the conversation he needed to have with his wife. One of his children was already lost to him—Julius, more baby than boy, resting beneath the patch of sod that had covered him nearly nineteen years. Sophy had come to him late, after the death of her mother—not his wife. It didn’t feel like Sophy had ever belonged to him, not until recently. And now she had flown.  
    This loss was different than the bewildering pain after Julius died that had felled both him and his wife—a wound this time, not an amputation—but it still pained him. He should have done so many things differently.  
    Another glass of your usual drink, he thought, meaning to console himself. He was used to living with regret. But it would be easier to swallow this dose if he knew what he was supposed to do about his wife. Lately it had been borne upon him that Georgiana needed care and—more strangely still—that he wanted to provide it. It was an impulse he could hardly remember feeling throughout the twenty-six years of their marriage, which was probably why he had no idea how it should be