not.”
She cocked her head to the side, gazing at him with remarkably powerful eyes. “I would like to have a relationship which would allow us to become pleasant and welcoming with each other. Do you concur that it would be a good thing?”
He nodded soundlessly.
“Wonderful,” she replied, beaming. “This is a place from which we can at least start. You help me with my roses. We shall have conversation. You shall come to dinner, and you shall find a house.” She pursed her lips. “Or you shall take up house with us.”
The iron tone of her words was irrefutable.
“I will find a house at once,” he assured.
“Good.” She picked up her tea and sipped as though this was the most natural conversation in the world. “Preferably within a few streets. Mary and I have never lived apart, and I would prefer to keep that. You know, when the children come, it would be most useful to have me about.”
When the children come.
Heath had never even imagined it, but suddenly, a feeling of such lightness filled him that he could hardly breathe.
“My dear, you aren’t going to faint, are you?” she asked, alarmed. “I have smelling salts, though I don’t usually use them myself. Occasionally, I have a friend who becomes overborne and—”
“No, no,” he declared quickly. “I am merely adjusting to everything you have said.”
“Oh, good,” she said. “Then, we shan’t have any trouble. You’ll stay to supper, won’t you? We must converse about how to introduce you to our friends.”
Introduced to their friends? Heath struggled to reply until he breathed, “They’re going to hate me, you know?”
She scoffed. “My dear, no. They’ll think you’re a marvelous, unique person. And I’ll tell you, one thing the ton likes is a unique person who doesn’t attempt to be like them. So, as long as you never try to be like us and you be yourself, they’ll admire you just the way you are. There will be no trouble at all. As a matter of fact, you shall be a godsend to have at most dinner parties because, usually, there’s nothing to talk about.”
It did strike him that she was saying he was going to be rather like a parrot, a bird of beautiful plumes that people could be distracted by, but he supposed there were worse things.
He swung his gaze from Robert to the Dowager Duchess, the last vestiges of suspicion hard to shake off. “Why are you two welcoming me into your family?”
Robert clapped a hand on his shoulder. “I won’t lie. I was tempted to find you and beat you to a living pulp, but I love Mary, and Mary loves you. So there’s really little else to say.”
Robert’s jaw tensed. “Though it would be nice if you could choose a career that wasn’t quite so dangerous to your person, especially when the children come.”
They kept saying that, the children coming, and he’d never really given thought to having children. But the idea of Mary holding a baby, their baby, in her arms suddenly filled his mind.
It crashed over him like a wave, filling him with. . . hope.
And he could think of nothing he wanted more.
“A change of career,” he repeated.
“Now, we’re not asking you to change yourself, my dear,” said the Dowager Duchess. “That would be an impossible imposition upon you. I don’t necessarily approve of gambling, for obvious reasons, but you don’t seem to take terrible advantage of people, and you did try to help my husband and to help my son. So I shall not think that much less of you for it, but perhaps choosing something in which you’d be less likely to be stabbed in an alley. . .”
“Might be more suitable for a husband?” he finished.
“We’d all sleep a good deal better,” she agreed. “Now, we’re not suggesting you don’t go to that particular part of town. Because as I understand, you do a good deal of very important work there, not in your club, but with the general populace. And we should not like to take that from you. If anything, we should like to contribute to it.”
Heath had not had a day like this in years, where every few moments, he experienced something entirely new.
His mother-in-law wished to help him in his endeavors?
The dowager frowned. “I find my time sometimes filled with the silliest things. Embroidery, for instance. I would much rather assist you in the taking care of the general populace of London.”
Again, he gaped. It seemed to be