Chapter 18 - MARK—SUMMONED BY THE MATRIARCH

Upon returning to my residence, I found a note from dear Mama shoved under my door. My mother didn’t deliver it. She wouldn’t come to my bachelor’s lodgings on Jermyn Street. She was not a writer, and my father dissuaded her from the idea of having a scribe like a few fashionable ladies had.

Yet this note, on Prahmn’s blue stationery, was written in her hand.

I’d been summoned, summoned by the Marchioness of Prahmn. Running a hand through my hair, I centered in front of my mirror. Not too disheveled. I should go now.

Delaying a visit to my mother was not a good idea. My father was still on holiday. This would be the best time if I wanted to avoid arguments.

The Marchioness of Prahmn never argued. She never raised her tone, she merely offered a look that wounded you in the heart.

Setting my papers on my desk, I looked at the music I’d written today. Miss Wilcox was my muse. There was no denying my reaction to her, her turns of phrase, the openness of those magical eyes—she healed the blockage in my mind. A few more lessons and the sonata would be done.

Walking out of my lodgings, I headed on Jermyn Street to the mews. Collecting my horse, I rode to 75 Grosvenor Street and arrived just before sunset. Mayfair addresses—white houses, redbrick manors, limestone and Portland cement, palatial residences like Anya House—filled this expensive part of London, reaching heights to bask in the pinkish rays that the inhabitants probably assumed they owned.

It would be very dark by the time I left. I doubted I’d stay the night. Tossing the reins to a groom, I said, “I’ll not be here long.”

The fellow nodded and I headed into the house.

Like the Duke of Torrance’s Anya House, there was plenty of marble and gilding. Yet, this hall was decorated with statues, copies from the Italian Renaissance.

Prahmn wouldn’t pay for an original, but he’d not let anyone know differently.

I marched past the footman and was intercepted by the butler, Mr. Reginald Chancey. “Lord Mark, I had not expected you until tomorrow.”

I held up my mother’s letter. “I decided to act early on the invitation.”

Chancey had been with the family since before I was born, a wise, cheery man with serious brown eyes that matched his deeply sable skin. “You’ll find her in her parlor. She had asked for no visitors until tomorrow.”

The fellow seemed insistent, but I couldn’t wait. Waiting made things worse. Waving the note again, I headed deeper into the house. I didn’t stop until I happened upon Mama’s parlor.

Sprinting ahead of me, Chancey announced my presence, shook his graying, balding head at me, then headed out, probably returning soon with a service of tea and an ear ready to listen.

When I entered, I found my mother, eyes covered, lying prostrate on her favorite chaise with an arm bent over her brow.

Blossoms of the floral silk covering the chair that wasn’t blocked by her slender body bloomed. It made her seem as if she lay in a garden. The heavy scent of lavender lit the room. I went to the dying fire and poked at coals, then I tossed on new ones from a shiny brass bucket by the spit.

I wondered if this fuel was from the weekly delivery and if it was from Wilcox Coal.

“Mama, are you well?”

“Miserable,” she said, before rising like a phoenix. “You came early.”

She waved at me to come kiss her hands, drawing me deeper into her special place, a parlor complete with a harp that no one played, in front of a bookcase brimming with rare editions that no one cared to read.

Lacy mobcap on her strawberry-blond head and wrapped in swaths of satin and silk robes, she looked like the very elegant woman I’d always known. “Sit, Mark. We need to talk.”

“That’s what your note said. Will Father join us too?”

“Prahmn is still . . . still on holiday.” She choked out the words but stopped short of saying what was readily known. Father had gone away with another new mistress to Scotland or somewhere abroad.

Deciding whether to take a seat in the Klismos chair by the fireplace or the hard Chippendale closer to the chaise, I decided instead to stand in this very yellow room and take the tongue-lashing like a man. “You requested to see me. I’m here, let the punishment begin.”

“Mark, you’re very dramatic.” She sort of giggled, probably trying to ease me into a false sense of hope. “I think you get that from me. So you’re forgiven for interrupting.”

Chancey returned with a tray of cups, a silver teapot, and a bottle of Father’s best brandy, Calvados, an apple brandy from Normandy. “This is for the both of you.”

The butler had seen millions of scandals in the Sebastian line, and nearly all of the Sebastian men had courted folly. My brothers were no paragons, my father no saint. I’m not sure where that put me on the scale of things.

“Sebastians are better at hiding things than you, Lord Mark.” Chancey’s tone sounded like I had disgraced my ancestors. “I will be near with the medicine, ma’am.” He bowed and left us.

Mother made herself tea and poured more than a jigger’s worth of brandy in her cup. “Mark, it seems that you had a little bit of an interesting week last week.”

I chose the Chippendale and took a cup of the chamomile sans the brandy. “It was interesting. I made a lot of progress on my sonata. I think I will be able to submit this year to the Harlbert’s Prize.”

“Um. Mmm. Oh, this is hot.” She looked at me and batted her sea-blue eyes. “I was talking about your newest friend. What do you have to say?”

There were a lot of things I wanted to say, or question, but my mother wouldn’t listen. Like my friend Livingston, she listened to gossip. Of the particulars of my life, unless it had to do with my or my brothers’ choices of a bride, she heard nothing.

“Mark, I asked about your new friend. I should know about who you spend your time with.”

“Truly? You wish to know? You want to know about the people whose music rooms I designed? What about the pupils I’ve garnered? What about the committeemen who will hear the sonata I’m working—”

Her expression, drawn cheeks frowning while sipping on brandy and tea, said No, no music. “Mark, I gave you music to help you be expressive. You lost your words so often.”

“How could they be heard over Prahmn screaming at you?”

Her lips disappeared, then she took a long swallow from her cup. When she and Prahmn fought, his odious temper silenced me and her.

Thank goodness he was not here. As much I thought I could now handle his critique, my tongue, as it did at the worst times, would betray me.

“Tell me, Mark. It’s your mama. Humor me. You always do.”

A joke? That’s what I was?

“I once tried to tell you of my enthusiasm for a painting. You laughed as I wrongheadedly bared my soul. Why should I expect differently?”

This had been my life. I was a spare’s spare. I would probably only be useful to the Sebastian line if that transfusion thing Livingston was working on came to pass.

“Mark, is it true you are engaged to one of the Wilcox girls?”

“How do you know anything about that family?”

“I know enough, Mark. They supply the coal to the house.”

“So you’re upset that I’m rumored to be in a relationship with a tradesman’s daughter?”

“Are you?”

“You know how rumors go. Where did you get such nonsense?”

“The papers. There’s a sketch that looks a lot like you on a pianoforte.”

“Am I the only man in London who can play an instrument?”

She slurped more from her bone china cup. “You’ve been very different, Mark.”

“Different? It’s been a week since I last saw you. We sat at the dining room table where you went through a list of suitable candidates. I remember half were industrious daughters of wealthy men of trade. Why are you letting this cartoon upset you? And if it were true, why would my choice be different from yours?”

“Your choice made the paper. That’s what’s different. If your father were here, he would have a conniption. The upset would be grand.”

“What do I do that doesn’t cause him to be disagreeable?” I shot up, turning to the books. The gilded pages I fingered were tattered and smelled of tart aged ink. “I am not in a scandal. That doesn’t even look like me in the Post.”

“Ha. So, you do know what I’m talking about.”

“I read the paper. It’s a scandalous sketch. Gilroy always looks to cause an upset.”

She seemed to accept this, sipping less liberally on her doctored tea. Then she rose up and pointed at me. “The Dowager Livingston said that’s you in the Post, you and your scandalous love.”

Livingston.

My friend, the paranoid fool, told his mother. The network of mothers in Mayfair stretched far. They went to work and contacted the Marchioness of Prahmn. I knew it was a risk telling Livingston. But it also made the faux relationship more believable. If my close friend knew of it, the illusion of a connection between myself and Miss Wilcox seemed truer. I breathed a little easier knowing our scheme had begun to work.

“There’s a young woman I care for.”

“A strumpet.”

“She is not that. I don’t want her to suffer for being free enough to dance to my music. I wish she were always about to twirl. Mama, I want her to be wildly herself.”

Yet, as I looked, my mother’s face turned redder and redder. She feared my association with Miss Wilcox.

“My heart breaks for you, having such pitiful and small-minded beliefs.” I stepped toward the door. “I need to go, Mother.”

“Mark, wait. I love you. I want you to be happy. But you know your father will refuse to support your marriage to anyone he doesn’t approve. I won’t be able to save you this time. I won’t be able to help at all.”

My mother did her best for me.

Though she never stood up to my father directly, she aided my moving out and having my lodgings far from here. She insisted that I had the best lessons even when Prahmn balked. I lost count of the music room designs I’d influenced because of her bragging of my skills.

And she never laughed when I told her I wanted to be a composer.

Those might seem like small concessions. But they were huge in the house of Prahmn. “Goodbye, Mama. I’ll see you Sunday. We can pretend this conversation never happened.”

“Mark, don’t go without answering. Are you engaged to the Wilcox woman?”

“Her name is Georgina Wilcox. And she is the finest person I know. Mama, I’m not asking you for anything. I know your position. But know that if I marry, it will be someone I love and respect. I’m interested in Miss Wilcox. What I feel was not public, but it has now become public. These papers put her in danger. I won’t stand for that.”

She flopped onto the chaise, draping her silken hands across her face. “Oh, what will become of you? Of me? My heart—”

“Mama. Listen. I know you can hear me. I’ll never put you in a position of choosing between me or my father. I know where your priorities align. I won’t ask you to help again. Go back to the war council and complain of your hardheaded son.”

“You make jokes, but can’t you see the little things I’ve done? And trust me. I know marriage is difficult. You must understand that such a union will require a lot of support. A marriage to Miss Wilcox will require your father’s blessing. You won’t have it.”

“Does it matter? Prahmn’s away with his latest . . . friend. Not exactly a paragon of strength or virtue. And you haven’t had much success making him do what’s right by agreeing with him.”

She popped up and came very close to giving me a well-deserved slap.

“Sorry, Mama. Prahmn is your choice, one you made for your family, your sisters, not your heart. I’ll choose my happiness. I cannot speak to what Miss Wilcox will or will not do. We will have to see. None of this requires your approval or my father’s.”

Mama paced, then flopped again onto the chaise. “What of your obligations to your family, Mark? Our public names—”

“You have the heir and a second. They’re following the paths you want. As I’ve always known, I’m inconsequential to the plan. You’ve all made that very clear. So I respectfully decline taking your advice. I’m following my heart. I know not where it will lead, but it’s going to be exciting.”

“What are the coal woman’s aspirations? She obviously wants a title like her sister. None of us will ever call her Lady Mark Sebastian. She will be snubbed, cut direct at every turn. Are you ready for that? Are you ready to be cut away from us?”

Georgina’s words about some people not being kind when she shopped in places where they didn’t know her family struck me to my core. It burned like acid deep in my chest when I realized “some people” were my family. “I suppose I’ll have to get used to being in places where no one knows the Sebastians. That means I’m going to have to learn not to care.”

“Not care about your family? Mark. Family is everything. You can’t walk away from it. And what of the Harlbert’s Prize committeemen? You think that they will think differently from Prahmn? You believe they will award a prize to a man of the ton who chose a coal wife?”

My music meant everything, but my honor was my soul. “Of all the slights I’d ever endured from my father, this one from your lips has to be the worst. Mama, if you think for one moment I’d turn away from love because of dark-hearted fools or my mother’s hatred of Miss Wilcox’s beautiful brown eyes and skin, then you don’t know me.”

I left her speechless, blinking, and rushed out to the landing.

When I trudged down the stairs to the grand hall, she called out to me. “Mark, I’m just trying to look out for your best interests.”

Standing in the shadow of the warrior Augustus of Prima Porta, she called out, “Mark, you didn’t agree. You always agree.”

“If I ever did, it was because I wasn’t listening. Mama, I did hear your words this time. I’ve heard them with my whole heart. I respectfully disagree.”

Walking out of the house, I heard her run back to her parlor, her tragic chaise, and the brandy she used to comfort herself.

The butler was on the portico directing the groom to get my horse. Chancey gave me a nod. “Standing on your own is hard, my lord. But it’s the first act of walking in your own power. Have a good evening, sir.”

Reciprocating with a dip of my chin, I went to the drive and mounted my horse, then started back to my lodgings. I needed to finish the sonata. My father wasn’t going to take my refusal very well. They were divided on many things, but concerning whom I would marry, the marquess and marchioness were in agreement.

I needed my own income.

More than anything, I needed to succeed without their help. This desire wasn’t about Georgina or the Wilcoxes. This had been building for a long time. I must find my power and stand tall.

No woman wanted a man who couldn’t be independent. No composer who wanted to set the world on fire could lack a backbone. Seeing Georgina and this ruse through was a sort of training process. I had to succeed and claim a future that I made with my own hands.