Confessions of a Royal Bridegroom(111)

He sat down, stretching his booted legs to the fire and resting his glass on his flat stomach. “It’s not the most convenient time, given my business concerns, but, no, I don’t. I grew up in the country. I choose not to live there now, but a few weeks won’t kill me.”

Justine couldn’t help coming to alert. Finally, an opening into his past. “You grew up in Yorkshire, did you not?”

He hesitated for a few seconds, and she feared he wouldn’t answer.

“Yes,” he finally said, almost as if he doubted the truth of it. “In a windswept little village not far from South Kilvington.” He flashed a brief smile. “Not that you’ve ever heard of South Kilvington, I imagine.”


She put her untouched glass aside, propped her elbows on her knees, and rested her chin on her palms. “I haven’t, but it sounds rather lonely for a boy without much of a family. Who raised you?”

His voice sounded carefully dispassionate. “My mother’s uncle. My grandfather died a few months before I was born, and my mother was sent to live with Uncle Bartholomew until she delivered. And, as I told you before,” he added, a distasteful note creeping into his voice, “since my mother abandoned me at birth—”

“Yes, you did tell me,” she interrupted. Instinct told her that the best way to deal with Griffin in such matters was with as little fuss as possible. “So, once your mother left, it was just you and your great-uncle?”

He looked slightly disconcerted but shrugged it off. “Correct. And our housekeeper, of course. Mrs. Patterson was the closest thing I had to a mother, growing up. She took good care of me and whacked me when I misbehaved. Not the ideal situation, but it could have been worse.”

“I suppose it was a bit like my aunt Elizabeth,” Justine mused. “She was usually too busy with her radical friends to pay much attention to Matthew and me, but at least we had her to care for us. And she never whacked us, I’m happy to say.”

Griffin had been staring into the fire, but at that he turned his head to gaze at her. “Lucky you,” he said with a smile.

She thought about that for a moment. “Yes, I was lucky, because at least she loved me.” She mentally dodged the sense of melancholy threatening to take over the conversation. “And what did your uncle do? Was he a local squire, or a tradesman? I really know very little about that side of your family, which I believe is a lamentable state of affairs in a wife.”

Now she could see mischief glittering in his dark gaze. “He was a vicar.”

She slowly sat up straight, staring at him. “A vicar,” she repeated blankly.

He nodded.

“You were raised in a vicarage,” she said. She must sound like a simpleton, but she truly couldn’t believe it.

“Indeed,” he said, clearly enjoying her shock. “I was raised by a fire-and-brimstone, old-fashioned parson. Oddly, enough, Uncle Bartholomew was not a bad scholar, although he much preferred putting the fear of God into the Sunday congregation to studying Greek and Latin texts. My grandfather was the true intellectual and teacher in the family, and that was not something Uncle Bartholomew entirely approved of, particularly if one’s studies interfered with leading the flock.”

Justine felt a tickle in her throat. “How . . . how very interesting,” she said. “I must admit I’m still finding it a bit difficult to imagine you being raised by a country vicar.”

“You can imagine how I feel, then,” he replied with a wry grin. “The funny thing is, when I was a boy I wanted to be a minister. For quite a ridiculously long period of time, too.”