Page 21 of Home Unchaperoned

Will wiped his mouth. “I offered to spend some time with my cousin, Lavinia, to see if perhaps we might suit. Out of my four female cousins, Lavinia seemed to be the one whose temperament was most similar to mine.”

This was to say that Lavinia was the most bookish of the four. Will hadn’t felt any particular affinity for Lavinia, but he was given to understand that was the usual way of ton marriages. She seemed kind, quiet, and her preferred way to spend an afternoon was with a novel. Although he did not delude himself that she found him appealing, he thought it might be possible for the two of them to muddle through a marriage together.

Catriona reached for another slice of bread. “Then why are ye here, instead of getting to know this Lavinia?”

Will scraped the bottom of his bowl with a piece of bread. “It was made clear to me that Lavinia was not the daughter my aunt wished for me to marry. I was expected to marry the eldest, Daphne, and there was to be none of this nonsense about courtship. We were to wed as soon as the bans could be called.”

Catriona snorted. “That smells of something rotten.”

Will reached for the ladle and helped himself to some more soup. “Your instincts are better than mine. I was merely confused by the hysterical fit my aunt flew into when I balked at the notion of marrying someone I scarcely knew. After four days of slammed doors and constant crying from my aunt and cousin, the butler took pity on me and pulled me aside. It turns out that Miss Daphne had taken on a new dancing master a few months prior to my arrival. In spite of her mother’s instructions to the contrary, the door to the ballroom was frequently observed to be closed during her lessons. Moreover, the sounds coming from inside the room were not suggestive of dancing. Leastwise, not dancing of the traditional sort.”

“Oh-ho-ho!” Catriona waggled her eyebrows. “So, she found herself in the family way.”

“Precisely.” Will held up the ladle in a silent question. At Catriona’s nod, he refilled her bowl.

Catriona’s expression was irate. “And they expected ye to patch things up by marrying her and claiming another man’s child as yer own?”

“So it would seem.”

“What did ye do, then?”

Will took up his spoon. “I went to London. I assumed they would not follow me, given that my cousin’s condition would grow more obvious by the day.”

It had even worked for a little while. Not that Will had any friends in London, but he had immediately joined the Society of Antiquaries. He figured if gentleman dilettante was the only type of historian he would ever be, he might as well go ahead and take up the mantle. And he had met some like-minded gentlemen in the Society.

Had he been able to remain in London longer, he felt certain he would have been able to forge a friendship or two.

But he’d never been that lucky.

“Unfortunately,” he continued, “my aunt has a number of friends in Town, and she wrote to every one of them. Soon, I couldn’t walk into a room without it filling with whispers about the ‘betrothed’ whom I had ‘made disappear.’ I suppose it wasn’t a huge leap to accuse me outright of murder. But Daphne was never my betrothed, and, as far as I am aware, she remains alive to this day.”

He’d been concentrating on his soup, trying not to fret over Catriona’s reaction. But he couldn’t resist sneaking a glance at her to see if she seemed convinced by his words.

Disappointment was written plain across her face. “Then ye’ve never slain anyone with a shovel?”

“I have not.”

A trace of desperation came into her eyes. “Not even someone who very much deserved it?”

He couldn’t help but chuckle. “No! I told you, I’m a dull academic. Why do you look disappointed?”

She blew out a huff. “These are bad men we’re going up against. A bit of shovel slaying experience wouldnae be entirely amiss.”

Now he was laughing, the sort of helpless, from your belly laugh that he hadn’t done in…

Gracious. That didn’t bear thinking about.

He gave her a fond smile. “You’re a strange person, Catriona McCallister.”

She responded with a preen. “Thank ye. So, no shovel slaying, but when I asked if ye’d killed someone, ye didnae deny it. Ye didnae do it with a shovel, then. What happened?”

Will steeled himself. “I killed⁠—”

He was interrupted by the chiming of the clock upstairs. Catriona sprang to her feet. “Is it one o’clock already?” She grabbed his arm and tugged him toward the door. “Come on! We still have to practice the dancing!”

Will stumbled to his feet, knocking over his stool in the process. “Don’t you want to hear about⁠—”

“Later.”