“No, I shall leave you to your very important business, but I came to tell you that Lady Harrowden had her ward come to stay. I was just there visiting the countess today, and I met her.” Maria sent him an arch look. “She’s a taking young thing, apparently quite wealthy—the daughter of a Cit whose wife can claim some distant connection to the countess.”

Lucius scrutinized his sister closely. “You are not planning matchmaking, I hope. Why come and tell me?”

“Well, it wouldn’t be the worst match you could make for yourself. She is still young and would be malleable enough that you could make her into exactly the sort of wife you could wish for. And as much as you claim no concern over the future of Mardley, the weather these last two years—what with the cold and rain and the early frost—it’s not given us the harvest we need to maintain either of our estates in the manner we are accustomed. Imagine if it goes on like this! We shall be ruined.”

“Save your histrionics for Holbeck. We are far from being ruined. Besides, I do not wish for a dewey-eyed innocent with no conversation, so put that thought out of your head.”

Maria tightened her lips and shifted in the chair. “Her dowry is not to be despised. But see for yourself. I shall not force your hand. As I said, I came to deliver my invitation, and with it the latest news, as neighbors do.”

“As gossips do,” he said brutally.

“You’ve been a recluse for too long. It will not harm you to have some sense of what goes on in London or in Hertfordshire,” Maria adjured him. After a pause, she continued with the topic that most interested her. “Miss Lockhart will take charge of the ward, and I believe she’ll have her hands full with this one—so charming, with a face that must enchant the members of the opposite sex. She appears to be eager to make her debut and will find no shortage of suitors, to be sure.”

Lucius looked up at the mention of Miss Lockhart’s name. “So then the ward is not malleable. The girl’s spoilt, it seems to me. Just what Miss Lockhart needs to make her position even more intolerable.”

“Why should you care about Miss Lockhart’s position? She is merely a companion, and now a governess. You need to be thinking about your own marriage and securing the estate for the rest of the family. You have three younger siblings who will be thrown to the wind if something should happen to you. And if you think you need only let George inherit, you deceive yourself. He will quickly run through the inheritance and ruin us all.”

Maria had no children of her own, and he supposed that was what gave her license to think she could meddle in everyone else’s lives. She certainly had no cause to worry about Mardley Estate, as she had married well enough and Lucius’s estate no longer concerned her. And although he sometimes worried about his younger brother’s devil-may-care approach to life, he could not bear for Maria to speak about George in such a dismal manner.