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this state of acute anxiety, he could scarcely bear
    the company of the grieving girls. They moped about, rarely went out, an d had covered everything in
    black. At supper just a few nights past, when he’d casually mentioned he’d not enjoyed asparagus soup
    in many years because Cassandra did not care for it, Phoebe burst into tears. He’d lost his temper altogether.
    “For Christ’s sake!” he’d bellowed with such force that his monocle popped right from his eye. “How long must I endure the incessant wailing in this house?”
    “She’s not wailing, sir.” Ava quickly intervened as Greer handed Phoebe a handkerchief.
    “Surely you can understand the deep sense of loss my sister feels —indeed, we all feel.
    Our mother has only recently
    passed.”
    Honestly, as if he needed to be reminded of that.
    Egbert stared hard at a spoonful of soup for a moment before quickly stuffing it in his mouth and spooning more. Of course he didn’t begrudge them the time to grieve their mother properly—he, too,
    was sorry for her demise. After all, she’d been his wife for ten years and a tolerable one at that. He just wished they would do it in their chamber s and not muddy his thoughts any more than his thoughts were already muddied. While her passing was sad, life did indeed go on, did it not?
    He’d finished his meal in silence, but his mood had grown darker and darker as he eyed the three of them. They look ed at him as if he were the one being unreasonable.
    After supper, Ava had ushered Phoebe and Greer up to their suite of rooms and left him alone with his port and his cigar, but not before bestowing a disapproving look on him.
    That one was just like her
    mother. Egbert imagined they all despised him, and truly, he wasn’t so heartless, but Violet had been his little flower for nearly eight years. He could not bear the thought of losing her, too, and was desperate for
    an excuse to quit this endless mourning a nd leave London to learn for himself why Violet had forsaken him.
    And that night, with the help of his port and a cigar, he landed on his excuse. Joy filled him, and he sprang from his chair and hurried to his study, his legs working hard to carry his rotund body as quickly as
    possible. Once there, he took pen and paper in hand and dashed a quick letter to Violet, filled with various declarations of adoration and devotion, and informing her that he would arrive in Paris in a fortnight.
    The second letter he wrote was addressed to his spinster sister, Lucille Pennebacker, at the Lake District family estate, Troutbeck. In that letter, he insisted his sister come to London straightaway.
    A week later, Egbert summoned his stepdaughters to the main salon. As he watched them enter his study swathed head to toe in the black bombazine of mourning, he mentally congratulated himself on being a charitable man, for what he would do for these three orphans was far and away the most charitable act
    they could expect from anyone. Certainly he would never turn out three orphaned debutantes, and he wished them no harm —but he wasn’t their father, was he? It did not, therefore, fall to him to ensure they found their way in this life. No, that responsibility had been Cassandra’s and now belonged to the girls’
    kin, whoever that might be. That was precisely why he had urged Cassandra to marry them off before it was too late.
    Alas, as with everything else, Cassandra had scarcely listened to him at all.
    Pity that she hadn’t, for it would have spared them all a great deal of anxiety. Here were her precious
    girls, completely dependent upon his charity as they took their seats. They sat properly and smiled uncertainly at his sister, Lucille, who had arrived just this morning and who had, judging from the thin smile on her doughy face, already found her charges quite in need of her guidance.
    Ava, the oldest and boldest of the three, looked from Lucille to Egbert and to Lucille again. She’d never really warmed to