She looked at her watch brooch. “I’m sorry to tell you it is slow. We have just enough time to change and leave. They must have planned dinner before they asked us.”
Damn!At this rate, he’d never have time alone with his wife. “When we get to Rose Hill, I’m barring the doors.”
“I’ll help you.”
She rang the bell-pull and soon her dresser and his valet were attending them. Now that everything with her uncle had been settled, Mary seemed to dismiss the cousin. Yet if their grandmothers thought Tolliver was in Edinburgh, Kit would have to be on his guard. After all, few people knew he and Mary had wed. He wouldn’t put it past the blackguard to try to abduct her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Mary would rather have walked, if only to spend more time with Kit, but her thin silk-and-kidskin slippers would have failed, at least twice, and one could not attend a dinner wearing half-boots.
He handed her into one of Lady Theo’s small town coaches. Once he’d taken his seat, he put his arm around her shoulders, and they sat in companionable silence during the short ride to the hotel.
Suddenly Mary had a thought. “I wonder what they would have done had they found us at the King’s Arms?”
Kit barked a laugh. “Ordered champagne and danced a jig, is my guess.”
She grinned. “You’re probably right. I know we’ve decided to forgive them, but I would still like to know what prompted it all.”
His head moved, as if he was gazing at her. Unfortunately, her bonnet blocked her view of him. “I’m not sure I wish to know what goes on in their brainboxes. It might frighten me.” Kit tightened his hold on her. “But by all means, ask. It might be interesting to know how ladies who should be in Bedlam think.”
Mary was still chuckling a few minutes later when the coach came to a stop at the hotel. Kit waved aside the footman waiting to assist her, and handed her out himself. A surge of love speared through her as she remembered all the small, caring gestures he’d made toward her that she’d mistaken as mere courtesy and not signs of his regard. For the first time she wondered if Kit had attempted to court her in Town, whether she’d have been aware enough to notice. He definitely wouldn’t have punched a gentleman there.Hmm.
They were escorted to their grandmothers’ apartments. The rooms made the ones they’d had look small in comparison. The parlor waslarger, and flanked at each end by bedchambers. They even had a balcony with a view to the garden in back of the hotel.
Her grandmother bussed her cheek, then held out her hand to Kit, who bowed over it. His grandmother hugged and kissed Mary and Kit.
“Kit,” her grandmother said, “you may pour the drinks.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Under the watchful eye of her grandmother’s butler, the hotel’s servants bustled in and out preparing the table. Their conversation centered on their travel to Edinburgh until the butler announced dinner. Once seated, with only Grandmamma’s servants in attendance, the conversation grew more interesting.
“I suppose you are aware of Meg’s love interest,” Grandmother Featherton said.
Kit’s lips pressed together. “I am. The best I can say for him is that he seems to care for her and has no ulterior motives. A bit of a bore, in my opinion.”
Mary wanted to pinch him under the table, but he’d been seated across from her. She couldn’t even reach to kick him. How could he not know he’d just given their grandmothers permission to interfere?
“I agree, Kit,” Grandmother Featherton commented. “He’s not up to her weight.”
He shrugged. “There is nothing for it. It’s her choice.”
As he applied himself to the soup, their grandmothers exchanged an almost surreptitious glance.
“Speaking of potential mates,” Mary said, giving them a wide-eyed, innocent look. “Exactly when did the two of you decide Kit and I would make a good couple?”
“Notgood, my dear,” Grandmother Featherton said. “Excellent. Constance and I have always striven for brilliant matches.”
“And not what thetonnormally considers brilliant,” her grandmamma added. “Life can be a very long time. Even lengthier if one is unhappily wed.”
Kit held his serviette to his mouth as he made a small choking noise.
“Are you all right, my dear?” his grandmother said as she slapped him on the back. “For instance, look how happy your parents are.”
He glanced up, his eyes suspiciously red. “You matched them? To hear it from my mother’s point of view, they fell in love.”
“Of course they did,” Grandmamma Featherton responded in an insulted tone. “We simply threw them in each other’s way and ensured they had sufficient opportunity to get to know one another.”
