The Marriage Contract

by Ruth Ann Nordin

  “Are you ready to meet your uncle?” he whispered to Susanna. “He came by just to see you.”

  He carried her out of the room and found Lewis lounging in a chair by the fireplace. He looked over at Stephen as he came into the room. “Tell me I misread your missive,” Lewis said, rising to his feet. “Tell me Patricia had a son instead of a daughter.”

  Stephen didn’t hide his amusement. “I know you never wanted to have your brother’s title, but it’s now yours, Lord Pruett.”

  Lewis closed his eyes and shuddered.

  “Why don’t you want it?” Stephen asked.

  “It comes with a lot of responsibility,” Lewis said. “I’d have to take care of the entire estate. Everything will rest on my shoulders.” He glanced at the baby. “Are you sure that isn’t a boy?”

  “Her name is Susanna, and she’s a darling little girl. I wouldn’t have her any other way.” Noting the way Lewis’ shoulders slumped, he added, “She’s healthy. Patricia’s healthy. Isn’t that what really matters?”

  “Yes, it is. I just…” Lewis shrugged. “I was always glad to be the younger brother. It’s scary to be the one with the title.”

  “I hope you don’t retreat from the entire world like Ichabod did.”

  “No, I wouldn’t do that. I love getting out and playing games.” He shot Stephen a pointed look. “Which is the problem. I’d have to focus on managing the estate instead of living the carefree lifestyle I’ve become accustomed to.”

  By the way Lewis talked, one would swear Lewis was a rake. Stephen waited until the butler put some brandy and crumpets down before he answered his friend.

  “Lewis,” Stephen began as the butler left, “you’re not exactly running from one bed to another, and it’s not like either of us are wasting money like we used to.”

  “No, but now I have to pay attention to which gentlemen I associate with. I have to start impressing people like your brother. You know the type: boring and stuffy. You have to watch every little thing you say lest you upset them.”

  “Have a seat and hold your niece,” Stephen said.

  He’d never seen Lewis so uptight before. Once Lewis was in a chair, Stephen gave Susanna to him to hold, instructing him on the correct way to do so. Then he gave Lewis a glass of brandy for his free hand.

  “Now have a drink, relax, and we’ll talk.” Stephen picked up his own glass and took a sip. “You and I have managed just fine without having a title. We were both able to figure out the right businesses to invest in using common sense.”

  “Well, it’s easy to know to invest in a store that creates pretty gowns.”

  “That’s because ladies like to look their best and gentlemen like seeing them in their best. As I said: common sense.”

  “But don’t titled gentlemen have to hang around in the same social circles?”

  “I don’t recall that being a rule.”

  “It’s an unwritten one. Having a title means more responsibilities. Suddenly, a gentleman’s importance goes up. He has to associate with others who are of equal importance.”

  Stephen took another sip then picked up a crumpet. “I don’t see what’s so important about a title. It’s nothing more than bragging rights, if you ask me. I know of middle class gentlemen who manage their households much better than titled ones do.”

  “That’s not the case with your brother. He’s one of the most respected gentlemen in London.”

  “My brother isn’t the only notable gentleman in London, and even if he was, it doesn’t mean you have to associate with him. You don’t need to be someone you’re not, Lewis. Just keep being you.” He gestured to Susanna. “She won’t care if her uncle isn’t a prominent member of the Ton. All she’ll care is if her uncle is happy whenever he sees her.”

  “I am happy to see her,” Lewis replied. He looked down at her and smiled. “She’s so tiny. I don’t know why, but I thought she’d be bigger.”

  “According to my sister and Patricia, it’s good she’s not any bigger than she is.”

  “Considering they give birth, I can see their point. I wouldn’t want to do it. It seems like a scary thing to go through.”

  “How much do you know about it?”

  “Just that a human being this size,” he nodded toward Susanna, “is able to come out of something that’s not nearly that big.” He paused then added, “Actually, I don’t want to know the details. It’s enough that ladies are brave enough to give birth. I think the entire human family would die off if gentlemen had to do it.”

  “To be honest, I wouldn’t want to give birth, either, but I did enjoy being there when Susanna came into the world. There’s something remarkable about it.”

  “Did you really see Susanna’s birth?”

  “I not only saw it, but I was the one who delivered her.”

  Lewis stared at him in disbelief. “You were?”

  “I won’t lie. I was terrified at the time because I was afraid I’d do something wrong, but it was the best thing I ever experienced.”

  “You’re a stronger person than I am. I think I would have fainted if I’d been in your situation.”

  Lewis glanced to the doorway, and Stephen followed his gaze. Patricia and her lady’s maid waited in the doorway.

  The two gentlemen stood up, and Stephen waved them forward. “Come in. I’ll have the butler bring some tea.”

  “I can get the tea,” Patricia’s lady’s maid said as she helped Patricia sit on the settee.

  Stephen frowned. “Are you feeling all right?” he asked Patricia.

  “I think I pushed myself too hard by going for a walk this morning,” Patricia replied.

  “I’ll slip something into your tea to help with the ache,” her lady’s maid said. “Would you gentlemen like any tea?”

  “I already have something to drink,” Lewis replied. He glanced at Susanna then turned his attention to Patricia. “Would you like to hold your daughter?”

  “You should hold her,” Patricia told him. “You aren’t here all the time to enjoy her company.”

  “She’s fun to hold,” Stephen added. “Before you know it, she’ll be running all over the place. I never thought my niece and nephew would be getting into everything in the room, but they are. My youngest nephew will catch up to them soon, too. It’s a shame babies don’t stay little longer.”

  “She is a darling,” Patricia’s lady’s maid said.

  “While I agree she is,” Lewis began, “I’d rather give her back to her mother.” He went to Patricia and gently placed the baby in her arms. Then he let out a sigh of relief and put his hand over his heart. “I was afraid I was going to drop her.”

  Stephen shook his head but decided not to say anything. He supposed not all gentlemen were comfortable holding babies or being around children. He sat back down. The maid headed on out of the room, and Lewis returned to his chair.

  “So you’re uncomfortable?” Stephen asked Patricia.

  “It’s not that bad,” Patricia assured him. “I just need to take it slower the next time I go for a walk. It was such a nice morning, and I was having an enjoyable talk with you.”

  She smiled, and Stephen experienced an unexpected surge of warmth in his heart.

  “It seems like you two are getting along well,” Lewis said, glancing between them.

  “We are,” Patricia replied, directing her attention to him. “You’re right. Stephen is a nice and considerate gentleman.”

  Stephen’s gaze went to Lewis. Lewis had said that about him?

  “Why are you looking at me that way?” Lewis asked him, his eyes wide. “You can’t be surprised I would say such things about you. We’ve been friends for years.”

  After an awkward moment of silence passed between everyone, Patricia said, “I think I’ll wait until the day after tomorrow before trying for another walk, and next time, I’ll take things slower.”

  “If you get tired at any time, we can stop and take a break,” Stephen replied.

  She
indicated she would do that, and they fell into a silence for a couple of seconds.

  “I am glad you and the child are doing well,” Lewis told her. “It’s true that I was hoping for a nephew so he could inherit the title, but I’m happy Susanna’s here.”

  “In all of the excitement of having her, I forgot about the title,” Patricia said. “Does this mean I’m not Lady Pruett anymore?”

  “Lady Pruett will be the lady he ends up marrying,” Stephen answered for him. “If you’d had a son, then you would be Lady Pruett until your son took a wife. At that point, you would have become a dowager. Since you had a daughter, Lewis’ wife will be Lady Pruett, and if he has a son, the title will go on to his wife.”

  “What happens to Lewis’ title if he doesn’t have a son?” Patricia asked.

  “My title will go to the oldest male cousin on my father’s side,” Lewis answered for Stephen. “Unfortunately, I can’t just pass it on to him right now. I wish it was possible for gentlemen to pass on their titles to others if they didn’t want it.”

  “You mustn’t think of it like that,” Patricia said. “A title is a wonderful thing to have.”

  Lewis grimaced, and Stephen laughed.

  “All you need is a wife,” Stephen told him. “You don’t need to worry about befriending boring and stuffy gentlemen. You make enough money with the investments we’ve been making. Just get married and see if you get a son from the union. It couldn’t be easier.”

  Lewis rolled his eyes. “It’s not easy to find a wife. It’s hard.”

  “I don’t understand why you think it’ll be difficult for you to find a wife,” Patricia said as she rubbed Susanna’s back. “You’re a likable gentleman.”

  “Ladies are difficult for me to talk to,” Lewis replied.

  “You have no trouble talking to me,” she countered.

  Interested in how Lewis would respond, Stephen directed his attention back to his friend.

  “That’s because I wasn’t going to marry you,” Lewis said. “Given everything, I knew you’d be perfect for my brother.”

  Stephen couldn’t help but notice the way Lewis had included the phrase “given everything” in that statement. His mind went back to the evening Lewis had brought her here. Lewis had said that it was safer for her to be outside of London because someone had been trying to kill her.

  At the time, Stephen didn’t believe the story Patricia had told Lewis. But now that he’d gotten a chance to know her, perhaps there was something to the story. Eloise would have used the story to gain Lewis’ sympathy…and security by marrying an earl who was financially well off.

  But the more Stephen got to know Patricia, the more striking the contrast between her and Eloise became. Not that he went around comparing the two. He didn’t. It was just at this moment, he was beginning to take note of the differences, and Patricia was nothing like Eloise. He actually liked Patricia. She could be a friend. She seemed to speak from her heart. He didn’t detect any hint of deception in anything she’d ever done or said.

  Lewis hadn’t been able to verify if Patricia’s life really had been in danger, but it was obvious to Stephen that she had believed it’d been.

  Patricia’s lady’s maid came back in with a teapot and a cup of tea. She put both on the table in front of the settee. “It’s black tea with a little peppermint, just as you wanted,” she told Patricia.

  “You make black tea with peppermint?” Lewis asked the maid.

  “It’s something my father used to drink when it was chilly outside,” the maid replied.

  “I’ve never had that before,” Lewis said.

  “I can bring you a cup.” The maid gestured to the teapot. “There’s enough for two or three people.”

  “As long as it won’t be any trouble…”

  “It’d be no trouble at all. I’ll be right back.” She hurried out of the room.

  Lewis shifted in his chair in a way that indicated he worried he’d just inconvenienced her, so Stephen said, “She wouldn’t have offered to get you a cup if she didn’t want to do it.”

  “Marcy’s very nice,” Patricia added. “She’s one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met. Stephen’s right. She wouldn’t have made the offer if she didn’t want to do it. She would have summoned the butler to do it instead.”

  “What is her role here?” Lewis asked.

  “She’s my lady’s maid,” Patricia replied. “And she helps me with Susanna. Are you sure you don’t want to hold your niece?”

  Lewis shook his head. “I’ll be more comfortable doing that when she’s older. Right now she seems so fragile.”

  Patricia glanced down at her daughter. “I suppose she is. She can’t even hold her head up. I can understand why you’re timid when it comes to holding her.”

  Stephen finished his crumpet then shot his friend a pointed look. “Someday you’re going to have children of your own. The sooner you get comfortable holding babies, the better.”

  Lewis grimaced. “I’m not like you, Stephen. I’m not good around children. I don’t have a single thing in common with them.”

  “You were once a child,” Stephen said. “Surely, you can remember something from that time in your life.”

  “All I remember is that I hated my lessons. I just wanted to ride horses or play a game.”

  Stephen laughed. “Which isn’t all that different from what you do now. Children are just little people. Sometimes I think they’re better than adults. They forgive easily and they tell you exactly what they want.”

  Patricia’s lady’s maid returned to the room, poured tea into a cup, and gave it to Lewis.

  “Thank you,” he told her as he took it.

  With a blush, she said, “You’re welcome.” Then, clearing her throat, she turned her attention to Patricia and Stephen. “Is there anything else anyone would like?”

  Stephen shook his head, and Patricia answered, “No. We have everything we need.”

  The maid offered a curtsy then left the room. And from there, Stephen tried to convince Lewis that children weren’t as frightening as his friend thought them to be.

  Chapter Fourteen

  After dinner that evening, Patricia decided to retire for the night, leaving Stephen with the perfect chance to talk to Lewis alone. As he poured port wine into their glasses in his den, he glanced over at his friend who was shuffling the deck of cards.

  “Do you mind if I ask you a question?” Stephen asked him.

  Lewis let out an exasperated sigh. “This isn’t about children again, is it?”

  Amused, Stephen chuckled. “No. I’m not going to keep trying to convince you that children are wonderful to have around. I wanted to ask you about Patricia.”

  “By now, I think you know more about her than I do.”

  Stephen brought their glasses over to the small table between him and Lewis. He sat across from his friend, and as his friend started dealing out their cards, he said, “I wanted to ask you about Patricia’s past. When you brought her here, you said something about a person who was trying to kill her.”

  Lewis’ eyebrows rose in surprise. “You’re just now wondering about that?”

  “At the time, I didn’t know her. She could have been deceiving you. Since then, I’ve come to realize she’s not like Eloise. She’s the type of person who tells the truth.”

  “I told you she was trustworthy. Couldn’t you have taken my word for it?”

  “Sure, I could have. Just like you could believe me when I say children are wonderful.”

  “I never said children weren’t wonderful. I just don’t know what to do around them.”

  Stephen picked up his cards. “All right, we’ll let the matter go. I want to talk about Patricia anyway. Who was trying to kill Patricia?”

  “I told you it was someone named Symon. She was running from him when I met her. I never saw him. She was so scared, I did the only thing I could think of at the moment, and that was letting her into my carriage.” He shrugged. “I can�
��t really tell you more than that.”

  “She didn’t explain why Symon was trying to kill her?”

  “Well…she did, but the story can’t be true.”

  “What is the story?”

  Lewis sorted through his cards for a moment then took a sip of his wine. “Her mother did something to upset a gypsy, and the gypsy put her and her mother under a curse.”

  “There’s no such thing as a gypsy’s curse.” He’d heard of tales of gypsy curses, but those were all make believe. None of them had any basis in reality.

  “That’s what I told her, but she was adamant that this dark curse had been following her during her entire life while she lived in London. She said it killed everyone she cared about.”

  “If the curse is an ‘it’, then where does Symon figure into all of this?”

  “She thinks Symon is a young man who does the gypsy’s bidding. Honestly, I think it’s all in her head.”

  “All in her head? Do you think she made Symon up because she was convinced this curse was real?”

  “I don’t know what to think. All I know is that I never saw anyone coming after her, but she was terrified. If this was all in her imagination, she was convinced it was real. I haven’t been able to talk her out of the nonsense. Maybe you can.”

  “How long was she seeing Symon?”

  “She claimed he was with the gypsy when the gypsy cursed her mother. I think she said she was nine or ten at the time. I can’t remember the exact age, but she was young.”

  Maybe that explained it. If there was a gypsy who spouted off some curse, a child might believe the curse had power behind it. If Patricia had been an adult, she would have been able to reason through the situation. She would have known the gypsy had only been trying to scare her. She would have blown the whole thing off. Children had many wonderful qualities, but they were also very trusting. Too trusting. A nine or ten-year-old girl could very easily fall for the notion of a gypsy’s curse.

  “Sometimes I wonder if being with my brother only made things worse,” Lewis said after he drank more wine. “My brother was so odd. Ever since he almost died from an infection when he was thirteen, he hadn’t left his bedchamber. I blame part of that on my father. He was so scared my brother was going to die that he told my brother staying indoors was a good idea.”