Bronwyn gaped at her, stunned at both the pendulum of her mother’s emotions and the utter absurdity of her reasoning. “You are blaming this on my friends?”
“Friends who would insist on filling your head with thoughts of independence and bluestocking ways,” her father replied, rubbing his wife’s shaking back as she sobbed into her handkerchief. “Which is why we are removing you from their influence.”
“No!” The word exploded from Bronwyn as she surged to her feet. Though she had fretted that her parents would do just this, the pain that sliced her from the inside out shocked her to her core. “You cannot do this. Mama, tell him he cannot ban me from seeing my friends.”
“I can and I will,” her father decreed. “No daughter of mine will be a social pariah, an unwed spinster. Why, next you know you’ll be telling us your scribblings will be printed in some scientific magazine and you’ll be calling yourself a naturalist.” He shuddered, even as his wife’s sobs renewed with greater volume.
Bronwyn’s shock quickly gave way to fury. “Iama naturalist,” she declared, her voice trembling. “I’ve worked hard, and I’m smart, and I can make a name for myself, no matter how many of my specimens you might destroy, no matter the equipment you might smash. Besides, there is nothing wrong with remaining unwed. Look at Adelaide, or Seraphina. Both are owners of highly successful businesses and are respected in the community.”
“Oh, Mr. Pickering,” her mother wailed. “Our daughter wishes to go intotrade!”
Bronwyn, praying for patience, pinched the bridge of her nose. “Papa made his fortune in trade,” she replied, her voice tight with frustration. “There is nothing at all wrong with it.”
But her parents, as ever, would not listen to reason. “No daughter of mine is going into trade,” her father declared, outrage visible on his face.
“You were right, Mr. Pickering,” his wife said, gazing at him with tears in her eyes, her features stamped with her misery. “We have to send her away.”
“Of course I’m right,” her husband said, patting her back consolingly.
But whatever else her father said was lost in the roaring in Bronwyn’s ears. “Sending me away?” she demanded. Surely she had heard them wrong. She had thought they would forbid her from going to her weekly meetings with the Oddments, not that they would remove her from Synne altogether.
Her father glared at her. “You didn’t think this latest wrongdoing would go unpunished, did you? We’re sending you to live with your brother and his wife in Exeter until you learn that you cannot do whatever you wish.”
“No!” Again the word burst from her, this time colored with horror. She could not live with James, so austere and strict. And his wife, who was so needlessly cruel. And in a location so very far from Synne and her friends and her research. Her spirit and her passions and her dreams would be crushed there as surely as an ant beneath a boot.
“No,” she repeated, trying and failing to hide the desperation in her words, “I won’t go.”
“You will, my girl,” her father decreed, rising to his feet. “And you shall not return until you are ready to be the obedient daughter we expect you to be.” He leveled a look on Bronwyn that left her cold, for there was no softness in it. She would not be able to convince them to allow her to stay. No, her fate was sealed.
The butler stepped into the doorway then. “Mr. Hawkins is here for Miss Pickering,” he intoned before stepping aside.
And then there was Mr. Hawkins, looking wickedly handsome in a slate-blue coat and dove trousers, his magnetic intensity clashing with the thick cloud of tension filling the air, sending her off-balance. His amber eyes scanned the room, quickly finding her. His expression was unreadable, but Bronwyn would not have cared if he had reeked of smugness and certainty. She only knew she had never been so happy to see anyone in her life.
“Bronwyn,” her father said, eyeing Mr. Hawkins with confusion, “who is this man?”
Before she could think better of it, Bronwyn made her way to Mr. Hawkins’s side and tucked her hand in his. Ignoring the man’s look of surprise, her parents’ gaping, even the now-familiar zing of electricity when their hands touched, she straightened and faced her parents.
“Mama, Papa, this is Mr. Ash Hawkins. My fiancé.”
Chapter 6
Well, that was unexpected.
Ash had arrived at Miss Pickering’s home in Knighthead Crescent much earlier than was polite for social calls. But he had been at his wit’s end after the morning’s debacle with his wards. One did not necessarily care about propriety, after all, when one was woken by the pungent smell of burnt food billowing from the kitchens at six in the morning.
Blessedly the damage had been kept to a minimum, confined as it was to the pan of what he supposed was intended to be biscuits. That did not mean, however, that it would not take them the better part of the day to air the kitchens out. Or that he was not doubly desperate to secure Miss Pickering for his wife. The quicker he could get her settled in with his wards, the quicker he could get back to London and Brimstone and away from the constant guilt that he was failing everyone he cared for.
He had expected to still have a fair amount of convincing to do once he arrived at Miss Pickering’s house. No one was ready to answer life-altering questions at such an hour, after all. And so he had compiled all manner of reasons why they should marry, each one dedicated to showing Miss Pickering why such a union would be of benefit to her: she would have all the independence she could wish for; she would be provided with all the funds she could desire; she would have his full support on any scientific endeavors she might aspire to.
But he had not thought in a million years she would need no convincing at all.
Her parents—she had called themMamaandPapa, so he assumed they were her parents, though they looked nothing like her—stared at Miss Pickering as if she had sprouted a pig nose.
“What do you mean,fiancé?” her father demanded, looking for all the world like an outraged rooster in his bright yellow coat and red breeches.
“Mr. Hawkins asked me to marry him yesterday,” Miss Pickering replied, her voice warbling only slightly. “I have decided to accept.”
“But…what…who…?”her father sputtered, his face turning florid, eyebrows as thick as a fox’s tail descending low over his blazing eyes.