Manners & Mannerisms by Tanya Chris

Author:Tanya Chris [Chris, Tanya]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tanya Chris Publishing
Published: 2019-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

William continued to be frustrated in his desire to have more than the occasional private moment with Reginald. He spent his mornings quizzing Mr. Piedmont about Rivington, feeling more lost with every meeting. Everything had been so clear when Reginald explained his own affairs, but Mr. Piedmont didn’t have Reginald’s facility for explanation. He only ever seemed to make matters more obscure. If only William could have some time with the ledgers to himself, but that request Mr. Piedmont always put off. The ledgers were desperately needed that afternoon elsewhere, and if His Lordship would only wait a bit, Mr. Piedmont would tidy them up and all would be clear. More than once William met Tom’s eyes and saw his own confusion mirrored there, along with a growing concern. Perhaps Tom also despaired of ever being able to make himself useful.

Between having his mornings thus monopolized and Frederick’s insistence on going up to Albon Manor in the afternoons—an insistence William now understood better—and considering that Reginald couldn’t, day after day, find excuses to spend the afternoon in his study when he’d already spent the morning there, they had very little time alone. There were walks and concerts and games, callers who had to be attended to, and calls that must be made in return, and though the Rivington contingent dined once at Albon Manor, and the Albon Manor contingent dined once at Rivington, and they all dined together once with the Hunts at the parish house where William chafed at the brazen way Lydia and Patience threw themselves into Reginald’s company, the days preceding Reginald’s trip to London passed with nothing more than a handful of stolen kisses.

Sitting at the breakfast table the morning of Reginald’s departure, William couldn’t have been more dejected. To think that more than a week must pass before they’d have the opportunity for even that much again.

“You’re most frightfully gloomy this morning,” Isabella observed to him. “Miss Abernathy hasn’t given you a direct refusal, I hope.”

“I haven’t asked a direct question.”

“Then you aren’t dissuaded?”

“I should hope he wasn’t,” Aunt Harriet said. “Dr. Hunt invited his nephew to dinner expressly for the purpose of meeting Miss Abernathy, but she was barely civil to him. She had eyes only for our Lord William.”

Dr. Hunt’s nephew had strained even William’s temper with his obvious attempts at being ingratiating. William hadn’t needed Susan’s signal to know his duty toward her, but it’d been yet another source of frustration—to be so bound to her side with Reginald across the room.

“You’d better offer for her soon then,” Isabella advised, “else there will be speculation that you trifle with her.”

“I don’t know that her brother will allow it,” he said, following their plan to present themselves publicly as Emma and Frederick were privately—lovers foiled by a guardian who cared more for money than affection.

“But you and Mr. Abernathy have formed so close a friendship,” James said. “It was a sound strategy, attaching yourself to the brother. How can he deny you when he so clearly loves you?”

“He might all the same,” William protested.

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