The Waltzing Widow/Smith by Joan Smith

the family, preferably by his remaining single and leaving his money to some of her numerous progeny. As well as Prissy Lady Sara had three strapping boys to be provided for. But Morton was a man of the world. A gentleman of mature years who had evaded the snares of such persistent wooers as Lady Beatrice was felt to be in no danger of succumbing to a captain’s widow.
    Avedon was less certain of Morton’s safety. His visit to Milhaven had been for the purpose of delivering Lady Bigelow home. He would normally have left within a day or two. He gave no sign of leaving and made no pretense that his reason for clinging on was anything but Mrs. Percy. He had developed an oddly uncharacteristic way of acting and dressing—consciously youthful. On the few occasions when Adrian or Sally saw him, they teased him about his new Brutus do and brighter waistcoats, but he was unfazed.
    “I ain’t over the hill yet, Sal,” he said, laughing. “Don’t count on my bankroll. I am thinking of setting up my own nursery.”
    “Oh, Morton, at your age,” she scoffed.
    “I am only in my thirties, like young Adrian here.”
    “A slip of a boy of thirty-nine, with a birthday in October,” she reminded him.
    “A groom of forty would look foolish,” he said. A smile lifted his lips at Sally’s nodding agreement. “I must get cracking and do the thing up before October.” This was said in a joking spirit, yet the assiduity with which he was courting Mrs. Percy raised doubts in Avedon’s bosom.
    These doubts reached a new height when Morton casually mentioned attending an assembly in Ashford. He hadn’t bothered with the local assemblies for a decade.
    “You can’t mean you are going to that!” Adrian exclaimed in amazement.
    “Mrs. Percy wishes to attend, and I have offered to escort her.”
    “Oh, Morton, my dear,” Sally chided. “You will look an utter quiz, dancing at your age. The whole village is already tittering at this strange way you drag your hair forward. I cannot think it necessary. You are not that bald.”
    “I am not bald at all, just graying a little.”
    Lady Sara gave another of her rueful smiles at such self-delusion. “The whole town will be in whoops, to see a man your age up jigging with a young girl.”
    Morton flicked a mote of dust from his sleeve. “I’m not quite ready for the urn yet. Was it not Mrs. Percy’s advanced years that were used as one of the many excuses for her ineligibility when it was Tony who had the inside track?” he asked.
    “There was no need for excuses!” Sally fired back. “There are good and sufficient reasons for finding her entirely ineligible.”
    “I don’t find an attractive young widow from a good family so ineligible as you do. But you may stop worrying about Tony. She won’t marry him.”
    “She won’t marry you, either,” Avedon said angrily.
    “Tut, tut, Cousin. I ain’t a cawker under your heavy thumb. It was you who set me onto her, so don’t cry craven on me now.” He drew out his watch and glanced at it. “This has been delightful, but I have an engagement with Mrs. Percy, and I would not like to keep her waiting.” He rose and sauntered from the room, leaving his angry cousins behind.
     

Chapter Nine
     
    Lady Sara was thrown into alarm by these ominous signs of Morton’s fortune escaping the fold. “I think we must attend this wretched assembly ourselves, Adrian,” she said.
    “I plan to attend.”
    She looked startled. “Why, you never go unless you have company visiting, and even then you complain like the devil.”
    “I’ll be at this one,” he said grimly.
    “Good, and if Morton is making too much headway with the widow, you must cut him out.”
    Avedon adjusted his cravat and said with arrogant nonchalance, “That had occurred to me as one solution.”
    “For, of course, you would never be vulnerable to such a creature,” Sally said with a steely, commanding look.
    On this occasion it was Avedon who was eager to turn to