Once a Wallflower, At Last His Love (Scandalous Seasons #6)(55)

“Er…feel free to move those,” he said, and gestured with his pipe over at the stacks of ledgers on the lone wing-back chair at the foot of his desk.

She cleared a slight place at the edge of the aged, cracked leather and sat.

Papa tucked the pipe between his teeth once more and exhaled a perfect, smoky ring. The smoky, pungent odor burned her nose. “Must you do that, Papa?” she chided. She’d long detested the acrid scent of his vice.

He waved off her gentle scold. “Bah, one pipe a day helps a gentleman think.”

If that were the case, Papa should be smoking ten pipes a day, because he might be somewhat useful in pulling their family from the direst of circumstances. Perhaps it was cowardice on her part, but she opted to focus on the concern she believed their father might at least be capable of seeing to. She leaned forward and clasped the edge of his desk. “I spoke to Hugh,” she said without preamble.

Several deep wrinkles lined her father’s brow. “Who…?” Her eyebrows dipped. “Er, right, right, Hugh,” he coughed into his hand, having the good grace to appear shamefaced at momentarily forgetting his only son and heir.

“He fears he’ll not be going to Eton.”

Silence reigned. The pall only heightened by the tick-tock of the partially cracked ormolu clock, a once extravagant piece that bespoke a time of almost luxury.

“Papa?”

He took another puff of his pipe and then set it down. He tapped it on a spare dish filled with ash. A mottled flush stained his fleshy cheeks. “He’ll go to Eton, Hermie, my girl.”

Some of the tension left her. She’d assured her brother that for their family’s present circumstances, he would have that which he deserved—an education to match every other respectable young boy of his age. And more, a semblance of normalcy, in light of Elizabeth’s scandal, Papa’s abject misery, and their overall near-poverty.

She made to rise, but then something, a flash of guilt in her father’s pale blue eyes gave her pause. “Papa?” Unease stirred in her chest. “He will go to Eton?” she repeated.

“Of course, of course.” Only this rushed assurance and the increased color in his face crushed all her earlier relief. “I imagine when you make a match or…er, I work through some of these failed investments.”

She closed her eyes. Oh, God. When she opened them, her father would not meet her gaze. Instead, his stare remained fixed on the cluttered desktop as he fiddled and fumbled with the ledgers in abject disarray. Hermione leaned over and placed her hand on his, stilling his frenetic movements. “And what if I don’t make an advantageous match?” she pressed, quietly.

He dropped the stack of papers and raked a hand through his hair. “You will.”

She collapsed into her chair; the breath sucked from her chest. “Papa,” she said again, an entreaty underscoring that single utterance.

He managed a wan smile. “You’re lovely, Hermie, and you’d make some gentleman a wonderful—”

“What gentleman would want the dowerless daughter of an impoverished family, with a sister…?” She glanced around, remembering herself. She dropped her voice to a hushed whisper. “With a sister who is simple, and a family whose reputation is now damaged beyond repair?” A bitter laugh bubbled past her lips. A man of Sebastian’s distinguished rank would never link himself with this shattered family.

“A worthwhile gentleman.”

She scoffed.

“One who will love you hopelessly enough to overlook such things, my dear.”

She closed her eyes and gave her head a despairing shake. Ever the romantic her Papa was. A man who’d gone and buried the remnants of his heart with his beloved, departed wife even though there were four very much alive children in desperate need of his love and guidance.

“Do not look like that,” he scolded.

“Like what?” The terse question came out far sharper than she’d intended.

“As though you don’t believe in love.”

“I believe in love,” she said defensively. Just not necessarily for herself.

Her father folded his arms at the waist and leaned back in his seat. “I have always admired your intelligence and your ability to craft a beautiful story.”

For all he’d done wrong these years, this man bore traces of the person he’d once been. A father unashamed, even proud of his bluestocking daughter, a man who supported each Gothic novel she penned. “Thank you.” She squirmed, still uncomfortable with praise for her work.

“I’m not finished, my dear.” He held a finger up. “What I’d intended to say is I’ve admired your intelligence, yet for a young woman who can dream up and tell such stories of love, you seem to move through life with a remarkable lack of faith in the sentiment.”

She’d seen what love wrought. Papa’s descent into a fog. Where was the romanticism in real life? “I’m not unromantic, Papa. I’m practical. There is a greater chance of the Queen’s Horse Guard taking flight over the palace than in me making the match you and Aunt Agatha are hoping,” expecting, “me to make.”

Her father reeled as though she had struck him across the face.

Hermione glanced away. Love was better kept to the pages of a novel where a woman couldn’t be disappointed or have her heart broken, and as she had learned early on, there were all manner of heartbreaks a young woman could suffer—the loss of a mother or the regret of a detached father. As well as the careless tossing away of a virtue one didn’t know to be prized.