Always a Rogue, Forever Her Love (Scandalous Seasons #4)(50)

She bristled at his deliberate insult. “All mothers aspire to a grand title, Jonathan. That is the way of our world.”

Yes, they lived in a world in which earls were not expected to wed spirited governesses but instead expected to settle for a perfectly dull, proper bride.

“I expect as you’re in the market for a wife…”

“Am I?”

She glowered, but continued speaking over him. “…that you’ll favor Lady Beatrice with the proper attention befitting a young lady of her station.”

Oh, it appeared the conversation had come round to Lady Beatrice. Wager won. He spread his arms and bowed low. “I am ever the dutiful son.”

She either failed to note, or blatantly ignored, his sarcasm.

“Is there anything further you care to discuss?”

Mother sighed. “That is all. Please, promise to think on what I’ve said.”

“Which particular piece should I consider?”

“All of it.” She snapped her skirts, and swept from the room.

Jonathan breathed a sweet sigh of relief and sought out the comfortable, familiar folds of the leather chair behind his desk. He sank into the seat, and closed his eyes.

“Is she gone?”

He jerked upright and quickly surveyed the room. Poppy peeked her head out from behind the gold damask curtains, which covered the full-length windows. “How long have you been there, Poppy?” He sent a prayer of thanks skyward that he wasn’t one of those sorts who talked to himself.

She wandered out from her hiding spot, and lifted on shoulder in a shrug. “A long while.”

“Shouldn’t you be in your lessons?” At the thought of Juliet above stairs, his heart clenched with a sudden desire to see her.

“I told Miss Marsh I wasn’t feeling well.”

Jonathan leaned back in his seat. He kicked his feet out, and propped them on the edge of his desk. “Why would you do that?” He imagined if Juliet were his governess, he’d relish every single moment in the lady’s presence. Particularly the dance instructions.

Poppy plopped herself into one of the leather winged back chairs at the foot of his desk. “Prudence is being horrid.”

Not for the first time, he pitied Juliet the unenviable task of seeing to the girls’ instruction. God love the woman, she’d never see the return of her cottage, unless it was a magnanimous effort on his behalf. Only, he had little interest in being magnanimous where she was concerned, as the end result would be her departure for that blasted little cottage. “Did you tell Miss Marsh?” He trusted her implicitly enough to know she’d be able to properly handle the row between his sisters.

Poppy swung her legs back and forth, more like the small girl she once had been and not this young lady on the cusp of childhood and womanhood all at the same time. “Not to me, Sin.”

“Jonathan,” he corrected.

“She’s being awful to Miss Marsh.” A frown turned her usual smiling lips. “Said some horrid things about Miss Marsh’s leg.”

“Her leg,” he said blankly. He’d indulged his sisters, and quite loved them, but the idea of Prudence being deliberately cruel to Juliet over her crippled leg enraged him to the point he wanted to pack her off for the country until she learned to be a kinder, more gentler soul.

Poppy nodded in rapid succession. “Miss Marsh just smiled through Pru’s nastiness.”

“Did she?” God was there another like her in all the world? Most women would have been reduced to tears for not only the injury she’d sustained as a girl, but the world’s unfair treatment for it.

“Oh, yes, and it only made Pru all the madder,” Poppy went on. “Said horrid things about Miss Marsh’s brother.”

Well, Juliet’s brother was deserving of all those horrid charges leveled by Prudence, still he didn’t care to have Juliet in the position of having to defend the cad. “Did she?”

She shifted sideways in her seat, and stretched her legs over the arm of her chair, rumpling her skirts. “I imagine you’ve been very angry with us at very many points in our lives.”

His lips twitched with the first real amusement he’d felt in days. “Assuredly,” he said with a mock seriousness that made her frown.

“You still would never do such a thing, no matter how angry you were with us,” she replied with matter-of-factness.

Jonathan lowered his legs to the floor, as his grin died as swift as it had appeared. “What would I never do?” He planted his elbows on the surface of his desk and leaned closer.

Poppy plucked one of her black curls and twined it in a circle about her finger. She opened her mouth, and then closed it, an uncharacteristic guardedness in her expressive hazel eyes. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to speak on it.” There was somberness to her admission.

His elbows dug hard into the surface of his desk. “Speak on what, Poppy?” She might be the youngest of his sisters, but with her dramatic way of conveying information, she was by far the most maddening of all the Tidemore girls.

She shook her head, and promptly released the curl she played with. “Oh, I mustn’t betray the secrets of the schoolroom. What manner of young lady would I be if I were as disloyal as that? Like Pru,” she muttered.

A gentle pride at the woman she was becoming filled Jonathan. Poppy had been a mere babe when Father had passed, and had never known the dedicated, oft-smiling former Earl of Sinclair. Jonathan hoped just some of his influence in her life had shaped her into this. Prudence on the other hand… “Out with it,” he ordered, all out of patience.