What had Patrina been like before the bastard had ruined her good name? He imagined a smiling, teasing, effervescent young woman. Not this guarded creature who only smiled with any real sincerity at his children.
“Why do you ask about Lady Patrina?” Suspicion underlined his sister’s question.
“Charlotte became separated from the nursemaid.” Wandered off, but that detail didn’t need pointing out considering all his sister’s talk of a mother for his children. “Lady Patrina returned her home.” He chose to leave out all the other fascinating pieces of their three exchanges thus far. His proper sister would look at snowball tossing as a grave offense equal to elopement.
“That was kind of her,” Amanda said with obvious reluctance. “Though in truth, I feel rather sorry for the young woman.” She made a clicking sound with her tongue. “No young woman deserves to have her affections played with and her reputation in tatters as Lady Patrina.”
No, indeed.
“She’s not fit company for anyone, Weston, certainly not for your children.”
From across the room, he detected the faintest rustle of the curtains. Charlotte poked her head around the brocade fabric, a frown on her lips. He gave his head a slight shake. She disappeared once more. The splash of color on her plump cheeks indicated outrage at Amanda’s charges against Patrina. He flexed his jaw. An outrage he shared.
“That isn’t to say she isn’t a pleasant woman,” his sister went on. “If I remember correctly, she is no great beauty but possessed a warm smile.”
Amanda’s casual dismissal of Patrina gnawed at him. He found he far preferred the gentle, sincere beauty of Patrina’s heart-shaped face to the more obvious beauty of his late wife. His curtains were clearly of like opinion for they growled in response to Amanda’s unforgiving words about Patrina.
He cleared his throat to cover Charlotte’s clear annoyance from over at her hiding place.
“It has been three years, Weston. Time enough for you to mourn Cordelia’s passing, and find a mother for Charlotte and Daniel.” His sister, just as all of polite Society noted his withdrawal and attributed it to some foolish broken heart. They’d seen the dashing Marquess of Beaufort’s whirlwind courtship of the Incomparable Beauty and only seen a love match amidst the cold, emotionless entanglements of the ton.
They didn’t know, or mayhap care, about Cordelia’s devotion to her lover, her plans to abandon Daniel and Charlotte, and ultimately the fleeing couple’s subsequent death as they’d made off to some far-flung corner of England. Odd, the haute ton knew so much and yet so little of a person’s affairs.
He raised his glass to his lips for another sip.
After a long stretch of silence, his sister seemed to register that he intended to say nothing further on the matter, for she stood and crossed over to him. “I want you to be happy, Weston.”
“And you imagine a wife will make me happy?” he drawled with a sardonic twist to his question. In his experience, a wife represented nothing but a headache and heartbreak.
Amanda leaned up on tip-toe and kissed his cheek. “I believe a wife will make your children happy.”
Again, Patrina’s face flitted to mind. He shoved the thought aside.
“And by your silence, brother, you know I speak the truth.”
The curtains rustled yet again, and Amanda angled her head. “What was that?”
Weston schooled his features. “What was what?” After all, if his sister discovered Charlotte and Daniel’s tendency to eavesdrop, he’d not be spared her scathing diatribe on all the ways in which he was failing as a father.
“Nothing.” Amanda gave her head a slight shake. “I’d imagined I heard…nothing. And remember we would dearly love for you to join us for the holiday.”
He sketched a short bow, and waited several moments after his sister had taken her leave. “You can come out now.”
Daniel and Charlotte spilled out from behind the curtain. Daniel nudged his elbow into his sister’s side. “You were stepping on my toes.”
“It was an accident,” she cried. “It was an accident, Papa.”
Weston’s lips twitched. “I imagine if you were both abovestairs where you’re supposed to be and not hiding in my office then neither of you would have suffered wounded toes or an injured side.”
Charlotte settled her hands on her hips. “But then we’d not have heard all those horrible things Aunt Amanda had to say about Lady Patrina. I think she’s pretty. Don’t you, Daniel?”
Daniel snorted. “Girls aren’t pretty.”
“Yes, but Lady Patrina isn’t a girl. She’s a lady. Isn’t that right, Papa?”
“She certainly is, Char.” And by his sister’s accounts, she was a young lady with a wounded heart. Having himself known the same wounding, empathy tugged at him.
Perhaps that had been what had first drawn him to the woman who’d dared to hurl snowballs at his children. He’d recognized something inherently sad about her, largely because he recognized it in himself.
Charlotte skipped over to his desk and scrambled onto his leather seat. Seated in her stark white skirts, with her tousled golden ringlets, she had more the look of a small doll than an actual child. She swung her legs back and forth. “I think Aunt Amanda is correct.” She wrinkled her nose. “Not about those mean things she said about Lady Patrina.”
Weston raised his glass to his mouth. “Oh?” He took a long swallow.
Daniel slapped a hand across his eyes and shook his head back and forth. “Bloody awful idea,” he mumbled.
His daughter’s lips turned up in a wide smile sans two front teeth. “We need a mother. Especially that one,” she pointed in her brother’s direction.
Weston choked on the mouthful of brandy.
“My reaction exactly,” Daniel said with a firm nod.
Charlotte glared in his direction. “Don’t be a ninny. Lady Patrina would make a perfectly fine mother. And I think she’s lovely. And she throws snowballs. And she bought me a ribbon. And—”
“All the most essential characteristics of a good mother,” Daniel groused with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
Her lower lip trembled. “And she’s nice,” she shot back.
Pain blossomed in Weston’s chest. His son might make light of Charlotte’s simple list, but those details ticked off on his daughter’s tiny fingers mattered very much to the girl. She’d never known a mother’s love, but neither had she known what it was to have the gentle influence of a mother. His mind raced with his sister’s revelation about Patrina, and the young lady’s interaction with his children.
“What is it, Papa?”
He’d sworn to never wed again. His heart had died long ago. Long before Cordelia’s death. He ventured it had been somewhere between the moment she’d hurled words of loathing at him and confessed she’d been carrying on with her lover and the time she’d slapped little Daniel across the cheek.
“Papa?” Charlotte pressed.
However, what if he approached marriage with a logical, clear focus? Love, emotions, and affection removed from the whole alliance. What if he wed for the benefit of his children?