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“I can’t say I’ve everhad someone turn tail and run off so quickly after being required to spend time with me,” Toss said, watching as Scott packed up his traveling trunk.
“I’m just hoping to get one night of sleep without your incessant talking keeping me awake.”
Toss pressed his hand to his heart and pulled his features in an expression of mingled hope and suffering. “At least I can console myself knowing you’ll write.”
Scott looked up from his efforts. “What makes you think I’m that fond of you?”
“It’s not a matter of fondness forme. I’ve seen you write four letters in as many days.”
“In other words, it is my fondness for letters that you are depending on.”
“Obviously.” Toss shrugged. “And as I am such a personable and unforgettable fellow, I assume you’ll be writing to me the very moment we are no longer in company.”
Scott snatched up the nearest thing at hand—his netted coin pouch—and threw it at Toss, pretending to do so out of offense.
Toss caught it easily. “Huzzah! Now I can tell my brother to do whatever he wants with my income from the estate while I go and live the life I want.”
“You can do all that with £2?”
“You have only£? to your name?” Toss sounded as if he didn’t know whether to believe that or not. They’d come to know each other well in the last two days—Toss really did talk a lot and had a knack for getting others to talk as well—and had discovered their situations were not entirely dissimilar. Toss’s family wasn’t destitute, but his brother heldallthe purse strings, leaving Toss pinched for money, something Scott understood all too well.
“I have only£?in that pouch,” Scott said. “I have at least another sixpence in the coffers.”
Toss threw the pouch back. “Do you suppose this Thimbleby place will be a disaster?”
“With my luck . . . yes.”
“Write and tell me what you find,” Toss said.
Scott eyed him a moment. “You really want me to send you letters?”
He shrugged. “You like to write them, and I like to read them. I’m not likely to write back, I should warn you.”
“That won’t discourage me. My own mother doesn’t write back.” He closed the lid of his traveling trunk. “And I’ve been writing to her for years.”
Toss lay back on his bed, hands folded behind his head. “I’d wagerCharlie’smother writes back.”
“Faithfully.”
With a far-off quality to his voice, Toss asked, “Do you ever wish you were part of the Jonquil family instead of your own?”
“I wouldn’t give up my sister for anything,” Scott said, wandering toward the window. “My late father will always be the best of fathers, in my estimation. And I love my mother, no matter her frustrating silence. But outside of that, yes, I’ve wondered what it would be like to be one of them.”
Toss’s smile returned. “You are playing the rescuing knight tomorrow, returning Gillian to Houghton Manor. That’s a veryJonquilthing to do.”
“Making an utter mess of things is also a very Jonquil thing to do.”
Toss laughed. “There’s still time for ample blunders.”
Scott smiled as he turned his attention to the window and the view beyond. He never had learned if the mountains grew snowy in winter or turned green in the spring. There never seemed to be time for the quietly pleasant things he would have enjoyed.His inherited debts and liabilities demanded all his time and thoughts and concentration, none of which were ever enough.
Movement on the grounds below caught his attention. Two of the Huntresses were walking slowly, arm in arm. He didn’t need more than a moment to know they were Gillian and Daria. They’d changed from the fine gowns they’d been wearing when he had, not more than an hour ago, gone to the circular sitting room after hearing Lisette’s explanation of Gillian’s predicament. The very practical day dresses and spencers the ladies below were wearing were better suited to a walk outdoors. He, though, had a lingering memory of Gillian’s gray-blue gown and how perfectly it had matched her eyes.
She’d been grieving, heartbroken, overwhelmed at her sudden change of circumstances and plans, and for a moment, he’d not been able to think of anything except how strikingly beautiful she’d looked. His uncle would not have been bothered by that momentary lack of compassion, but his father would have been.
There seemed no end to the ways he proved a disappointment to his father.
Toss joined him at the window. His gaze swiftly found the ladies below. “Shame about Gillian’s cousin or aunt or—” Toss looked at him, clearly unsure the exact connection between Gillian and Mrs. Brownlow.
