“You are so vain, Grace,” he said between chuckles. “You make it an easy feat indeed.”
“Arse,” she grumbled, though it lacked even an ounce of bite to it.
“You do not deny it I see,” he drawled, propping a hip against her dressing table and crossing his arms.
She shrugged, turning back to the looking glass. “Why deny the truth? I am nearly five and thirty. It would seem odd if I do not fear a small bit the very physical aspects of aging. Especially as I never once had my London Season, and it seems all the other women here for the first time are hardly women at all, but mere infants.” She used two fingers to gently pull back at the skin by her eyes before sending him a cautious sideways look. “Have you seen Danielson yet? He mentioned that a letter arrived from Sainsly.”
Immediately Tristan’s muscles seized. He had expressly instructed that all correspondence from his ancestral home in Lincolnshire be conveyed through his solicitors. But when had his stepmother ever heeded his wishes in that regard?
For a brief moment he was that boy again, fighting for his father’s approval. And forever destined to fail.
He set his jaw, fighting down those feelings he had worked so hard at burying. Yet another feat at which he’d failed, for they cropped up powerfully, and often. “I’ll tell him to burn it. As I have the others.”
Grace looked troubled. “It could be important, Tristan.”
“If it was important, my solicitor would have contacted me with all haste. No, this is merely Josephine’s attempt to manipulate me again, nothing more.”
She seemed to sense, as she always did, when he was done discussing it. For after a long look she directed her gaze to her dressing table. She selected a small pot from the assortment of containers there while asking, “Are you just returning home then?”
“Yes.” Relief at being freed from the subject of his stepmother was quickly replaced by concern as he watched her open the pot and apply some rouge to her cheeks. “Are you certain you wouldn’t rather I stayed in more? I hate that you are alone so much.”
She waved a slender hand in the air, rolling her eyes. “I told you, I do not need a keeper, Tristan. I am not here to upend your life in any way. You may go about your days as if I am not even here, and before you know it, I shall be out of your hair completely.”
“You must know I love having you,” he said, his frown deepening. “It’s been too long since you were in England at all. I’ve missed you.”
She tilted her head, smiling up at him. “I have missed you, as well. But that does not mean I have any wish to be in your pocket at all hours of the day.”
“Yet you hire a companion to keep you company?”
His voice was sharper than intended, ringing out through the room. Grace laid the pot down on the gleaming top of her dressing table and faced him. “Are you upset I have hired Miss Merriweather?”
“Of course I’m not upset,” he scoffed. Yet her gaze remained intent on his face. He pushed away from the table, unable to look her in the eye. His cousin was taken aback, and rightly so. He had sounded a churlish bore.
“You do a fairly poor job of making that sound at all believable, Tristan.”
“Do I? I cannot imagine why.” He walked to the window, looking down into the small, square garden that backed the property.
She came up behind him. “Don’t lie to me, darling. What is it about my hiring on a companion that has turned you surly?”
He could not very well tell her it had nothing at all to do with her hiring a companion and everything to do with the identity of said companion. If he voiced such a thought either she would let the girl go without a by your leave, or she would read much too much into it.
He broke into a cold sweat. The very idea of Grace thinking he felt more for Miss Merriweather than he did was inconceivable.
He eventually said, with utmost honesty, “The very fact that you feel you need a companion tells me I should not be leaving you to your own devices quite so much.”
“Nonsense,” she scoffed. “I’m much used to my own company, especially in the past year since Hubert died. But I happen to like Miss Merriweather. And she was in need of a position. What else could I do, send her back out into the streets to starve?” Her face grew hard. “Can you believe, Tristan, that those horrible Gladstows threw her out of the house without even a reference, carrying everything she owned in one small bag?”
A vague sense of unease worked its way across his shoulders. “They tossed her out?”
Grace nodded. “And it was not as if the girl was neglecting her charge. If you had only seen her last night, watching over Miss Gladstow. Such concern, such care for the girl.”
“You don’t say,” he muttered. The vague unease was turning into a tingle that set the very hairs on his arms on end.
She nodded, her eyes fierce. “From my understanding, it was Miss Gladstow’s unexpected engagement that prompted Miss Merriweather’s termination. Though I cannot understand it. It is one thing to be unhappy with your child’s choice in husband. It is quite another to punish the girl’s companion for it when she was doing her best.”
Tristan’s stomach lurched with the bitterness of guilt. Well, hell. This was something he had not expected. But Grace was peering suspiciously at him.
“You were dancing with Miss Gladstow shortly before her engagement was announced. You wouldn’t have any insight into the matter, would you?”
“Of course not,” he scoffed. He may love his cousin, would entrust her with his life. But there was something about his little matchmaking venture that made him want to protect it, to hide it from the world. He only hoped she would take him at his word, that her curiosity would not prompt her to probe for more.
His acting skills must have been exceptional, for Grace nodded and turned her gaze to the window. She heaved a sigh. “Poor girl. I am thankful I passed her my card last night, that she had the sense to seek me out for a position. Heaven knows what would have happened to Miss Merriweather if she had not.”
It did not take much of an imagination to deduce. There was only one place for women to go when they had no home, no family, no money. The thought of Miss Merriweather on the streets, begging for coin to survive—or worse—slammed through him. Horror and fury at Mrs. Gladstow’s unfeeling actions boiled up. But with it was mixed a healthy dose of disgust in himself, for he had equal fault in the whole debacle. Seeing Miss Gladstow happily settled was cold comfort now, as a young woman’s life had nearly been destroyed because of his interference.
It was more proof that he was nothing special, that it would only take the smallest misstep on his part to reveal to the world what a fraud he was.
“Tristan? Tristan, are you well? You appear ill.”
Grace’s voice shocked him back to himself. He looked at her, quite unable to dredge up his typical carefree smile. “I’m happy she came to you, is all,” he rasped.
Though what the repercussions would be for him, he thought with no small amount of trepidation as Miss Merriweather’s face flashed in his mind, he hadn’t a clue.