Heiress Without a Cause

CHAPTER SIX

Ferguson pulled himself up into one of his father's many well-sprung carriages, glad that it would only take ten minutes to reach the Stauntons' townhouse. He was impatient for reasons that went beyond his sisters' debuts, even though those couldn't come fast enough. After his encounter with Madame Guerrier the previous evening - and what he discovered about her after she left - he was oddly eager to be out in society again, if only to ferret out the woman's identity.

It would have been faster to walk. Salford House was on Berkeley Street, almost on Berkeley Square, only five minutes on foot from his Piccadilly mansion. But since he was using the twins as a pretext for visiting, it was more proper to drive.

Maria and Catherine were twenty-one, born to the sweet doormat the old duke had married when Ferguson's mother died. They sat on the opposite seat, draped in black, blonde hair pulled into tight chignons and blue eyes firmly fixed out the windows. Except for their hair, they had little in common with their mother, who had died almost two years earlier. In fact, their contained poise and stubborn chins reminded him of his full sister, Ellie. He hoped the chins were an anomaly. He had never been able to manage Ellie, and he didn't want to try again with two of her. But a bit of spine would be nice, if only to make them more attractive to suitors.

The coach was enclosed and the view unremarkable, but they studiously avoided his gaze. Other than a single awkward breakfast earlier in the week, when he surprised them on his first day back in London, he had not seen them in a decade. Even before that, he hardly knew them. He was shipped off to Eton less than a month after his mother died and he avoided the nursery - and memories of the happier years he spent there with Ellie - on the rare holidays when he came home.

He knew their names were Catherine and Maria, but it was a shame no one thought to introduce one to one's own siblings. He could not tell them apart - and if they never spoke, he might never discover which was which. Imagine if he agreed to an engagement for the wrong one?

He cleared his throat. They ignored him.

Finally, he said, "Ladies, you do know that I shall not hurt you, correct?"

This finally got their attention. They swiveled toward him, each giving him an identical once-over. Then, the one on the right said, "We do not know that with certainty, your grace."

So at least one of them had a bit of backbone. He smiled. "I'm your brother, not a distant cousin. You may call me Ferguson."

"You may as well be a distant cousin, for all we've seen you," the other one said.

They both had backbone. And from the sudden mutinous cast to their mouths, they would use it with him.

Perhaps backbone wasn't a quality to be prized in younger sisters. "I had my reasons for staying away, I assure you."

If he thought his quelling tone would dampen them, he was wrong. "Your reasons were serious enough to leave us to our own devices with Father?" the right twin asked.

"If you were so unhappy in his house, you should have married. It would have at least been an escape."

They both laughed, a bitter sound incongruous with their innocent appearances. "And where should we have found husbands? We still haven't debuted. Other than walking in the park, we never leave the house."

"Surely you go shopping, or calling on other ladies?"

"Father wouldn't let us," they said simultaneously. The twin on the right continued. "With you turning into a notorious rake, Henry drinking himself to death, Ellie making herself the most scandalous widow in London, and something clearly off about Richard, Father was determined to keep us from misbehaving. He found it easiest to keep us at home."