The Courtship by Grace Burrowes Read Free Book Online

confidences, and—perhaps his greatest attribute—he was also capable of keeping them.
    “What would you think of acquiring Esther Himmelfarb as a sister-in-law?”
    Tony was silent a long time, which was better than had he burst out laughing.
    “Her Grace would make her life hell,” he said eventually. “His Grace would accept her.”
    An accurate assessment, as far as it went. “And you?”
    Another protracted silence broken by the serenades of crickets, who knew nothing of titles and sang for their true loves every night.
    “She’d do, Perce. You aren’t the frivolous younger son you were five years ago. Canada sorted you out, or something did. Miss Esther would follow the drum, did you ask it, and Her Grace would have to choose her battles with that one.”
    “No, she would not.”
    Tony’s observation and Percival’s own reply brought some order to the chaos of a man contemplating—seriously contemplating—holy matrimony for the first time. Percival sat forward on the bench, his elbows braced on his knees.
    “At first, I merely thought myself smitten with Miss Himmelfarb’s good looks and self-possession. She’s so irreproachably Teutonic about the chin, you know. Stirs a man’s instincts, that chin.”
    Tony maintained a politic silence, so Percy continued to work out his logic with words. “Esther Himmelfarb is lovely, but she’s also canny, and she’s resourceful. These are qualities to admire, qualities a lady with a title needs if she’s to manage well.”
    And now it was time for an officer to gather his courage and confide in his little brother. “She said Starkweather had been judged by a court higher than the military, and I must not argue with its decision.”
    “You told her about him?”
    Percy nodded. The crickets sang, the scent of rosemary wafted on the breeze, and what had been a hunch in Percy’s mind, an instinct, solidified into an objective. “I came upon her after Layton had been pestering her on the stairs, and Tony, I had all I could do not to flatten the man right then and there.”
    “Why didn’t you?”
    Insightful question. “Because until my ring is on her finger, such behavior would redound to Esther’s discredit… I’m also not sure she’d accept me.”
    “And that,” Tony said slowly, “is why she would make an excellent Duchess of Moreland, should the day ever come.”
    “Precisely. I must woo Esther, and I’m not entirely sure how to go about it.” The admission lay between them, a puzzling anomaly in their long history of late-night conversations wherein Percival typically parsed Tony’s confusions and blind turns.
    “Bit of a puzzle,” Tony said, “when a gal don’t flirt, carry on, or cast any lures. You could try kissing her.”
    “I expect Jasper Layton has made the same attempt, and likely others have as well.” She slept with a chair wedged under her door latch, considered all food and drink suspect, and trusted none of the ladies to guard her back, for God’s sake. A frontal assault was not going to win the lady’s heart.
    “Sometimes answers come if we’re patient,” Tony said. “I’m waiting for Gladys to turn twenty-one.”
    “How much longer?”
    “Another bloody year, and her mama is making noises about an excellent match in the offing. Makes it difficult to twiddle one’s thumbs here in Kent when one’s love is twiddling hers back in Town.”
    “So you write letters and twiddle and swill Morrisette’s brandy.”
    “You’ll expect me to keep an eye out for Miss Himmelfarb, too.”
    The image of Jasper Layton eyeing the lady with undisguised lust rose in Percival’s mind. “I’ll keep an eye out for her as well, and as for the wooing part, maybe something inspired will come to me.”
    ***
    Percival Windham was the most aggravating specimen of an aggravating gender ever to attend an aggravating house party.
    Why would he have brought Lord Tony to the kitchen garden, when he’d all but invited Esther to tryst with