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“I wouldn’t call them excesses,” she mumbled.
He fished a note from the pile of correspondence Wilkins had given him. “You do not find one thousand pounds to be an excess?” he questioned.
“Give me that.” She held out her hand and leveled him with a stare that would have made him quake in his boots when he was younger. With her icy glare and pinched brows, she could freeze him in his tracks when he was a boy, but no longer.
“I think not,” he returned. Then he took a deep breath and dove directly into the issue at hand. “I believe it’s time for you to move back to the Hall, Mother.” He would hate having her underfoot, but he couldn’t keep an eye on her if she wasn’t at hand.
She pulled back and turned up her nose. “I’ll do no such thing. My town house is perfectly acceptable.”
“You mean my town house,” he clarified.
“It’s mine in theory,” she huffed as she sank primly onto a chair across from him.
“The amount of money you’re losing at the gaming tables is tremendous,” he said as he withdrew more notes from his drawer. They arrived nearly every day. From people his mother had gambled with and lost. They all knew she wasn’t good for the debts. Yet they played with her anyway because the Duke of Robinsworth never left a debt unpaid. His presence in their drawing rooms might not be valued. But his purse certainly was.
“I’ll take those,” she said again.
“Why, Mother? You cannot begin to pay them.”
Her face fell. “I do not know why you feel you have to be so cruel,” she said as her eyes welled up with tears.
“I do not understand why you gamble with money you don’t have.” He tapped the cards on the table. Then he made a clucking sound with his tongue. “But I’m prepared to pay them in full.”
“As you must, Robin,” she said quietly, using his childhood nickname.
“On one condition,” he amended.
Her face contorted slightly. “Which is?” she said from between gritted teeth.
“I’m closing the town house effective immediately. You’ll be moving back to the Hall.”
She jumped to her feet. “I will do no such thing,” she gasped.
He continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “I will reconcile your debts. Every last one of them. Then you will cease gambling with money you do not have. You may use your pin money any way you see fit.”
“But there’s not enough,” she protested.
Still, he continued. “You will spend nothing more than your pin money. You will move back to the Hall. You will assist me with my daughter.”
“Anne hates me.”
Anne hated everyone. “You will assist me with your granddaughter. She could use a feminine presence. You will behave respectably and set a good example for her.”
“You need a wife,” she snapped. “It’s unfortunate that no one of respectable breeding will have you.”
Oh, his mother knew how to throw the barbs that would hurt the most. “Then I am free from the wife search, it seems, since no respectable woman would pay me her favors.” He leveled her with a glare. Though Miss Thorne had graced him with a smile and no fear in her eyes.
“It took years for me to get over your past deeds. To find my way back into society. You have no idea how arduous the task was.” He couldn’t gather sympathy for her, despite the look of anguish in her eyes. “If I move back to the Hall, I will once again be cast beneath your dark cloud of suspicion.”
“Do you think I killed my wife, Mother?” he clipped out.
“Of course not,” she rushed on.
“Then I would assume a mother who finds no fault with her son will be quite content to return to the family estate.”
“My friends won’t know what to think.”
“Quite frankly, Mother, I don’t give a damn what they think,” he drawled. “I’ll have Wilkins begin the preparations to move your household.”
