Julian’s mind had already made up a long list of possible outcomes from allowing his mother to help select the guests for his house party. Of the myriad of outcomes, very few were favorable for him.
He would need to tread carefully when it came to the party. Knowing his mother, she would do everything in her power to arrange a marriage for him that was entirely unsuitable.
A wife who would treat him in exactly the same fashion as she had his father—that would be her ultimate revenge for him having the temerity to be born. Nothing would make her happier than to see her only son miserable.
Even now, he could imagine her sitting in her fine carriage on her way back to her fine new husband, plotting how best she could hurt her son.
“Just remember, no matter whom she chooses to invite, you don’t have to marry any of them,” said Lady Margaret eventually.
“Yes. But what damage will she manage to do in the meantime? Will the mothers of thetonbe told that I am some kind of monster, entirely unfit for marriage?”
Only after he returned to London following the end of the week-long party, would he know whether the price of recovering the Crusader Ruby had been set beyond his means.
