“Oh, my,” his wife said faintly.
“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Pickering, Mrs. Pickering,” Ash said with a bow.
“Oh, my,” Mrs. Pickering repeated, her hands flapping about in the air, the white scrap of lace and linen she held fluttering in front of her like an anxious bird.
“You did say you wanted me married, didn’t you, Papa?” Miss Pickering said.
“Yes, but not to—” The man pressed his lips tight against whatever he had been about to say, looking Ash up and down, his face turning a dark red.
“Go ahead and finish,” Miss Pickering continued, her voice tight, her body fairly trembling against Ash’s arm. “Not to a commoner, isn’t that right? You wished me to marry, even planned to send me away to live with my brother as punishment for not finding a husband, yet you will accept nothing less than a nobleman’s suit.”
“My daughter deserves a title,” her father countered, seeming to have forgotten Ash was present.
“I hate to tell you this, Papa,” Miss Pickering snapped, “but dukes are not exactly thick on the ground, much less single dukes looking for a wife.”
Ash, watching the quarrel between father and daughter with rapt interest, promptly choked. “Er, Miss Pickering?” he tried. Mayhap now was the time to inform her of his true identity.
No, he thought guiltily, the time to inform her had been yesterday, an immediate correction of his wards’ deception. The next best time would have been mere minutes later when he had proposed they marry.
But, barring the existence of traveling through time, now would have to do.
The Pickerings, however, seemed not to have heard him.
“There have been a grand total of four eligible dukes on Synne in the past years who have found brides,” her father countered. “Four!”
Mrs. Pickering stepped up beside her husband, her ample bosom pushing into the fray like the bow of a ship plowing through rough waters. “And while there are very good reasons for you losing the majority of them,” she joined in, her voice shrill in her outrage, “we cannot forget that you had one in the palm of your hand before he chose another.”
Beside Ash, Miss Pickering groaned. “Why must you continue to bring up the Duke of Carlisle?”
“Because you nearly secured him, Bronwyn,” her father raged. “You were nearly a duchess. And now you would marry a—I’m sorry,” Mr. Pickering said in a ridiculously conciliatory tone, considering the subject, turning to Ash, “what business are you in?”
“Gambling,” Ash answered automatically. “But if you would just hear me out—”
“Gambling!” Mrs. Pickering wailed. “Oh, Mr. Pickering. We shall be laughingstocks. What shall we do?”
“We shall not allow Bronwyn to marry this person, that is what we shall do,” Mr. Pickering declared.
“You cannot do that,” Miss Pickering replied heatedly.
“We can and we shall,” her mother stated. “I am so sorry, Mr. Hawkins, but we must ask you to leave.”
“You will do nothing of the sort,” Miss Pickering countered. She grabbed tighter to Ash’s hand, as if she feared her parents would rip him from her side and toss him out on his ear.
“Listen to your mother, young lady,” her father said, his chest puffing up in outrage.
Ash might have continued to let the argument run its course; it did not seem they would allow him to speak, though it was his future on the line as well.
But when he looked down at Miss Pickering and caught the telltale glint of a tear quickly blinked back, saw the slight trembling of her lower lip, he decided he was done worrying about propriety and politeness. “I have something to say,” he roared, his voice rising above the chaos, feeling ridiculously like he did when trying to stop his wards from squabbling.
They all looked to him, varying degrees of shock stamped across their faces.Finally.He opened his mouth to tell these people that he was, in fact, a duke.
Just then, however, the butler was at the door, his voice breaking into the brief moment of blessed silence.
“Lady Tesh, ma’am.”
A short, ancient, brightly gowned woman pushed past the man, hobbling into the room. Behind her, a fair young woman followed along nervously, a small, scraggly white pup held in her arms.
“Lady Tesh,” Mrs. Pickering gasped, dropping into quite possibly the deepest curtsy Ash had ever seen. “We are honored that you’ve come to visit. Please allow me to say once again how very sorry we are for missing your luncheon yesterday—”