So, so, so very hurt that it made his poor, bludgeoned heart ache. “I presume you tracked me down at this late hour because you have something pressing to say, aunt, so kindly get it over with because I am busy.” Busy feeling betrayed.
“Your mother went to bed in tears tonight after the unfair and disrespectful tongue-lashing you gave her.”
“If you are referring to the private conversation I had with my mother when she ambushed me on my way out this morning, then it was hardly unfair.” Although it had been more a tongue-lashing than a conversation. She’d complained that he’d bolted from his surprise dinner and then disappeared before the dessert without so much as a thank-you-all-for-coming-but-I-am-tired, and he had replied—shouted actually—something along the lines of “you’re blasted lucky I even turned up for the meal and you can shove your stupid parlor games where the sun doesn’t shine.”
“I reluctantly agreed to a birthday dinner party on the day of my birthday, set strict parameters for the occasion, and she ignored every single one of them to put on a surprise she knew I would hate. Therefore, if anyone has disrespected anyone, then she is the guilty party.”
His aunt’s only reaction to that unpalatable truth was to roll her eyes. “She’s also been close to tears all day trying to explain away your absence, despite the brave face she has put on for your guests, so I hope you are proud of yourself.”
“They are not my guests.” While he was filled with guilt at the news that his mother, who rarely cried, had done so because of him, he had to defend himself on that score too. He wasn’t going to be painted the villain of this piece when he was the victim! “I did not invite one single person currently ensconced in my house to be there!” Each time he thought of all those people, he felt queasy. “They are her guests—and yours—and whatever plans she has made behind my back with them are her problem and not mine. As you can plainly see…” Guy swept an expansive arm to encompass his stack of ledgers, papers, and his moonlit estate outside. “I have a million more important responsibilities to attend to.”
“Boo-hoo, poor you.” His aunt clomped closer. “I suppose, in your tiny, closed-off mind, that justifies your failure to return to those guests last night? Legitimizes the temper tantrum you subjected your poor mother to when she had the audacity to tell you off for leaving a dinner that she, and a great many other people, worked hard to lay on for you? Excuses youfrom failing to attend every meal or activity today? Of failing to pop your ungrateful head into the room, even, for two minutes to say hello to all the people who traveled all the way here to see you? When the very least you could do is offer your profound apology for your unforgivable absence.”
“To apologize, I would have to feel some regret at missing them.”
“Do you take delight in insulting so many good people, Guy? Does it make you feel better about yourself?”
“‘Delight’ is too strong a word for the indifference I feel toward them, aunt.”
“Indifference? To good people who have come here with no other motive than to help you to celebrate your birthday? Shame on you!”
Good people, his arse! “Are you claiming they have no other motive?” Guy’s stunned laugh was bitter. “Do you and my mother honestly think that I was born yesterday? Or did you not consider me canny enough to notice that every family invited conveniently also has a single daughter of marriageable age to parade under my nose?”
That was just one of the things about Lottie’s involvement in this awful situation that bothered him. Hurt him more than the surprise had. She had known it was a cattle market and that he was the prize bull up for sale and she still hadn’t told him. Even when they had buried the hatchet and settled their differences and grown closer. Close enough that he had considered her a friend. Close enough that he had been compelled to kiss her last night and had come within a gnat’s cock of asking to be allowed to court her!
If she had any reciprocal romantic feelings for him, it made no sense that she would be party to that. Nor would she send him into the lion’s den without warning him. Ergo, he could only conclude that her loyalties lay elsewhere, his feelings weren’t returned, and that he had wasted them on the wrong woman yet again.
“This whole mockery of a surprise house party is merely my dear mama’s latest unsubtle attempt to get me to make her some grandchildren.” Which, ironically, he would have been right up for last night with Lottie. But that was yesterday, when he’d not been thinking straight. Today, he didn’t even want to look at her, let alone touch her.
A shocking lie which he hoped if he repeated often enough to himself, he might eventually believe!
“My dear mama has put me out to stud in a field full of mares and she doesn’t care which one I mount so long as I mount one of them.” Whichever way he looked at it that was insulting. And humiliating.
So,sovery humiliating.
Aunt Almeria turned her nose up as if horrified. “Don’t be vulgar, Guy!”
“Whyever not, when it is vulgar?” He had feelings, after all. And foolishly futile hopes and dreams about the sort of wife he wanted to spend eternity with. However, in one fell swoop, his mother had reduced him to the appendage between his legs and not the man who actually owned it! “Is it any wonder I want no part of it?”
Aunt Almeria pulled up a stool, and as soon as she perched upon it, sniffed the air with distaste. “It stinks in here! It’s a wonder you can breathe, let alone work, with this acrid stench in your nostrils. It’s making me gag.” For effect, she did. “The smell is suffocating.”
“I’m quite used to the aroma of a stable.” He certainly preferred it over the bitter stench of betrayal. Thanks to all his stuttering and stammering before the kiss, Lottie also knew that she tied him in knots and he hated that he had given her that power over him. Feeling so emotionally exposed made him feel physically sick.
“Horses, I can stand.” Aunt Almeria coughed some more, directly over his ledger too, forcing him to sit back rather than be sprayed. Forcing him to pay attention as she jabbed an incensed finger inches from his face. “The fetid aroma of burning martyr, I cannot. Now get your moping carcass out of that chair and go be the host your mother’s efforts deserve.”
“Do you need an ear trumpet, aunt? As you clearly didn’t hear anything I just said about wanting no part of the charade being played in supposed honor of my birthday. I especially do not want the part of the leading man!”
“Leading man!” She slapped her hand on the table before she waggedher finger again. “Oh, for pity’s sake! This is not about you, idiot! It has never been about you! You have some arrogance to even think that it is!”
Perhaps she was going senile rather than selectively deaf. Or had partaken of a glass too many of sherry after dinner. “Er… correct me if I am wrong, aunt, but isn’t that mockery of a sham my surprise milestone birthday party? Or am I not the one turning thirty?” He glanced around the tack room and then under the table as if looking for the real birthday boy. “Don’t tell me that my manipulative mother has another son that she wants wed but has kept that a secret from me for three decades? If she has, I certainly hope that my secret brother is feeling frisky enough to service all those braying fillies she procured for him. And in between breeding, he can jolly well pay for the unwanted debacle as well, as I dread to think how much it is going to cost to feed forty unwelcome mouths at least three meals a day for a week. He’s welcome to the lot of them!”
“That’s just as well as martyrdom, vulgarity,andsarcasm are the most unattractive characteristics in a potential mate.” His aunt shot him a withering glance. “If you are going to be selfish and view things on the most superficial level possible, nephew, then yes, this event has been thrown in your honor. However, while I share my dear sister’s frustrations that you have failed to do your duty, it is her that currently concerns me the most. I am extremely worried about her.”
“If she’s convinced you that she is ill, she really isn’t.” He threw his head heavenward and prayed for strength. “She’s definitely got heartburn and not heart failure. I checked with her physician. He’s prescribed her peppermint tea and licorice root and she’ll take neither to ease it and still eats cheese!”
It was his aunt’s turn to stare at the sky as she shook her head. “What day is it today, Guy?”
“Saturday. Which means I still have too many interminable days left of my mother’s hideous surprise to endure and trust me, I am counting down both the hours and the minutes.”
