A Lord Rotheby's Holiday Bundle by Catherine Gayle Page B

Hyatt and her father my word. We’ll
marry tomorrow.”
    “ Your word does not seem to
mean much, these days.” Jonas frowned resolutely. “As much as I
hate to admit it, I think you’d do well to listen to your
grandfather for once. Grow up. Be a man.”
    If they weren’t driving through
crowded streets, Quin would draw Jonas’s cork for that comment.
“I’m as much a man as my father ever was.”
    “ Precisely the problem.
What happened to wanting to be better than him?” Jonas navigated
the phaeton around a sharp turn, nodding and tipping his hat to a
passing carriage. “Why are you content to live the same life he
did—only perhaps to a greater extent? I wonder what your mother
must think of you these days.”
    Blast. Quin hated it with a blinding
passion when Jonas was right. “Mother is none of your concern. She
is perfectly content in her new marriage, and thoroughly oblivious
to my pursuits.” Thank God. He would hate himself more than he
already did if she could see what a wastrel he’d become. “It’s
better this way.”
    “ Better how? Better that
you never see her? She loves you. She wants you to finally be
happy. Like I do. And what of your sister? Nia wouldn’t recognize
you if she saw you.” Jonas shook his head and looked
away.
    Quin ground his jaw. Nia was far
better off without him in her life. Jonas should leave her out of
this.
    The phaeton rolled over a deep rut in
the road, bumping them against each other even more than they
already were. “Can’t you see that it would hurt your family to see
you acting like this?” Jonas asked after a protracted
silence.
    “ Acting like what? Like a
gentleman who is doing the right thing? Like a bloody dandy about
to tie myself irrevocably to some silly chit I’ve known for less
than a day?”
    “ Like a wounded bear,
acting out against everyone around you, Quin,” Jonas muttered.
“You’re acting out against me, against Rotheby, and now you’ve gone
and drawn Miss Hyatt into your mess. When are you going to accept
the fact that you can’t change the past, you can’t change the man
your father was, but you can damned well change who you
are?”
    “ I can’t. I am who my
father made me.”
    And he would bloody well stay that way
until he died.

Chapter Eight
     
    2 April, 1811
     
    Marriage — real, true marriage — is not something I’ve ever really
allowed myself to contemplate. After seeing what happened between
Mother and Father for so many years, it is the last thing in the
world I wanted. Yet now, I will be married whether I want it or
not. Tomorrow, in fact. Oh, dear good Lord. How did I end up in
this mess? Still, Lord Quinton does look to be quite the pirate. Perhaps at least a
marriage to him will be adventurous. Do I want adventure? I’m not
certain. I simply do not want boredom. So I shall hope that my
pirate will not bore me to tears. And perhaps someday we will learn
to love one another. I can always hope. Lust, at least, appears to
be in no short supply.
     
    ~From the journal of Miss
Aurora Hyatt
     
    Everything felt numb.
    Aurora couldn’t afford to feel. If she
allowed herself to feel, then she would collapse beneath the
enormity of it all.
    Father had kept to himself
in his study since Lord Quinton left that morning. When she did see
him, the look upon his face was so pitiful she wanted to toss
herself kicking and screaming upon her bed. She was the cause of his despair. He
hadn’t appeared so despondent since the days when her mother was
still alive.
    Rose continued to check on her, asking
if Aurora needed anything. Aurora wanted to wail each time her maid
asked such a question, because it only reminded her of how fast it
was all to happen. How the wedding she had once hoped never to have
at all would not take place at St. George’s and be attended by all
and sundry, but instead would be held at some tiny parish church,
with only those who absolutely must attend present. How, within
such a short breadth of