She just hoped it came sooner. It would be pleasant to have one less problem to deal with.
“Keep watch over Carline,” Lune said at last. “If she isn’t involved, they may yet approach her. Inform me if you uncover any signs of trouble.”
Ordinarily she put the Lord Keeper’s spies to a variety of uses, but they were useless in the matter of the comet, and the Sanists were by far her second greatest worry. Anything else could wait. Valentin Aspell bowed deeply and said, “Madam, I will do everything I can.”
Miserably chill rain washed across Westminster in sporadic waves, but the interior of Gregory’s was warm, and laden with the competing scents of coffee, wig powder, perfume. The close of the Christmas holidays, the sitting of Parliament, and the prospect of approaching spring meant the quality were returning to London from their country estates, and marshaling themselves for the beginning of the Season.
Of Galen’s companions, two had retired in such fashion, while one—like him—had stayed in London, for lack of money to make that country estate habitable. Today was the first renewed gathering of their usual club, which Mayhew had dubbed the Feckless Scions. It was more a joke than anything else. They were just a small group of friends meeting in a coffeehouse; nothing like so organised as White’s, or even the clubs of the whores or the Negroes. It was, however, the only one Galen belonged to. There was one for men associated with the fae, but it was an awkward thing; they were too mismatched of a lot, and as Prince, he felt very self-conscious in attending.
Besides, those men would not have been able to help him with his current problem. Galen drained his coffee cup, clapped it onto the table, and said, “Friends, I need your assistance. I have to find a wife.”
His declaration met with appalled looks. Jonathan Hurst, eldest of their coterie at twenty-five, said, “What for? By any decent standard, you’ve got at least five more years of free whoring ahead of you, before being shackled to a wife.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve sired a bastard,” Laurence Byrd said suspiciously.
Peter Mayhew smacked him on the shoulder. “He said find a wife, idiot. If he had a bastard, logic says it would come with a woman attached.”
“Not if the mother’s dead, or unsuitable! He might need another woman to raise the child for him.”
“I don’t,” Galen said, before their speculations could saddle him with enough scandal to occupy society gossips for a week. “There’s no child—at least not that I know of. But my father is forcing my hand.”
Noises of comprehension sounded around the table. All had met his father, and knew Charles St. Clair’s manner. “It had to happen sooner or later,” Byrd agreed, his countenance now sympathetically gloomy. “Well, there’s one silver lining: the sooner you’re married, the sooner you get out from under his thumb. You have that to look forward to, at least.”
For what it was worth. Galen knew better than to believe his wedding and departure from Leicester Fields would mean freedom from his father. He knew men of thirty years’ age who still flinched when their sires spoke.
None of his companions suffered quite so much under the patriarchal hand. Byrd’s and Mayhew’s fathers were both of a more amiable nature, and Hurst’s had died seven years ago—though that had the unfortunate effect of making him responsible for two headstrong younger brothers, both of them disinclined to respect him as the patriarch of their household.
“My round,” Mayhew said, and got up to buy more coffee, threading his way through the room.
Hurst tugged the folded cuffs of his coat straight with a precise motion and said, “All right. You’ve asked our aid, and we shall give it. What do you need?”
“A wife,” Byrd reminded him.
“And any female creature of marriageable age will do? Provided, one imagines, that she has two legs, two eyes, and all the other parts customary to such a creature—”
Galen laughed. “I took your meaning, Hurst, and he did, too. He’s just being an ass. As to your question…” Laughter turned to a sigh. “The primary requirement, as you might imagine, is wealth.”
Hurst nodded. “Your sisters.”
Mayhew had just come back, and the bowls rattled against the table as the he set them down. He was the youngest of their group: eighteen, and precisely Daphne’s age. Galen knew full well that his friend harbored a not-so-secret tendre for his middle sister. He also knew, unfortunately, that the Mayhews were in even worse straits than the St. Clairs. Regardless of what wealth Galen acquired with his marriage, his father would never consent to let Daphne wed someone of such low status.
“How large of a settlement do you need?” Byrd asked. If he noticed Mayhew’s discomfiture, he gave no sign, but simply took one of the cups.
Choosing a number left a bad taste in Galen’s mouth, but he’d promised himself, while Edward shaved him that morning, that he would approach this in precisely the same way he did the threat of the Dragon: identify what needed to be done, evaluate potential methods of achieving it, and then pursue them one by one until he attained success. It was a wretched manner of seeking marriage, but it was also the only way he could bring himself to do it at all.
“Five thousand,” he said at last. “More, if possible.” Which made it unlikely he’d snare the daughter of a gentleman. Those with good fortunes were seeking better prey than him.
His companions nodded, and Hurst said, “Anything else?”
Now it became a matter, not of necessity, but of desire. And that was far more treacherous territory. “The usual,” Galen said, trying to make light of it. “An agreeable nature, good habits of cleanliness, no insanity in the bloodline—”
“No fondness for lapdogs,” Byrd suggested. “Can’t stand the damn things. I’ll never visit if you marry a woman with a dog.”
But Hurst didn’t break his gaze from Galen. He, too, sought a wife, though less urgently; as head of his own household, it was now incumbent upon him to secure an heir. “You’re a romantic, St. Clair,” he said, over Byrd’s complaints about useless dogs. “Surely you must desire more in a wife than a moderate fortune and a clean bill of health.”
Byrd ceased his tirade. Mayhew, too, was watching. They would not let it go, he knew; they understood him too well.
A faerie queen, he thought, images of Lune filling his mind. Seated on her throne, or taking her ease in the garden, ethereal as the moon.
He closed his eyes. “A serene manner,” he said, releasing the words one by one, as if laying treasures on the table. “Well-educated, not just in languages and music and dancing, but history and literature. And above all, a quick mind, curious and clever. Someone I can converse with, in more than mere flirtation.”
Silence greeted his description. Galen made himself open his eyes once more, and found himself facing three very different expressions. Byrd, ever the cynic, recovered his tongue first. “You’ll have to keep such a wife on a leash; curiosity and marital stability rarely go hand in hand.” Mayhew smacked him again.
“I’m quite serious,” Galen insisted, flushing. “Fortune is well and good, but that is my father’s requirement, not mine. And he isn’t the one who will be living with her until death do us part. I’m damned if I’ll take a wife I don’t respect.”
It silenced Byrd, and put a thoughtful look on Hurst’s face. “It narrows your field, at least, and that is a virtue; you’ll be pursuing specific targets, which they often appreciate. Judith Chamberlain might do.”
“Too old,” was Byrd’s immediate verdict. “He can’t take a wife half again as old as he is.”