And they may as well have replaced the ringing of St. Lawrence’s bell with the one now clamoring away loudly in his head, for the sheer enormity of its power.
His littlest sister, Eris, at very nearly five, and also the most tempestuous of the lot, would be the first to break the silence. She shot a hand up. “I’m getting—”
Sixteen-year-old, Shakespeare-loving Delia, an identical twin, slapped a hand over the mouth of the youngest of the Kearsleys. More babe than girl, his littlest sister waved her hands about excitedly in a bid to speak whatever words had now been silenced.
Delia whispered something into the little girl’s ear . . . that managed to penetrate her eagerness.
Eris promptly lowered her hands to her lap, and in a foreign display of primness, she folded her chocolate-stained fingers upon her once immaculate white, and now chocolate-stained, skirt.
Clayton’s suspicions . . . and fears . . . deepened.
Had he been simply an observer and not the one summoned, he would have been endlessly fascinated by just what Delia had said to manage to silence the chatterbox.
As it was, as the summonee . . . all he knew was a healthy dread.
His mother came to her feet and motioned to the lavender-upholstered gilt-wood armchair beside hers. “We have summoned you today, Clayton.”
He made his way through his gaggle of sisters, none of whom rose, and all of whom looked up at his approach. “I see that,” he drawled after he’d settled into the chair.
Except again, that dread-inducing silence met his response.
He looked from sister to sister to sister.
But for the lone leather book resting on one of his sisters’ laps, everything from their expressions to their blinking was a perfect match.
Clayton squirmed. When he’d been a young man at university, he’d been set upon by footpads and had his purse and fob snatched before suffering a cuff to the head for resisting giving over his timepiece. Even with all that, he always said he’d take a turn with even the most ruthless pickpocket over the whole of the Kearsley sisters together.
His mother smoothed her wrinkled grey skirts. “Shall we begin?”
“The suspense is killing me,” he said, and that response was met with a bevy of identical frowns from his less-than-pleased siblings. He shifted. “I was not being sarcastic.” And he wasn’t. He was terrified.
Out of his damned mind.
Anwen, the eldest and most practical of his sisters, pushed her too-large spectacles back on her nose. “Good. I would advise against that. This matter is of import.” The round wire rims promptly slid back into the improper place.
Alas, all his efforts at having them replaced were met with outrage and indignation by his sister, who was as loyal to her spectacles as she was to their sisters.
“Very serious stuff,” Daria, the most notoriously morbid of his sisters, murmured.
At her side, her younger twin, Delia, picked up her book and proceeded to read.
“Ahem.”
When the other girl made no attempt to lower her reading material, Daria tried for her attention once more. “I said, ahhem.” Finally, Daria slapped Delia’s fingers and favored her sister with one of those haunting, dark looks Clayton had once caught her practicing in a mirror.
Sighing, Delia lowered the volume to her lap.
Daria returned her attention to the group. “As I was saying . . . very serious stuff.”
Once again, six of the ladies present nodded.
Eris looked confusedly between their mother and her elder sisters. “But we already did that part,” she said on a loud whisper.
“Shh.” Daria and Delia promptly covered the younger girl’s mouth.
Clayton leaned across the elder of the twins and whispered for Eris’s ears only: “It’s all right, poppet. I’ve already determined there’s a play been scripted— Oww.” He winced as Eris brought an impressively strong foot down on top of his own.
She glared back at him with enough fire in her eyes to make him fear the future down the road. “We are talking, Clayton.”
So much for being the loyal, avenging brother. “Very well.” He straightened. “Then why don’t we dispense with all the dr—” All eyes narrowed on him. This time, he was wise enough to edge his foot away from his youngest sister. “Er, that is . . . Why don’t we dispense with all the”—Clayton fiddled with the fabric of his cravat—“dithering?”
“You were going to say ‘dramatics,’” Brenna charged.
The bluestocking of the group, Brenna could recite any of the Enlightened thinkers, and debate a person into forgetting their name. As such, Clayton took several moments to fashion a response. “I—”
“Furthermore,” Delia interrupted, “if I may point out, ‘dithering’ is not much better. It suggests one does not know one’s mind, and we each know our own mind.”
This time, their nods were perfectly synchronized.
Yes, there could be no doubting the Kearsley sisters knew what they wanted and when they wanted it, and Lord help the one who served as a possible impediment to those wishes.
Unfortunately, in this particular instance, it appeared that he was the unlucky one pegged as the “impediment.” “Forgive me,” Clayton said with his best attempt at a suitable-enough-for-them level of solemnity. “If you would be so good as to continue?”
“I will be the one to say it.” Cora, his science-minded sister, pulled back her shoulders. “I am—”
“I am getting marrrried,” Eris cut off.
Silence met the little girl’s announcement.
She smiled, revealing the wide gap between her two front teeth.
Clayton didn’t so much as blink. Of anything the noisy, oft-demanding, but always loving lot of Kearsleys might have said, that was certainly . . . not it. “I . . . ?” He scratched at what he trusted was a thoroughly confused brow. “Whaat?”
Cora frowned. “I was going to say that.”
“Well, in fairness, if we want to be accurate? It was decided that I should be first,” Anwen corrected with a little sniff. “I am just twenty-four.”
A series of protests and challenges went up with sister fighting over sister for that dubious pleasure of—
Clayton sat back in his seat and just took in the scene.
Long, long ago, sometime between Anwen coming to blows with a doctor who’d refused to fashion spectacles for ladies, and Delia crashing upon the stage of a Royal Theatre performance to confront the player delivering his lines from Hamlet—or incorrectly delivering his lines, as she’d pointed out—Clayton had ceased to be nonplussed by anything they said or did.
That was . . . until now.
Because from the bits and pieces he was able to make out of a scene that seemed dangerously close to descending into an all-out brawl, his sisters, each of whom had expressed a distaste at even the mention of the marital state, should now be quarreling over who would have the honor and privilege first.
Their mother clapped her hands once. “Girls!” Her voice, however, was muted by the din of her quarreling daughters. “I said, girls! That is enough.”
Alas, she may as well have been any one of the unsuccessful governesses they’d brought in over the years to tame the wild beasts.
Putting two middle fingers into her mouth, the viscountess whistled loudly.
That “emergency gesture,” as she’d come to refer to it, had the necessary silencing effect. Each of her daughters fell quiet, though they each still took time to periodically glare at their last debate partner.
“Now,” the viscountess went on, “it hardly makes sense for Eris or Delia or Daria to marry first.”
“Yes, as I see it, they still each have at least another year or so before they venture into the bonds of matrimony,” Clayton said dryly.
Eris and the sixteen-year-olds glared his way once more.
“Forgive me,” he murmured, having committed the folly of shifting their ire away from their previous opponent and back toward him.
&nb
sp; Their mother cleared her throat. “As I was saying, our youngest girls, despite their offer of sacrifice and their willingness to do so, should not at this time, or at any time within the nearest of futures, be wed.” She drew in a breath and, bringing her shoulders back, looked straight ahead. “It shall be . . . me.”
Oh, good God.
Clayton slumped in his chair and dropped his brow into his palm.
“No other. It should be me . . . I shall do it . . .”
“I am the eldest sister . . .”
“But I am the one who . . .”
There was never a dull day in the Kearsley household. That held true from Clayton’s earliest remembrances of his wild and free family. One that he’d sought very much, as heir to the earldom, to raise himself above. And yet, it hadn’t been until his father died four years earlier, on Eris’s first birthday, and Clayton had stepped in to fill the role of viscount and de facto father to his sisters, that he’d come to appreciate that he’d not had any idea of just how wild his family, in fact, was.
From the overdramatic debates and discussions that frequently ensued, to each sister’s eccentric interest, to all the sisters’ devotions to their respective interests, the Kearsley girls were the pieces upon a chessboard that he still hadn’t been able to make heads or tails of.
“Are you quite through?” he called loudly over the racket.
“What manner of son are you?” Cora cried out. “Have you not heard what Mother said? She said she will be the one to marry. When she loved Papa so desperately, she should be the one to wed another.” The girl sniffled and dabbed at nonexistent tears in the corners of her eyes. “Why . . . why . . . at her advanced age, she is very near the end and should hardly be thinking of marriage.”
The viscountess’s lips formed a displeased moue. “I beg your pardon? I am not so very old.”
“Yes, you are,” Eris piped in. “You have white hairs.”
“I have three white hairs.” Their mother lifted her three middle fingers. “Three.”
“Either way,” Brenna murmured in sad, somber tones, “no woman with white hair should be the one to enter into marriage.”
As Anwen touched the streak of white hair tucked behind her ear, her frown deepened. “I have white hair.” As she’d had since she was a girl of sixteen. Society had been less than kind to her for it.
“Precisely.” Brenna stuck her tongue out. “That is why it should be me.”
Leaning over, Anwen grabbed the younger girl’s loose ringlets and gave them a sharp tug.
“Owwww!”
Before the display could dissolve once more into a debate as to who would have the right to wed first, Clayton raised a hand. “If I may . . . ?” His mother and sisters quieted once more, and each looked expectantly his way. “Now . . . this . . . sudden desire to marry—”
Cora cut him off. “I don’t have one.”
Clayton gave the ever-sharpening ache in his head another rub. “Weren’t you just fighting for that privilege?”
“Privilege? I hate men.”
He furrowed his brow. Now had it been Brenna, reciter of Condorcet, advocate of women’s rights, well, then, that he would have expected. “Since . . . when?” As soon as the question left him, he frowned as a more pressing query slipped forward, an important one. “Why?”
“Why, but there’s many a man hath more hair than wit,” Delia said in dramatic tones, and with that, she picked up her book and proceeded to read.
“Shakespeare,” her twin explained to Clayton.
“I know that.” When she wasn’t reading the Great Bard, one could count on Delia to be reciting his wisdoms. “I want to know—”
Delia made a flourishing motion of turning the page in her copy of Macbeth.
“Oh, never mind. Can someone please explain the sudden about-face amongst so many of you where marriage is concerned?”
His mother looked at him as if he’d sprung a second head. “Because one of us must do it, Clayton. I’m not sure if you are aware, but in a family of six daughters and a mother, there are many who will require looking after.”
When he wasn’t there.
That thought hung unfinished without a need to be spoken aloud, as the Kearsley curse, which saw the men struck down too quickly and the women ravaged by tragedies of other sorts, was common knowledge to each sibling present.
“I assure you I am quite aware.”
And for the first time since he’d stepped onto the makeshift stage of whatever farce this was, a somberness descended upon the gathering.
An understanding of what the future held—or rather, did not hold—had been with him from early on, and as such, he’d accepted the same fate met by the other men who had come before him. Be it his father, who’d choked on a plum pit and died too soon, or his grandfather, who’d taken an errant bullet from poachers on his Scottish estate, the list of peculiar, untimely deaths went on and on.
Anwen cleared her throat lightly. “Then you must also be aware, Clayton”—her words came haltingly, with an almost pained quality to them—“that we cannot rely upon the charity of distant relations.”
No. He well knew that.
“Mr. Meadows.” Their mother spat the name like the epithet it had long been in the Kearsley household. Clayton was now all that stood between the distant cousin several times removed and inheriting the title.
“It is hardly Mr. Meadows’s fault that he is the heir behind me.”
Gasps went up, and Cora flew out of her seat. “You would dare defend Mr. Meadows?”
Their mother, however, held up a hand, and that brought the young lady back into her seat—albeit stiffly.
“Mr. Meadows has done nothing wrong,” Clayton insisted. “That is, with the exception of being next in the line of succession. Which is no fault of his own, I should point out.”
“You would defend him,” Delia muttered.
“He is frequently writing to Mother, and he always asks after you, Clayton,” Brenna shot back. “Why would he do something like that? Hmm?” The gangly girl folded her arms across her chest, and all her sisters immediately followed suit, daring him with their expressions and poses to defend the man.
“I don’t know,” he drawled. “Perhaps to be friendly?”
“Friendly,” Anwen muttered, giving her head a disgusted shake that sent her spectacles tumbling to her lap. Nearly half-blind without them, she felt around, searching, finding, and then jamming them upon her face once more.
“Yes,” he went on when she could see him again. “Forgive me for not thinking his motives are anything but pure. He is not a villain in a Shakespearean play—”
Charging to her feet, Delia brandished her book. “Though those that are betray’d Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor stands in worse case of woe!”
He winced. “Et tu, Brute?”
Delia’s eyes flew wide. “You should use my Shakespeare against me?”
And wonder of wonders, his mother took pity . . . on him. Sailing to her feet, she placed herself between Delia and Clayton. “Come, Delia. It is hardly your brother’s fault.”
He gave his head a wry shake. That was the defense? Clayton peeked out from behind his mother and caught the fury flashing in his sister’s eyes. She made a slashing motion with that book across her throat, and thinking better of it, he ducked back and took what protection the viscountess had offered.
“Now, can we please resume this ever-pressing matter?” she asked the room at large.
The moment she seated herself, Cora spoke. “This is a waste of time, Mother. We have already decided that we have to be the ones to look after us.” As Clayton would not. That meaning came as clearly as if it had been spoken.
“I agree,” the viscountess said sadly. “Your father, God rest his soul, did not leave us well off.”
All the girls made the sign of the cross.
The late earl had known precisely what fate awaited him. And yet, instead of attempting to live a life where he had
things in order before his passing, he’d believed in living for the now and indulging the whims and wishes of his daughters. They weren’t destitute, but neither were they comfortable.
And there was the matter of Clayton’s sisters requiring security and stability . . . none of which they’d have when he was gone. The fact of the matter was, building a fortune wasn’t something that happened overnight. Most of the lands yielding profits would go to the heir to replace him—a distant cousin who was a nice enough fellow. But to expect the man to care for six female relations and Clayton’s mother?
As such, where would his sisters be if Clayton failed to produce an heir? If he did, however, marry and provide a future Viscount St. John, all the land and fortune would stay with his immediate family. As would the poor wife left to look after his sisters . . .
It was something Clayton had not allowed himself to think of since his father’s passing.
Not as much as he should have.
Because there could be only one solution that would ensure the properties and monies they still had did not pass to Mr. Meadows. Another person.
An heir.
An heir only he could provide. He and . . . a wife.
Oh, bloody hell.
He slumped in his chair once more.
“Why is he looking like that?” Eris whispered up at Delia, and when the twin didn’t answer, Eris turned her questioning gaze up to Daria. “Is he . . . going to be sick?”
He certainly felt like he was going to cast his contents up. “I’ll do it.” His voice emerged strangled.
Eris screeched and, flying out of her seat, rushed to the opposite end of the gathering. “I don’t want to get his sick.”
“I’m not . . . going to be ill,” he assured. “I’m . . . I’m . . .”
All his kin looked back expectantly.
“I’m going to be the one who marries.” He managed to get the words out.
He braced for the onslaught of shock and disbelief.
Oddly, there was an almost bored expectation from the group. It lasted no longer than a moment that might have been imagined.
“Are you certain?” His sisters spoke over one another, their words of praise rolling together.
“That is so very wonderful of you . . . You are the very most devoted brother, you are.”
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