The viscountess’s lips formed a displeased moue. “I beg your pardon? I am not so very old.”
“Yes, you are,” Eris piped in. “You have white hairs.”
“I have three white hairs.” Their mother lifted her three middle fingers. “Three.”
“Either way,” Brenna murmured in sad, somber tones, “no woman with white hair should be the one to enter into marriage.”
As Anwen touched the streak of white hair tucked behind her ear, her frown deepened. “I have white hair.” As she’d had since she was a girl of sixteen. Society had been less than kind to her for it.
“Precisely.” Brenna stuck her tongue out. “That is why it should be me.”
Leaning over, Anwen grabbed the younger girl’s loose ringlets and gave them a sharp tug.
“Owwww!”
Before the display could dissolve once more into a debate as to who would have the right to wed first, Clayton raised a hand. “If I may . . . ?” His mother and sisters quieted once more, and each looked expectantly his way. “Now . . . this . . . sudden desire to marry—”
Cora cut him off. “I don’t have one.”
Clayton gave the ever-sharpening ache in his head another rub. “Weren’t you just fighting for that privilege?”
“Privilege? I hate men.”
He furrowed his brow. Now had it been Brenna, reciter of Condorcet, advocate of women’s rights, well, then, that he would have expected. “Since . . . when?” As soon as the question left him, he frowned as a more pressing query slipped forward, an important one. “Why?”
“Why, but there’s many a man hath more hair than wit,” Delia said in dramatic tones, and with that, she picked up her book and proceeded to read.
“Shakespeare,” her twin explained to Clayton.
“I know that.” When she wasn’t reading the Great Bard, one could count on Delia to be reciting his wisdoms. “I want to know—”
Delia made a flourishing motion of turning the page in her copy of Macbeth.
“Oh, never mind. Can someone please explain the sudden about-face amongst so many of you where marriage is concerned?”
His mother looked at him as if he’d sprung a second head. “Because one of us must do it, Clayton. I’m not sure if you are aware, but in a family of six daughters and a mother, there are many who will require looking after.”
When he wasn’t there.
That thought hung unfinished without a need to be spoken aloud, as the Kearsley curse, which saw the men struck down too quickly and the women ravaged by tragedies of other sorts, was common knowledge to each sibling present.
“I assure you I am quite aware.”
And for the first time since he’d stepped onto the makeshift stage of whatever farce this was, a somberness descended upon the gathering.
An understanding of what the future held—or rather, did not hold—had been with him from early on, and as such, he’d accepted the same fate met by the other men who had come before him. Be it his father, who’d choked on a plum pit and died too soon, or his grandfather, who’d taken an errant bullet from poachers on his Scottish estate, the list of peculiar, untimely deaths went on and on.
Anwen cleared her throat lightly. “Then you must also be aware, Clayton”—her words came haltingly, with an almost pained quality to them—“that we cannot rely upon the charity of distant relations.”
No. He well knew that.
“Mr. Meadows.” Their mother spat the name like the epithet it had long been in the Kearsley household. Clayton was now all that stood between the distant cousin several times removed and inheriting the title.
“It is hardly Mr. Meadows’s fault that he is the heir behind me.”
Gasps went up, and Cora flew out of her seat. “You would dare defend Mr. Meadows?”
Their mother, however, held up a hand, and that brought the young lady back into her seat—albeit stiffly.
“Mr. Meadows has done nothing wrong,” Clayton insisted. “That is, with the exception of being next in the line of succession. Which is no fault of his own, I should point out.”
“You would defend him,” Delia muttered.
“He is frequently writing to Mother, and he always asks after you, Clayton,” Brenna shot back. “Why would he do something like that? Hmm?” The gangly girl folded her arms across her chest, and all her sisters immediately followed suit, daring him with their expressions and poses to defend the man.
“I don’t know,” he drawled. “Perhaps to be friendly?”
“Friendly,” Anwen muttered, giving her head a disgusted shake that sent her spectacles tumbling to her lap. Nearly half-blind without them, she felt around, searching, finding, and then jamming them upon her face once more.
“Yes,” he went on when she could see him again. “Forgive me for not thinking his motives are anything but pure. He is not a villain in a Shakespearean play—”
Charging to her feet, Delia brandished her book. “Though those that are betray’d Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor stands in worse case of woe!”
He winced. “Et tu, Brute?”
Delia’s eyes flew wide. “You should use my Shakespeare against me?”
And wonder of wonders, his mother took pity . . . on him. Sailing to her feet, she placed herself between Delia and Clayton. “Come, Delia. It is hardly your brother’s fault.”
He gave his head a wry shake. That was the defense? Clayton peeked out from behind his mother and caught the fury flashing in his sister’s eyes. She made a slashing motion with that book across her throat, and thinking better of it, he ducked back and took what protection the viscountess had offered.
“Now, can we please resume this ever-pressing matter?” she asked the room at large.
The moment she seated herself, Cora spoke. “This is a waste of time, Mother. We have already decided that we have to be the ones to look after us.” As Clayton would not. That meaning came as clearly as if it had been spoken.
“I agree,” the viscountess said sadly. “Your father, God rest his soul, did not leave us well off.”
All the girls made the sign of the cross.
The late earl had known precisely what fate awaited him. And yet, instead of attempting to live a life where he had things in order before his passing, he’d believed in living for the now and indulging the whims and wishes of his daughters. They weren’t destitute, but neither were they comfortable.
And there was the matter of Clayton’s sisters requiring security and stability . . . none of which they’d have when he was gone. The fact of the matter was, building a fortune wasn’t something that happened overnight. Most of the lands yielding profits would go to the heir to replace him—a distant cousin who was a nice enough fellow. But to expect the man to care for six female relations and Clayton’s mother?
As such, where would his sisters be if Clayton failed to produce an heir? If he did, however, marry and provide a future Viscount St. John, all the land and fortune would stay with his immediate family. As would the poor wife left to look after his sisters . . .
It was something Clayton had not allowed himself to think of since his father’s passing.