Free Barbara Metzger by Lady Whiltons Wedding

dejected suitors in the parlor.
    If they did have to leave, though, Graydon believed he’d never have another chance. He’d be leaving the pigheaded chit at the mercy of that Pomeroy flat. With Uncle Albert making threatening noises, Daphne might think she needed to marry for protection, for her and her mother and those young cousins. She never listened to reason before; he doubted she’d start now. He could only pray her mother wasn’t cut from the same bolt.
    “Perhaps an apology is in order?” Graydon suggested.
    “Even though I still think I was right, if I thought she’d see me, I’d beg her forgiveness. Me, the Earl of Hollister. Can you believe it?”
    “Easily. I’ve seen stranger things in the name of love. And you did insult her pride and her intelligence, don’t you know, by negotiating away her portion without a by-your-leave. If I were you, I’d grovel.”
    “That’s if she agrees to see me. I cannot very well barge into the bedroom of a respectable female and demand she hear me out.”
    Graydon had seen stranger things than that, too. In fact, he’d been considering undertaking such a maneuver soon, if he couldn’t have a private talk with Daffy. Now a private talk was the last thing he wanted, if he had to pay for his father’s sins as well as his own recently resurrected failings. What he had to do, and do fast before anyone questioned his presence here, was get this hobble with Albert resolved so his father and Lady Whilton could reach an understanding.
    Graydon saw nothing for it but to cut a deal. Having recently come from the battlefront, he was a great proponent of negotiation. What they had to do, as he saw it, was get the old sot to hand over Lady Whilton’s twenty thousand pounds. The loose screw would do it, Graydon figured, for a like sum from the earl, under the table, of course. In effect his father would be paying his own bride’s dowry, but as long as she didn’t know it, she’d be satisfied at having got her money and her own way. The governor might have to up the ante some to win assurances from the bastard baron that there would be no future demands or threats on the boys, but he could afford it. Any price was worth it to see the last of that curst rum touch.
    “But that’s dishonest,” the earl protested after Graydon explained his plan. “It’s lying to Cleo, and letting her keep her addlepated notions besides. Women’s independence and all that rot. I’m not sure I want to live under the cat’s paw.”
    Graydon picked up the engagement ring from the table in front of his father. “Do you want to live alone the rest of your life?”
    *
    After seeing her mother put to bed with a dose of laudanum, Daphne didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t tired, but she didn’t want to face the earl—or his son—again this night. She was sure her mama would reconsider her hasty and impassioned decision in the morning.She just had to, Daphne swore, for Lady Whilton and the earl were meant for each other. Daphne didn’t dare go offer Lord Hollister her reassurances, however.
    Gracious, she couldn’t let difficulties between herself and Gray get between the older couple again. But how to convince her mother of that? By convincing Mama that Graydon hadn’t broken her heart, not by half. She’d been disappointed in his character, that was all. With all the recent gossip being confirmed and amplified by Uncle Albert—and not denied by Major Howell, Daphne noted—her assessment had been correct: Graydon was a libertine. Her heart wasn’t involved one jot in the decision to jilt him, she told herself firmly, rehearsing what she’d tell her mother in the morning. Not one iota.
    Miles would make a much better husband. He’d teach her cousins and her future sons about the land and about honor. Yes, she’d do well to accept Miles’s steadfast loyalty. For sure Daphne could never go live with Mama and the earl, not after this upset, not if her presence was going to remind