Landon’s words from White’s whispered forward . . .
They school their members on how to instead push that task off onto brothers, guardians, and fathers, who will then see to the responsibility of raising a family’s wealth and status through marriage . . .
And his breath caught on a hiss. “My God, you plotted it all.”
“What would you prefer?” Brenna asked. “That one of us marry instead?” She didn’t even pretend to misunderstand.
Clayton found himself in the same ranks as the “tricked,” the pathetic brother duped by conspiratorial sisters, and just as his friends had rightly predicted.
It was a rather swift descent into ignominy.
“But . . . how in hell is a man supposed to marry if your club’s entire mission is to encourage other women to avoid the matrimonial state?”
All the women collectively rolled their eyes. “That isn’t our only mission. We talk about our rights, or rather, our lack of them, and the ways in which we can extend our influence over not only our households but also society.”
He shuddered. “Terrifying. Utterly—oomph.”
Cora kicked him in the shin, abruptly ending the rest of his sarcastic response. “And for that matter, not all potential marriages, either. Just the bad ones,” she said in tired tones, as if she’d already covered this particular topic a dozen times with him, and not just this once. “Why, Perenelle Flamel and Nicolas Flamel were quite content.”
His confusion deepening, Clayton shook his head slowly. “Whooo?”
Cora released an exasperated sigh. “Perenelle Flamel, the famed alchemist, and her scribe husband.”
“That’s just a legend.” Brenna spoke in the bluestocking tones she used to elucidate the Kearsleys on obscure topics that only she knew about.
“How dare you!” Cora reached across, making a grab for Brenna, but Anwen angled herself between them.
“Ahem. If we might focus.”
With a final glare for her younger sister, Cora sank back against the squabs.
“Now, as Cora was correctly pointing out, we’re aware some women will prefer to marry, and as such, there are plenty for you to choose a bride from.”
“How considerate,” he drawled. “Thank you ever so much.”
Anwen beamed. “You are most welcome.”
“I think he’s being sarcastic,” Brenna said from behind her copy of Treasons Master-peece, the Powder-plot Inuented by hellish malice . . .
Leaning across the bench, he flicked a finger at the gilded letters upon the cover. “A rather apropos choice of book, I’d say, given the circumstances.”
Her earlier sisterly grievance apparently forgotten, Cora leaned closer to Brenna. “He’s calling you a traitor,” she said in a loud whisper that sent Clayton’s eyes rolling.
“Yes, I quite gathered that.” And in a clear demonstration of just how bothered by that insult she in fact was, Brenna licked the tip of her finger and flipped her page with a flourish.
His mother turned a disapproving look Clayton’s way. “You are being quite overdramatic, Clayton, and it does not become you.”
“Really? I am overdramatic? This from a mother who stormed the countess’s household like she’d unveiled a traitor at the Home Office?”
His mother gave him an arch look. “Now you’re just being silly. A lady is not permitted a role in the Home Office. More’s the pity. I do think I’d make an excellent spy, do you not?” she asked Cora.
“Oh, absolutely,” the devoted daughter praised, earning a beaming smile from the viscountess.
Clayton folded his arms before him, watching on. If a single one of them expected the matter would be so easily put to rest . . . “Ahem.”
The viscountess’s focus flew back his way. “Where were we?” Her wrinkled brow conveyed her confusion.
“I believe Clayton charged us with being given to histrionics,” Anwen volunteered. At a look from Clayton, she winced. “Sorry,” she mouthed, having the good grace to at least sink lower in her seat.
“That’s right.” The viscountess relaunched her earlier defense. “Furthermore, if we are speaking on dramatics, then we find ourselves in like ranks?”
It took a moment to register that the pointed look . . . the four pointed looks—five, if one included Eris—were all reserved for Clayton.
And then it hit him.
A laugh exploded from Clayton’s chest. “I’m the one given to histrionics. This from a family where one sister quotes Shakespeare, another is in a perpetual state of mourning, and the lot of you orchestrate an over-the-top meeting to trick me into marriage.” He laughed all the harder, earning a deepening scowl from the usually smiling viscountess. “Or where a mother who joins an antimarriage league bursts into strange households in a panic.”
“Firstly, it is not a strange household,” his mother said, her voice ripe with indignation. “It is Lady Norfolk’s. Secondly”—she puzzled her perfectly unwrinkled brow—“or is that thirdly?”
“Oh, no. I’m fairly certain that Lady Norfolk’s identity fits with your first point pertaining to Clayton’s statement of a strange household,” Anwen helped clarify for their mother.
Eris jumped off her mother’s lap and proceeded to stomp her feet on the carriage floor. “I want to go to strange households and join antimarriage leagues.”
Their mother made a soothing sound and drew her youngest daughter back onto her lap for a comforting hug. “Someday, dearest,” she cooed. “Someday.”
Clayton scrubbed his hands over his face. And he had no doubt Eris would, and that she’d also ascend to the rank of leader. Given the familial curse and Clayton’s short length of life, he’d either perish long before that or it would be what did him in. “And furthermore, why is Eris here?”
“There was trouble again with her governess . . . I had to let her go this morning, and—”
Yet again. Either way. “Forget Eris,” Clayton said.
“Well, you brought her up,” their mother pointed out.
“I know I did.” He dug his fingers into his temples. “Can we please just focus?”
When the little girl had been properly pacified, their mother looked over the top of her head at Clayton. “Furthermore, fourthly—”
“Thirdly,” Clayton and Anwen corrected in unison.
“I am not really a member of the society. I merely discovered the meetings and arranged for your sisters to attend.”
Of course she had. She’d be the only mother in the whole of the realm to maneuver her daughters into a club of women disavowing marriage.
Cora smirked. “Furthermore, it should be pointed out, given the way you arrived at Lady Norfolk’s unannounced with plans to shut down our society, that you must have acquired that trait for the outrageous from the Kearsley line.”
Checkmate.
The carriage rocked to a jarring halt that sent them rolling back and forth.
His sisters all scrambled for the latch, with their mother finding it first and letting them out before the driver had even reached the side of the carriage. By the quick, steady pace they’d set for themselves, weaving and dodging around passersby, there could be no doubting what they intended: escape.
He narrowed his eyes. Like hell was this exchange at an end.
Jumping down, he followed swiftly on the heels of the rapidly retreating Kearsleys.
As he entered, he found the lot of them stacking their cloaks atop one another’s in the arms of the family butler, Mr. Georges. The vibrant stack of fabric rose to the servant’s eyes, blocking his vision.
“Halt!” Clayton called just as they reached the main corridor leading off to another wing of the household. “In my offices.” From the corner of his eye, he caught a slight movement. Clayton sliced a glance upward. “All of you,” he called, just as Delia and Daria, observing from the top of the stairway, would have rushed off. “Now.”
Lifting their chins in unison, his sisters fell into line behind the viscountess; almost
in perfect time, Daria and Delia descended to the bottom step and met up with the rest of the Kearsleys.
Clayton removed his hat and handed it off to one of the footmen rushing forward to rescue Georges from suffocation by ladies’ garments. Shrugging out of his cloak, he handed it over and made for his offices.
All the while, indignation fueled his steps.
His kin had joined a subversive order.
His sisters and mother had all come together to try and dismantle Polite Society.
And they’d set out to deceive Clayton, using his own guilt as a tool to manipulate him into doing that which he didn’t wish to do.
Clayton firmed his jaw. He could have forgiven their joining the ranks of a rebellious society such as the one they’d found themselves members of, had they not turned those lessons on him.
Entering his offices, he found them seated nearly identically to how they had been in the carriage. Only this time, with the addition of the absent-until-now rest of his sisters, each lady had squeezed herself upon a pair of curve-backed chaises. With the exception of their mother.
This time, his mother stood behind her daughters, with her hands on her hips and a rebellious glitter in her eyes, a mark of her defiance.
The moment he reached to close the door, the viscountess launched her attack. “I am very disappointed in you.”
He pushed the panel shut. “You’re disappointed in me?”
Such was the problem of being the lone male member of a family in a house of six women . . . they excelled at disarming a gent before he could find his feet for an argument.
“It was most impolite of you to go ordering your beloved mama and sisters about in front of servants as you’ve done, Clayton.”
“Ordering us about in front of anyone.” Anwen, the most loyal of his siblings, stared at him with a disappointment that was only emphasized by those enormous spectacles.
The viscountess gave a tight nod. “Indeed, your sister is correct. It was most impolite of you to go ordering us about in front of anyone. I’ve raised you to be far more—”
“Polite?” he furnished, lifting a brow.
She pointed a manicured finger his way. “Precisely. I’ve raised all my children to be polite and kind.”
“It is also impolite for a beloved mother and sisters to go about betraying one’s son and brother,” he drawled, crossing over to the sisters who’d become members of this newest club. Clayton spread his arms before them. “And yet, here we are. Now, if you would, join me.” He motioned for the Kearsley matriarch to take a seat. “Please.”
Elevating her chin another notch, she swept around the chaise.
All the girls rushed to make room between them so that their mother had a place at the center of their group. She gave a toss of her slightly greying brown curls. “I’d begin by stating we’ve not betrayed you,” she said once more when Clayton had settled into a French leather armchair.
His sisters nodded in concurrence.
He suppressed a snort. This he had to hear.
“We merely brought you ’round to realizing that there was no reason it shouldn’t be you who weds,” Cora said, lifting her shoulders in a matter-of-fact shrug.
“Your sister is correct, Clayton.”
“All of you felt compelled to join an antimarriage society?” he asked the room at large.
Mother sighed. “That is how you men think of it.” The Kearsley women shared a commiserative look as if Clayton were the only one incapable of seeing logic and reason, and mayhap they weren’t off the mark.
“And that isn’t what the Mismatch Club—”
“Society,” his sisters and mother corrected.
“Is?” he finished.
“We’ve already told you,” Cora said. “That isn’t our sole purpose. That is what society thinks we do.” Her shoulders drew back. “But we are about far more than that; we are dedicated to the overall enlightenment of the mind through discourse on controversial—”
“Yes. Yes,” he said, cutting her off, saving himself yet another lecture on their lofty goals.
Clayton looked past his other sisters, focusing on just one, a lover of Jane Austen and gothic novels and romance tales. “You don’t wish to marry, Anwen?” Anwen, who was on her fourth Season, who’d been preparing for her entrance into Polite Society and marriage and motherhood since she’d been in the nursery, forcing Clayton into the role of pretend groom when he’d been fourteen and she five.
Anwen’s cheeks pinkened. “I don’t know if I want to marry. I just know that I don’t wish to marry yet,” she murmured, her gaze on her lap.
That he didn’t believe. But neither was it his place to challenge her on whether or not she wished to wed some gent.
“The girls just wish to be in control of their own fates and futures,” his mother clarified.
“And that couldn’t be assured without throwing me on the sacrificial wedding pyre?” he shot back.
“No.” That negation came collectively from all the ladies present.
Their mother added an extra nod in confirmation.
“Either way,” Cora put to him, “why should Anwen, and not you?” He looked toward the charge leveled by his latest opponent as she continued. “Hmm?”
Clayton bristled. “I never said she had to.”
Mother clapped her hands once. “I’ll not have this become adversarial.”
“A bit late for that,” Clayton muttered. “The timing for a friendly talk would have been better had it come before all the duplicity.”
Cora stuck out her tongue.
“Do you not want to marry?” his mother asked.
All eyes went to Clayton.
Did he want to marry?
The answer was neither a simple yes nor no . . . but rather complicated in nature, with the truth all coming down to one simple fact: he was a Kearsley. Society referred to the Kearsleys as “unlucky,” not attributing it to anything more than that, and he had never been able to correct even his friends on the matter because he knew how it seemed. Unbelievable. Overdramatic. Impossible.
But the truth remained: he was destined to die young, as had most every other male Kearsley ancestor. That knowledge—nay, that burden—had been with him early on . . . along with regret regarding his fate. That same knowledge had driven him to live as safe a life as possible, as risk-free . . . so that he would be here as long as he could for his sisters and mother.
The same sisters and mother who’d embraced their notorious line and lived with an almost careless abandon—those were luxuries not permitted him as head of the family. There was no escaping or getting around that connection and the fate that awaited him because of his bloodline.
“Why isn’t Clayton saying anything?” Eris whispered loudly, bringing Clayton out of his silent musings.
“I know why he doesn’t wish to marry.”
All eyes swiveled Daria’s way.
Daria peered at him and spoke, her voice unearthly and haunting. “It is the curse.”
He sighed. “It is—”
“Of course it is.” Murmurs of assent and understanding went around the room, interrupting his answer.
“We are all shaped by the curse, Clayton,” Anwen said ever so gently.
“Yes, I know,” he allowed. But where his sisters lived their lives fully, daring the curse to smite them, he chose a cautious path . . . and one filled only with worry. As close as they were as a family, this was something they’d never understood about him . . . and something he never felt comfortable speaking about. He adjusted a cravat that had gone rumpled under Sylvia’s hands upon him. “Might we return to talk of the Mis—?”
“Well, I think it is silly to be so bound to the curse. ‘The world’s mine oyster, Which I with sword will open,’ and you should let it be, too,” Delia said to a round of stomping feet of consent from their sisters.
He waited until that rumble of noise quieted before shifting them away from the uncomfortable matter of the curse, over to a dif
ferent and slightly safer topic. “I simply feel it might be best if you consider not attending—”
Brenna burst to her feet. “You think to tell us not to go to Lady Norfolk’s?” she cried out, her voice sharp with shock and disbelief.
“Yes. No.” He dragged his hand through his hair. “It is just . . .”
They stared back. “Yes?” they asked.
It was just that the last person he needed his family having dealings with was Norfolk’s widow.
He’d spent the better part of three years avoiding the lady, and with his siblings forming a friendship of sorts, that distance he’d kept between them grew tenuous. Those were details he couldn’t share with his family. Or anyone.
Cora gasped, stifling that sound behind her fingertips; all the while, from over them, she scowled at Clayton.
“What is it now, Cora?” he asked, drawing upon the patience that could come only from being the eldest sibling in a family of six others.
“Why . . . why . . .” His sister stretched out another several “whys” until she’d ensured all eyes were upon her. “You disapprove of Lady Norfolk.”
He sputtered under that false and erroneous assumption. “That is prepos—”
“And I should expect better of you, given her connection to Lord Norfolk,” Mother added, tsking her disapproval, to which all his kin present added until they had the sound of the chicks from Eris’s collection of fowl at their Kent estate.
He set his teeth hard enough that his jaw ached. The illustrious Lord Norfolk, whose family, along with most of society, believed him to have been a paragon while he lived. Clayton himself had also believed that at one time.
“It has nothing to do with the lady and everything to do with . . . with . . .”
“Yes?” they prodded when he went silent.
And yet, what was there to say? Neither he nor his father, when he had been living, had been ones to stifle and silence the women of their large family. He wasn’t one who’d dare prohibit them from forming friendships where they would . . . or dissuade them from speaking their minds. But this newfound relationship his sisters had with Sylvia . . . it went beyond that. It dragged forth the past and a connection with Sylvia that he was better off not thinking about.
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