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Devin waited. “Marlowe can succeed you at St. Wilfrid’s,” he said, when his cousin finally stopped hanging on to the door and straightened up. “That temporary fellow who succeeded you last November is as tedious in the pulpit as he is in real life.”
“I suspect we need Marlowe today,” Otis said, chortling. “Emergency, isn’t it? After waiting two years while I was studying for the priesthood, now St. Wilfrid’s can’t survive a month without a vicar.”
“I see you understand,” Devin said, ignoring his cousin’s glee.
“If you’d worried about your parishioners’ suffering, you wouldn’t have held the living for me.”
“You’re family.”
“I’m a rotten vicar, and I always was headed that direction,” Otis said. “You’ll have to dispatch with your competition yourself, Devin. Marlowe is a good choice for St. Wilfrid’s. One look at him and anyone would know that the fellow is not only picturesque but virtuous. A do-gooder to the bone. Ready to punt people into the next life with a prayer or twenty.”
“I agree,” Devin said.
“If I had any doubts about leaving the clergy—and I don’t—this conversation would have turned the balance. This is going to be a marvelous Season. Just wait until my father—”
“Otis.” Devin’s voice cracked like a whip.
“Really?”
“No.”
“I suppose,” Otis conceded. “Father’s going to see, though. People think he is too blunt to be perceptive, but they’re wrong.”
“There may be nothing to see,” Devin said. “I merely had a brief conversation with the lady. I should make . . . I should thoroughly assess the field.”
“You know, there are two ways of picking a horse, not that it’s an appropriate comparison,” Otis said. “You can check the teeth, the withers, and the gait of every steed for sale at Tattersall’s or . . .”
“Or?”
“Or you can just look one in the eyes and start negotiating a price.”
“Aren’t you the one who just told me that I can’t buy one of the Wildes? That my title and money aren’t enough?”
“True,” Otis said, pulling the door open. “I’m not saying that the negotiations would be easy or end favorably. I’m just saying that sometimes a man knows instinctively what he wants. And on that subject, not even a morning call to Miss Astley until I decide your next step.”
Devin stared at the closed door for a long minute after his cousin left.
The door opened and Otis’s head appeared. “Send violets, masses of them,” he ordered. “No note, just your card.” He disappeared again.
Devin had never done anything rash in his life. In fact, he couldn’t think of a single impulsive decision.
As a child, his father’s fits of uncontrolled rage had kept him from imprudent behavior. He had been educated at home instead of being sent to Eton, so that—in his opinion—his father could have the pleasure of exploding with rage and throwing his tutors out the door. Just when Devin turned sixteen and might have begun to rebel, his father died.
That huge, blustering life was snuffed out, and Devin stepped into the silence.
After that, there wasn’t any time to rebel. He had to find people to advise him, as there was much he didn’t know.
His father hadn’t paid attention to estate management, and Devin had had no time to learn it. He needed to pay his father’s debts, when he didn’t even know how many there were. It was the beginning of a lifetime’s practice of hiring the best and setting them to work.
In fact . . .
He froze.
Had he just enlisted his cousin to do his wooing for him?
Chapter Eight
The Duke of Lindow’s townhouse
