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Chapter Eight
“Ernest,” she said, smiling, “it’s good to see you.”
He rose from his chair and bowed. “Likewise, Jenny. I heard you had taken ill last night at the ball.”
“I am better now as you can see. Please do be seated.” She sat down adjacent to him. “Your grandmother left not long ago.”
“She came to threaten you to marry my cousin, did she not?”
“Persuade, more like.”
“And did she succeed?” he asked, looking worried.
“She did. I have agreed to marry Nicholas.”
“I was hoping for a different answer,” he said, frowning. “Are you certain you want to do this?”
She could be open with Ernest, tell him things she could not tell her father. “The benefits are too great to pass and…” she trailed off and looked away. She had been about to say that Nicholas was not a stranger. Hewasa stranger now.
“And what?” Ernest prodded gently.
“Nicholas has changed,” she said. “I don’t recognize the man he has become.”
Ernest leaned forward in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees. “Neither do I and I can’t understand what brought on the change.”
Jenny had been wondering the same thing. Before he’d left England after his studies at Oxford, he wrote to her frequently, asked her how she was faring, and even inquired about her growing collection of rocks. But then he had left and all that came after that was silence.
“Has he ever replied to your letters when he was on the continent?” she asked.
“Yes,” Ernest answered, “but they contained very little information. He mostly informed me of where he was.”
“He never replied to me,” she said quietly, looking down at her hands.
“This is my fear. I’m afraid he has changed too much for you but if I am being honest, you are the only woman I would approve for him to marry. Perhaps you can help him with whatever is troubling him.”
Jenny doubted that. “I don’t know if I can.”
He smiled gently at her. “You will be able to. I trust you.”
She chuckled. “We shall see.” He had become the brother she never had and she cherished their relationship. He also knew Nicholas—the new Nicholas—more than she did.
“Does he know that you have accepted his proposal?”
“My father has signed the contract and I gave your grandmother an answer in person. He will know soon enough.”
“He should be delighted,” Ernest drawled and she was unsure whether he was being ironic. “I did not eat breakfast before I came here,” he declared. “Will you be a dear and feed a poor man?”
She laughed and rose to ring the bell for the butler. “You are anything but poor.”
“Well, I have no title,” he joked. She was happy he had outgrown his jealousy of Nicholas’s title. It had caused them a lot of trouble when they were children. Ernest had even refused to play with her because she was Nicholas’s friend.
“And still, fresh-faced debutantes throw themselves at you.” Before she could draw the bell pull, the butler appeared in the doorway with a calling card on a tray. “Another caller?” she asked, picking up the tray.
“Yes, my lady. The Duke of Seaton.” Immediately after he said that Nicholas appeared behind him.
He bowed in greeting before entering the drawing room. Jenny took a moment to order Ernest’s refreshments, doubling the ration to accommodate Nicholas, then joined them.
“I believe felicitations are in order,” Ernest said, smiling slyly.
