“Well, now that your sister is married, it’s high time I got out of this dreary city.” Mother preened before the mirror. “I’m going to visit my sisters.”
“Surely, not today!” Devil take it! Mother was having one of her proper fits. Robin hoped Tessa could handle the holiday and return with her sanity intact. Most of the time, Robin fled the house to avoid dealing with his mother’s changing whims. He often felt guilty for leaving Tessa behind to deal with Mother, and the timing for this trip could not be worse. He had something important to speak to Tessa about, but he hadn’t meant to ask for her hand this suddenly.
“Oh, yes.” The servants returned, carrying two trunks between them. “Do not forget to hail a hack for Miss Abbott, Bates,” his mother said. “She is to meet the stage at precisely four o’clock.”
Robin spun around. “Why does Tessa need a hack and the stage when she is traveling with you?”
His mother laughed. “Oh, no, no, no, dear boy, such a fuddle-head. Tessa is bound for Begley Cottage, while I am headed to Brighton. She will need the hack, unless you prefer to save the coin and have her walk to the coaching house. Do you?”
Robin was shocked. “No, of course not. I don’t want her to walk that far. I don’t want her to go anywhere at all. Why the devil is she going there, anyway? She cannot wish to visit with your mother when you never do.”
“Well, an unmarried woman cannot be unchaperoned and keep her reputation intact when I’m gone. It was always understood that once your sister was off my hands, I would travel. If you had stayed at home more often, instead of enjoying Town and your friends so much, you might have remembered that today marks the beginning of my freedom. I have grown weary of chaperoning duties.”
A sniff made him turn to watch Tessa descend the stairs, dressed for travel in her very best cloak, the one that had been laid out on the bed in readiness for her ridiculous trip.
He felt a sharp pain in his chest. She was clearly upset about going. Had Mother given her any choice? “When will you return?”
“Well,” Mother said, thinking the matter through very slowly. “I cannot imagine I shall be ready to return before Christmas. There is so much to catch up on with my sisters. Besides, with you going out so much, there is little to come back for.” His mother smiled broadly. “Perhaps I won’t come back until next spring. What do you think of that?”
That sounded very good to him indeed—having Mother gone so long. A quiet Christmas at home was exactly what he longed for. It would be pleasant to have peace from theatrics, too. But… “Tessa?”
Tessa said nothing but concentrated on catching the ends of her bonnet ribbons. She turned and faced the mirror to tie the bow.
“Well?” he demanded. He could bear to be apart for two weeks, at most.
His mother clucked her tongue. “Tessa shan’t be back at all, my boy. I’m sure you don’t want the expense of having her travel back and forth across the country. She will go to Begley today, and Grandmamma can watch over her from now on.”
Chapter Five
“The devil she will! Grandmamma will forget all about Tessa the moment she arrives, or worse, put her to work as if she were a servant,” he argued.
Many of their relatives had done that to her, and he wouldn’t allow it to happen again. Tessa had already had a rough start in life, passed from one relation to the next until she’d landed on his doorstep. To cast her aside when she became an inconvenience was incredibly rude of Mother and against his wishes.
Tessa was more than just a poor relation, dependent on his protection. She was his best friend in the entire world.
With Anna married and Mother gone, he would easily find the money to hire a chaperone and keep her here. He was not so miserly as to toss Tessa out on the street again. And he did intend to marry her—if she’d consent to have him for a husband.
Bates peered out the front window. “The hack has arrived, madam.”
Tessa startled at the butler’s words, but then she turned to smile brightly at him. “Thank you for everything,” she murmured.
Despite her smile, she clutched her reticule tight in her hands. The same old relic she’d carried when Robin had first met her. He’d never managed to replace it with a better one because it had been her mother’s, and she’d clung to the only thing she had left of her past. She’d not changed very much since those awkward first days in his home, really. She was still as timid, and too quiet, but he never wanted her to feel she was unwanted.
“This isn’t right.” Robin didn’t recall a plan to send Tessa halfway across the country, and all on her own, no less. Of all the ramshackle starts, this was by far his mother’s biggest folly. “Why didn’t you warn me of her plan for you, Tessa?”
“She told you,” Tessa murmured so softly, he almost didn’t hear her. “I was there. You said nothing against the idea, and you said you’d be pleased to have peace and quiet again.”
Had he even been listening? Mother tended to ramble on, and he tended to not listen when she got too bad. He should have paid more attention.
“Peace should never be at the expense of your happiness. Yes, I’ve been looking forward to the quiet ahead. For both of us.” He caught her ice-cold fingers and squeezed them. “You don’t have to leave just because Mother says you must.”
His mother scowled at him. “Really, Robin, this is hardly a matter that concerns you now. Go back to whatever it is you usually do with your days.”
“I can’t. Tessa belongs here,” he insisted. “She is not leaving.”
His mother gasped. “How can she stay when I am to leave in less than an hour? There will be a scandal we will never live down. She must have a chaperone.”
Really, was his mother so self-absorbed that she’d never noticed how attached to Tessa he’d become? Or how well suited to becoming his wife Tessa really was? “There will be no chance of scandal, I assure you, when Tessa is a married woman.”
Robin concentrated on Tessa’s reaction, anxious that she understood him at last.
She didn’t meet his gaze, but the fingers in his trembled. He whispered her name and then reached out to tug the ribbon on her bonnet undone, as he had so often longed to do. He slowly lifted her well-worn straw bonnet from her bowed head, and then tossed it carelessly over his shoulder. “She can’t go anywhere without a hat.”
Behind him, his mother gasped. “Really, Robin. That was a perfectly acceptable hat to wear on a long journey. And you scared off all her suitors by not offering to dower her.”
“Actually, she still has one suitor, and he doesn’t want to marry her because of any dowry. Tessa, look at me.” Tessa didn’t move, so he placed his hands gently upon her arms and pulled her closer. He slipped his knuckle under her chin to lift her watery gaze to his. “Tessa will marry me. Won’t you, Tessa?”
Tessa’s smile was slow in coming but blossomed with hope. “Will I, Robin?”
“Of course, you can say no. However, I still want you to stay. This is your home, too, now. From the moment you crossed my threshold, you became an irreplaceable part of the family.”