After the Wedding (The Worth Saga #2)(47)

The dowager was her sister’s husband’s mother, a woman who had taken Theresa under her wing the moment Judith’s marriage had been announced. She had declared that she’d always wanted a daughter, and after a few uneasy months together, they’d actually become friendly.

So Theresa had planned to do exactly as the dowager suggested. She had made a plan, stitch by stitch, obtained the appropriate silks, then sat down to wage war on the fabric.

The main problem with this plan was that Theresa’s embroidery was utter shite.

She’d given herself a full three months to produce something within the bounds of acceptability—something that her oldest sister could put on, say, a divan in a rarely used room, instead of quietly sending up to the attic. Or burning it to stay warm in the winter.

Alas. After two months, Theresa stared down at her current attempt—try nine—and the lopsided things that were supposed to represent the ravens of the Ashford crest.

Instead of sleek, feathered things, Theresa had managed to produce something that looked more like a withered, blackened cauliflower. Or maybe, a diseased octopus?

A shame. She liked octopodes.

She imagined herself presenting this cushion to her sister.

“What are these?” Judith would ask, her lip quirking in dismay.

Oh, just some rotting vegetables, Theresa would reply. My love for you is like a field of rotting vegetables—like rot, my love grows to encompass the entire crop. It’s rather hard on the vegetables, but if you would just look at it from the rot’s point of view—

That explanation would go over so well.

The other idea that the dowager marchioness had come up with was that Theresa could compose a poem. Perhaps Theresa could combine the two? At least she’d get a laugh.

She glared out the glass window.

“Theresa?”

Theresa turned at the sound. Her younger brother, Benedict, stood in the doorway.

She raised a single eyebrow, set her cushion of rotted splendor aside, and folded her arms, waiting for her brother to realize his mistake.

His legs came together; he straightened. His hand rose in a salute. “My pardon, your Excellency. General Worth, I mean. I beg a moment of your attention.”

Theresa considered whether she should punish her brother. On the one hand, insubordination needed to be extracted from the root. Besides, nobody told Benedict that he had to produce a cushion or a verse for his sister’s birthday. He was a boy. He was allowed to do all sorts of non-labor-intensive things, like purchasing flowers as a gift on the morning of Judith’s birthday.

On the other hand, thus far, nobody in her family had noticed that she had dragooned her younger brother into her own private army, and Theresa intended to keep it that way.

Today, she could be magnanimous. “Proceed, Corporal Benedict.”

“You promised we would deal with my little problem.”

Benedict’s little problem was not so little. Over a year ago, he’d refused to return to Eton. She could hardly blame him; he’d been badly treated. Since then, Judith and Christian had attempted to find him a place in the world. He’d been made to sit in a lawyer’s office for the last three months.

He hated it with a passion that burned hotter than…than a field of withered cauliflower, put to the flame?

“Give it some time,” Judith had told him comfortingly. “A year may feel like forever to you at this age, but it’s nothing. You can’t know if you like the work if you don’t take time to get good at it.”

“You’ll grow into it,” Christian had promised Benedict. “You like talking with people and being right. You should love the practice of law.”

Theresa, who knew her brother far better than either Judith or Christian, had promised to come up with a plan to free her brother from the tyranny of the law office. Which—admittedly—was not so tyrannical, as the man was incredibly kind to Benedict and his wife brought him biscuits. But all professions that one did not wish to have were a tyranny.

“I’ve been thinking about the matter.” Theresa slid her embroidery underneath a cushion. “What you need is to show an aptitude for some other profession. They’ll never agree to pull you from this law thing if you haven’t provided an alternative.”

“Yes, but I don’t know an alternative.”

“I do,” Theresa said. This was probably not a lie. She technically didn’t have an alternative in mind at the moment the words came out of her mouth. She was just certain that by the time she finished speaking, she would have figured one out.

“Excellent! What is it?”

“Let us come at it another way,” Theresa said. “What were your thoughts on Judith’s birthday present?”

“Flowers,” Benedict said glumly.

“Ask yourself: Does Judith really want flowers?”

“Well…”

“No,” Theresa decided. “She does not, any more than she wants terribly embroidered cushions depicting the last century’s worst farming tragedies. She’ll appreciate them, because they come from us, but she doesn’t want them.”

“True.”

Theresa folded her arms and tried to look like a wiser older sister. She was fifteen to Benedict’s fourteen; it shouldn’t be hard. “Let us ask ourselves this: What does Judith want? What does she really want?”