Gingerbread Bride

Chapter Nine

On the following day, he was up and about again, but still found it impossible to get Mary alone. Indeed, she seemed always to be leaving a room as he entered it, and when he tried to follow, good manners required him to stop and attend to whichever person she'd sent to ask his opinion, challenge his beliefs, invite him to a game, or otherwise distract him. He grew sick of hearing, from one person after another, "Lieutenant, Miss Pritchard says..."

So it continued, a cat-and-mouse game that Mary appeared not to notice, and the Wrens watched with benign amusement. He was well enough now to continue on to London, but somehow, he couldn't bring himself to leave.

On Friday night, several days after he arrived, and only a few days before Christmas, they sat fifteen for dinner. It was cheerful, loud, and not at all decorous. People talked across the table, and several were participating in more than one conversation. Dr. Wren was holding his own in a debate about whether Lancelot was a later addition to the Arthurian canon or an original round table member under another name, while simultaneously sharing recipes for mead and arguing about a point in mathematics that Rick nearly understood.

Farther down the table, a group of young ladies were proposing ideas for setting up a dance floor in the garden, since no room in the house could accommodate dancing, as well as the number of guests who would be at the Christmas party on the twenty-third. The chief problem, it seemed, was providing sufficient light so the dancers could see, without setting fire to the trees.

The house would be full on the night of the party, with those staying for Christmas arriving early, and those leaving for home waiting till the next morning. Rick had already told Mrs. Wren he'd move to one of the Oxford inns ahead of the festivities.

The butler, who was really a general factotum, came to stand between Dr. Wren and Rick, and bent over so he would be heard above the hubbub. "Doctor, your nephew, Viscount Bosville, has arrived."

Rick turned to look at the door. Sure enough, the blackguard was there, studying the noisy dinner table with a barely concealed sneer.

"Theo," Dr. Wren bellowed, silencing the guests. "Theo, young Bosville is here for a visit. What do you want to do with him?"

Mrs. Wren went to greet her nephew. The guests took up their conversations, so Rick couldn't hear what she said. In any case, he was watching Mary struggle to maintain an expression of benign indifference.

What the hell was Bosville after? As if Rick didn't know. He toyed with the idea of telling the Wrens what Bosville had done, but he had no proof, and, after all, the man was their nephew.

That settled that. He could not leave now. However she might feel about it, Rick was sticking to Mary. Limpets would be amateurs, compared to Rick, for as long as Bosville stayed in this house.