Her father slashed his hand through the air. “My decision is final. I’ll not have you in the company of Viscount Everdene.”
“Lucien will not even be at this tea!” Grace flung back.
“Lucien!” her father sputtered in outrage. “Since when have you two been on such informal terms?”
“Since we were eight and in dancing lessons. And you’ve naught to worry about regarding his lordship’s presence at Everdene Hall. He intends to return to London.” A sense of loss surprised Grace.
“Dearest Grace,” Helen said. “I beg you see reason. Your father and I love you very much.”
“Love me?” Good heavens. The woman barely knew her.
Helen reached for Papa’s hand, giving him an adoring smile, before turning it to Grace. “It is because of that love that I wrote to my dear friend Deborah and explained that it is imperative that you depart for Scotland at once.”
The world seemed to tilt at her stepmother’s words. Grace heard Will blustering his objections as if from a distance. “Scotland?” Grace stared at her father, certain he’d object. When he did not, she turned her attention back to Helen. “That is hardly for you to decide!”
“Youwillshow your stepmotherproperrespect,” her father said. “Helen wrote at my direction.”
“Not at mine!” Grace wheeled to face her father. “I’m not a child to be ordered about.”
“You are a woman who should have been married long ago!” His words fell like stone.
Bitterness spilled poison inside her as she glared at him. “Now that Mama is dead, and you have no more use for me as a nursemaid, I’m to be married off? Do you feel even a qualm about sending me so far away from everyone I love? From the little boys?”
Her father reared back as if she’d slapped him. “I saw the way that Lord Everdene was looking at you, even if you did not!”
But she had. The confusion, the sensual attraction, the deep pull of understanding she could not deny. Despite multiple emotionally fraught encounters, she felt a kind of ease with Lucien she’d not encountered with any man she’d ever known.
Silence filled the room, her father’s gaze challenging her to deny what they both knew was true. At last, he tugged at his cravat. “I am sending you away for your own good,” he said. “I wish to see you married with a household of your own.”
“InScotland? With a man I’venever met?”
“Deborah assures me that the local belles find her son most amiable!” Helen interjected.
“Then they are welcome to him!” Grace crossed her arms and gave a sharp nod.
“You will leave for Inverness within the week and remain there until the season begins. If a betrothal is not forthcoming from that quarter, I have also made it known to Neville’s father that you are, as yet, unwed should Neville wish to renew his addresses.”
Grace stared at him, feeling sick. “How could you?”
“Why should I not? You have fulfilled your duties to your mother. The impediments that separated you and Neville have dissolved.”
“He’s married.”
“His American wife succumbed to yellow fever while he was surveying business interests in Louisiana.”
“You contacted his family without a word to me? Mama would never have sanctioned this.”
“Your mother is not here.”
Her hands balled into fists. “I know that better than anyone! I was with her when she died, while you?—”
She stopped herself just before she said the words she could never take back, but they hung in the air, unspoken. Her father’s face went ice white. Helen snuffled in her handkerchief.
He patted his wife’s hand, his gaze locked on Grace. “This discussion is over until you can conduct yourself as a dutiful daughter should.”
“I will. As mymother’sdaughter.” She turned on her heel and stormed from the room. Will caught up with her at the top of the stairs. He grabbed her elbow, spun her around and gathered her against him, clinging as they had after their mother died.
“Of all the abominable interference!” Will said. “Helen is shameless! And father—I’d never have believed he was capable of this. What are you going to do?”
