The Honorable Heir Read Online Free PDF Page B

the world but his title, but then, that was all I thought I wanted. Well, his title and his handsome face. Which is precisely why I wish to spare you from looking only to the surface of the man.”
    “I know seeing those men must be difficult for you.” Estelle reached across the table and covered Catherine’s hand with hers. “But I feel like their presence here is such a godsend. So few people here are accomplished musicians, and Mama never lets me associate with the townspeople anymore.”
    “I understand they were giving you notions of joining a band.” Catherine grimaced, the mere word denoting lower Manhattan factory workers who turned amateur performers on their off days.
    “Amy Beach performed in public.” Estelle never failed to point out the talented Boston musician and composer as an example of a woman of good family who performed. “With an orchestra. And now she is married and not publicly performing.”
    Estelle sighed.
    “I know you want to play for others, Stell, but playing in a low theater is no life for a VanDorn.”
    “And what is a life for a VanDorn?” Estelle removed her hand and drummed her long fingers on the lace table runner. “A marriage where my husband stays in the city more nights than he’s at home with me and the children? Do you know how pathetic Mrs. Post is, driving down to the train station night after night, hoping her husband will appear? He scarcely does. I’m mortified for her. And then you were stranded in that mausoleum of a house on Romney Marsh while your husband gambled away your dowry in London.”
    “Bisterne is a very beautiful manor house, not a mausoleum.”
    “After your money stopped it from crumbling to bits.”
    “What do you know of it?” Catherine’s voice emerged harsher than she intended just as her mother swept into the dining room on a cloud of lavender and rose perfume.
    “Girls, you aren’t quarreling, are you?”
    “No, Mama,” they chorused.
    “Good. Catherine created quite enough of a stir last night with that mauve-and-green gown, and we don’t wish to have the servants gossiping about how the two of you cannot get along with one another.” Mama paused in her speech as a footman entered bearing fresh coffee steaming in a silver pot.
    He drew out Mama’s chair with his free hand, then poured coffee into the cup already set at her place. Mama took only black coffee for breakfast, which was probably why she remained girlishly slim despite her forty-five years. The footman departed the room without so much as offering to fill a plate for her.
    “You should have remained for the entire ball,” Mama continued. “You looked ashamed of yourself, Catherine. And, Estelle, you will never find a husband if you don’t allow young men to court you.”
    “I don’t want—”
    Catherine shot her a glance, then faced Mama. “I had developed a headache.”
    “I saw old Mrs. Selkirk talking to you.” Mama raised her coffee to drink and her eyebrows to query.
    Catherine raised her own cup as though she and her mother were saluting one another with foils before a duel—coffee cups at five paces. “I’m to stay away from Lord Tristram Wolfe.”
    Estelle smirked. “Which you didn’t.”
    “He wouldn’t stay away from me. In fact—” Catherine took a deep breath. She may as well get this out of the way now. “He’s calling this morning.”
    “Indeed?” Though they were as dark as her daughters’, Mama’s eyes gleamed from beneath half-mast lids. “Will I be the first mama in Tuxedo Park—or Newport, for that matter—to see her daughter marry two English titles?”
    “I have no intention of marrying another Englishman.” Catherine pushed back her chair. “And if you want the best for your younger daughter, you will be cautious about allowing Mr. Wolfe and Mr. Baston-Ward to call upon her. They are highly unlikely to inherit titles without a number of men dying prematurely.”
    As her husband had—far too prematurely—a month