Chapter 5

The Marchioness tapped her foot. "You stared at Lady Quint in public."Lucien looked up. "I was watching a palm fall into soup."The Marchioness raised an eyebrow. "Nobody else believes that."Lucien returned to the report. "Nobody else has taste."His aunt placed another letter on the desk. "Your grandmother's trustees have written."Lucien stopped reading.The late Duchess of Caldermir had left a peculiar condition in her will: if Lucien remained unmarried until his thirty-third birthday, the trustees could transfer control of the Northern Coal Railway to his cousin, Silas Ashcombe, for five years. His grandmother had considered this a way of forcing him to build a family; Lucien considered it an insult to every unmarried man who had ever been trusted with a horse.His birthday was six weeks away.Lucien set down the report. "They want another inspection."The Marchioness sat opposite him. "They want proof that you have established a stable household."Lucien leaned back. "I have a stable household."The Marchioness counted on her fingers: "You have a butler who threatens the chimney sweep and a housekeeper who hides knives."Lucien shrugged. "They are both very stable."The Marchioness leaned forward. "You need a wife."Lucien folded his hands. "I need a legal wife for six weeks."The Marchioness sat back. "That is not more comforting."Lucien kept his voice calm. "It is more accurate."The Marchioness studied him. "Whom do you intend to ask?"Lucien thought of the ladies at the musicale: their smiles had been polished, their conversation had been carefully arranged, and their interest in him had been immediate, energetic, and almost entirely based on his inheritance.Then he thought of Mabel Quint. She had judged his boots; she had left him to follow a man who knew where her aunt was.Lucien looked at his aunt. "Lady Mabel."The Marchioness stared at him. "The girl who put a leaf in Mr. Pritchard's soup?"Lucien kept his expression steady. "She did not put it there deliberately."The Marchioness narrowed her eyes. "That is the argument you have chosen?"Lucien folded his arms. "She understands households."The Marchioness tapped the desk. "She understands injured ponies."Lucien met her gaze. "She understands kitchens, accounts, and the difference between a useful chair and an expensive one."The Marchioness leaned forward. "You have spoken to her for less than ten minutes."Lucien nodded. "I know."The Marchioness narrowed her eyes. "That is the first sensible thing you have said."Mabel lived with her widowed aunt in a narrow house near Bloomsbury. The front steps leaned slightly to the left; the parlor wallpaper had been repaired with a strip of blue ribbon. Mabel had inherited a small allowance, a collection of cookbooks, and a family belief that a woman's safest occupation was marriage to a man who did not gamble.

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