“The law is not on your side,” Phillip said, “and more to the point, the lady is not on your side. She doesn’t need a husband, and you don’t need a fortune, so for the sake of all concerned, leave her alone.”
Brompton rose and stretched, not a care in the world. “What business is it of yours? The matter is one for the Bromptons to resolve, and if they don’t resolve it to my satisfaction, I will see to it that Edna and Eglantine are no longer received, Portia and Flavia are pariahs, and Isaac and Charlie must resign from their clubs. I can do it too. I’ve had ten long, cold years to study on the matter.”
He sketched an elegant bow and sauntered off into the darkness.
Phillip debated joining Hecate in her room, but if she needed one thing more than to be free of her strutting cousin, it was a good night’s rest. He returned to the summer cottage and pulled off his boots, but didn’t go to bed. Instead, he fell asleep on the terrace, his fitful rest interrupted when the first cold drops of rain pattered down from a starless sky.
Hecate awoke with the leaden limbs and foggy mind of one who’d barely made a start on a serious lack of rest. Exhaustion upon waking was nothing new, though. She lay in bed, listening to a pattering rain and rummaging in memory for the source of the foreboding that weighed on her heart.
Johnny. Wretched, rubbishing Johnny.
The recollection of his hands on her wrists, his lips on her cheek, had her throwing back the covers and slogging from the bed.
“Of all the harebrained, witless, presuming…” She considered her reflection in the cheval mirror and saw a woman as angry as she was weary. The Bromptons had had their fingers in her pockets forever. She’d learned to manage their perpetual demands, learned to impose schedules and budgets and even some manners on them.
Johnny didn’t intend to help himself merely to her money, though. He sought to pillage her very personhood. Steal her freedom and her fortune, the knave. She’d always wished the Bromptons would develop some ambition, but not like this…
She dressed with particular care for a change and wrapped her usual bun in a pair of twining braids. She fastened her shawl with a pearl brooch and dabbed a bit of scent on her wrists and beneath her ears.
“Battle-ready,” she muttered, giving her appearance one last inspection. A lady was to be composed at all times. Hecate had no desire to disguise the pugnacious glint in her eyes.
To her surprise, Papa occupied the breakfast parlor. He picked up his coffee cup, flicked a dismissive glance over her, and sipped.
“Good morning, Papa.”
He waited a moment before replying, for which Hecate wanted to dump his drink over his head. “Wet morning,” he said. “Isn’t your horse race today?”
Was he gloating? “One hopes the weather will clear off, but the course is flat. Safe enough even if the ground is damp.” Hecate helped herself to eggs and ham, though another silent, brooding meal with Papa was not how she’d like to start her day. She took the chair one seat away from him.
She would have preferred Phillip’s company, his quiet steadiness, his subtle humor, his calm.
“The weather will oblige you,” Papa said, pouring himself more coffee. “All of creation orders itself according to your whim. Your mother enjoyed the same undeserved good fortune.”
Hecate considered taking a tray to the conservatory, but all too often, retreat had been her tactic of choice with Isaac. The result was incessant bullying and whining.
“Mama wanted to present you with a son. She was denied that pleasure. Please pass the honey.”
Another slight delay, then the honeypot was thunked down a foot from Hecate’s plate. “Is that what she told you? She was trying to present me with a son? If nothing else, the blood of an accomplished liar runs in your veins.”
Hecate stirred honey into her tea. “She also told me that you assured her you were marrying her because you esteemed her above all women and would expire for lack of her love. You swore her money was of no moment whatsoever. If Mama was mendacious, then I carry the name of an even more accomplished liar than she was.”
The breakfast parlor acquired the sort of quiet that made the rain against the windows loud by contrast. Hecate did not confront Isaac in the usual course. If they had to communicate, they did so in writing, through the solicitors, or through other family members.
Hecate didn’t hate Isaac—he’d suffered significant disappointments in life—but she neither liked nor trusted him. He was cold-blooded in a way the rest of the family was not and driven by bitterness as much as greed.
“Tell me, Hecate. Will you try to lie your way out of your betrothal to Johnny?” Papa put the question almost pleasantly. “I would enjoy seeing you try. I, who watched you sign the settlement agreements just before I signed them myself. I, who know for a fact that Johnny will be more generous with that money than you have ever been.”
Hecate sipped her tea, feeling an old, rancid sense of betrayal. “Did you summon Johnny from Canada?”
Papa took a slice of toast from the rack and helped himself to the raspberry jam. “Why would you think such a thing? The man spent ten years making his fortune through luck, skill, and determination. Now he’s come home to you, just as he promised he would. Another woman would be touched by and grateful for such devotion, particularly a woman of plain appearance and few accomplishments.”
Eins, zwei, drei… “I begged Johnny to take me with him. He patted my shoulder and wished me luck. I cannot marry a man who has never proposed to me.”
“Your memory fails you. Johnny proposed very prettily. You accepted, but understood that he wanted to bring his own means to the union. You respect that about him. I do, too, and so will all of Society.”
Hecate picked up her fork and understood that Papa was at least partly justified in his anger. Mama might well have hoped to present him with a son, but she’d also capitulated to the lure of her sea captain out of sheer despair. To be Isaac Brompton’s daughter had been vexing and painful.
Mama must have suffered the torments of the damned as his supposedly barren wife.
“I am not marrying Johnny,” Hecate said, spearing a bite of eggs, “who never did me the courtesy of a proposal, much less seek permission to court me, much less send me a single billet-doux. Believe whatever other fancies you please, connive with Johnny however you wish, but know that I will not marry him.”
The silver lining in that declaration was that, but for Phillip, Hecate might be considering a negotiated truce with Johnny. Promises to Isaac notwithstanding, Johnny, as Hecate’s husband, would guard Hecate’s fortune for the simple reason that any settlements would make a part of that fortune his.
He would not champion her interests, but he would champion his own, and that could work to Hecate’s benefit.
In the same moment those thoughts flitted through her brain, she rejected them. Putting up with her family, she’d learned to be pragmatic to a fault, to think always of the long term and of the larger picture. The larger picture was, when Johnny had frittered away his portion of her money, he’d come after hers.
“Don’t marry him, then,” Papa said, biting off a corner of his toast. “Have your tantrum, show your ingratitude. Give the gossips yet more to titter and laugh about. Johnny will simply present the signed documents to a court of law and bring suit for breach of promise.”