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Jack let the remark sit. He tried to look like an aristocrat pretending not to notice a social lapse.
Seemingly he succeeded, because Winstead flushed.
“I thought I would take the duke as my model,” Jack said, heaping coals on his head.
“What’s this registry?” the older man growled.
“I intend to look into that.”
“I’ll find out.” Winstead glowered. He had a broad repertoire of threatening expressions. “I’ll brook no delays. And if you think you’ll see a cent of my money before the knot is tied…”
“This is actually faster than banns, I believe.”
Winstead glared. He didn’t like being opposed, even when he was being given something he wanted. He would almost…almost prefer to throw it away. But not quite. How had Harriet and her kindly mother resulted from such a forebear? The man was a monster of selfishness, and the sooner they got away from him, the better. However that separation was accomplished.
Could it not be marriage? The pang that followed this thought laid Jack’s soul bare—he loved Harriet. With all his heart. This had made her denial of the engagement a greater blow than any rejection from society. He adored her. If she did not love him, then…a sudden pain twisted in his chest. But her mother had been sure about her affections. Jack sat straighter. Whatever the truth, the first step was to wrest control of the situation from this tyrant. He was quite able to dothat. “So we are agreed. There will be no banns. I will procure a license…”
“I’m to trust you to do it then?”
Had Winstead bullied his way to commercial success? Jack supposed he had. Such things happened, unfortunately. “Tereford said the bridegroom generally does.” He was wielding the duke’s name like a duelist’s sword.
Winstead growled what might have been an assent. “I’ll tell the vicar there’s to be no banns,” he said, reasserting his primacy. “Useless fellow might have let me know about the license,” he muttered. He glared at Jack. “You’d best have it in hand before the ball.”
“The…oh yes.” He’d heard there was to be a ball. Winstead had been lashing his builders along to finish his new ballroom.
“I’ll have the whole neighborhood here, and I want everything in order.” Winstead leaned forward, bracing for an argument.
Jack refused the gambit. “Indeed.” He rose to go.
“What about the settlements?”
Right, he was expected to care about those. “Perhaps you could have something drawn up?”
“You would allow that?” Winstead seemed incredulous.
“I can look the documents over, and we can discuss any points of contention.” Actually he would ask the duchess to read the things. She would ferret out anything that needed negotiating. If he was getting married. He so hoped he was.
Smirking like a man who’s put something over on a rival, Winstead stood. “Very well, my lord. I shall have the papers for you in a few days.”
Jack nodded and, gratefully, took his leave. Once they were married—should they be married—he and Harriet would spend as little time as possible with her grandfather, he decided.
“I shall expect to hear you have the license,” Winstead called after him.
Of course, he had to have the last word. With a wave of his hand, Jack gave it to him and made his escape.
***
“You have just missed him,” the Duchess of Tereford told Harriet not long after Ferrington had gone out that day. “I believe he went to see your grandfather.”
“He what?”
“James said he intended to discuss the marriage settlements.”
That couldn’t be right. Not after their last encounter when everything had gone so wrong and she’d been too tongue-tied to explain. Harriet had come to Ferrington Hall today to do so and set things right.
“Is that surprising?” Cecelia asked. “Why shouldn’t he? It must be done.”
Only if they were to wed. Harriet wasn’t certain of that after she had so wounded the man she…loved. During a dark, tearful night, Harriet had faced it. She loved Jack the rogue earl, and she had hurt him. The look in his dark eyes when he’d come back into the room after overhearing their careless talk had cut her to the quick. Her throat had been tight with remorse, her mind frozen.
