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“Hardly that,” she replied. “Papa was astonished when he heard.”
“As was I.” James remembered the bewildered outrage of his fifteen-year-old self when told that he would be under the thumb of a stranger until he reached the age of twenty-five. “And, begging your pardon, but your father is hardly a pattern card of wisdom.”
“No. He is indolent and self-centered. Almost as much as you are.”
“Why, Miss Vainsmede!” He rarely called her that. They had dropped formalities and begun using first names when she was twelve. “I am not the least indolent.”
She hid a smile. “Only if you count various forms of sport. Which I do not. I have thought about the trusteeship, however. From what I’ve learned of your father—I did not know him of course—I think he preferred to be in charge.”
A crack of laughter escaped James. “Preferred! An extreme understatement. He had the soul of an autocrat and the temper of a frustrated tyrant.”
She frowned at him. “Yes. Well. Having heard something of that, I came to the conclusion that your father chose mine because he was confident Papa would do nothing in particular.”
“What?”
“I think that your father disliked the idea of not being…present to oversee your upbringing, and he couldn’t bear the idea of anyonedoinganything about that.”
James frowned as he worked through this convoluted sentence.
“And so he chose my father because he was confident Papa wouldn’t…bestir himself and try to make changes in the arrangements.”
Surprise kept James silent for a long moment. “You know that is the best theory I have heard. It might even be right.”
“You needn’t sound so astonished,” Cecelia replied. “I often have quite good ideas.”
“What a crackbrained notion!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My father’s, not yours.” James shook his head. “You think he drove me nearly to distraction just to fend off change?”
“If he had lived…” she began.
“Oh, that would have been far worse. A never-ending battle of wills.”
“You don’t know that. I was often annoyed with my father when I was younger, but we get along well now.”
“Because he lets you be as scandalous as you please, Cecelia.”
“Oh nonsense.”
James raised one dark brow.
“IwishI could learn to do that,” exclaimed his pretty visitor. “You are said to have the most killing sneer in theton, you know.”
He was not going to tell her that he had spent much of a summer before the mirror when he was sixteen perfecting the gesture.
“And it wasnotscandalous for me to attend one ball without a chaperone. I was surrounded by friends and acquaintances. What could happen to me in such a crowd?” She shook her head. “At any rate, I am quite on the shelf at twenty-two. So it doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t be stupid.” James knew, from the laments of young gentleman acquaintances, that Cecelia had refused several offers. She was anything but “on the shelf.”
“I am never stupid,” she replied coldly.
He was about to make an acid retort when he recalled that Cecelia was a positive glutton for work. She’d also learned a great deal about estate management and business as her father pushed tasks off on her, his only offspring. She’d come to manage much of Vainsmede’s affairs as well as the trust. Indeed, she’d taken to it as James never had. He thought of the challenge confronting him. Could he cajole her into taking some of it on?
She’d gone to open the door at the rear of the entryway. “There is just barely room to edge along the hall here,” she said. “Why would anyone keep all these newspapers? There must be years of them. Do you suppose the whole house is like this?”
“I have a sinking feeling that it may be worse. The sole servant ran off as if she was conscious of her failure.”
