"Pray give Aunt Helen my very best wishes, but you can't possibly mean for me to come stay with you."
"Why not? You cannot remain here without a chaperone. Think of your reputation. Gerald has made your situation completely untenable," Peter asserted with a firm air, as if the matter were a foregone conclusion. "You may recover your situation at least in part by leaving this house and having nothing more to do with your half-brother until you are safely married."
"But the impropriety--"
His brows lofted skywards. "Whatever do you mean? Who better to live with than your father's sister?"
Vanessa looked at his stern expression and sighed inwardly. She bit her lip. He had to know that living under the same roof with three unmarried young men, aunt or no, could potentially be far more damaging than remaining with her half-brother. She had the sinking feeling they were not exactly going to ally themselves with her, so much as fight over her as if they were a trio of hounds and she a juicy bone.
"Peter, Toby, I thank you for your concern, but this has all been one mull from start to finish. You need have no fears on my account. My solicitors and I shall be taking steps to recover my situation as rapidly as possible."
Toby, ever blunt and outspoken, emitted a braying laugh. "Impossible. It's bad enough everyone saying you were mad after your childhood tantrums and brain fever. Now you've been gambled away by Gerald like an African slave upon the auction block. Gambled by your own brother. Just how on earth do you think you can ever hold your head up again in decent society without the support of the more respectable members of your family?"
Vanessa quirked one brow. Surely Toby wasn't including himself in that category? Why, he had been rusticated from Cambridge three times in his very first year for his daring and outrageous pranks. Even the substantial fines and bribes his father had paid to Trinity College had not been able to save him from the ignominy of being sent down after the fourth and final time, long before he ever even made it to the third term.
She looked at his florid face. It wasn't even night yet and he already looked the worse for drink. His burgundy cravat was askew, his linen hardly looked fresh, and his wine-colored coat was so dusty and wrinkled she was sure it had been slept in. This is how he paid calls on people in the district? she wondered with dismay.
She was astonished that her aunt let him. But then the poor woman had been browbeaten to a nonentity by her male-dominated family, though she recalled that Aunt Helen could be shrewd when she wished to be.
Both men gazed back at her fixedly, waiting for her to accede to their requests.
At length she replied, "I've done nothing wrong, Cousins. I was here safely at home with my reading and knitting for the poor whilst the debacle was going on. Surely if the more respectable members of my family were so concerned, one or the other of you should have prevented the whole situation from going too far in the first place. It was your ball, after all, Peter."
Peter flushed and opened his mouth to defend himself.
Vanessa forestalled him with one raised hand. "I don't want to engage in recriminations. I simply want a plan of action as to how to deal with this predicament without recourse to moving in with my aunt and your whole family, marrying Clifford Stone, or allowing Gerald's outrageous behavior to go unchecked."
Peter and Toby glanced at each other and remained silent.
"Hmm, I thought so. Well, thank you for your offer of a roof over my head, but it hasn't quite come to that yet. I'm not about to take umbrage and storm out of Hawkesworth House in high dudgeon. Gerald and I will resolve this matter one way or the other without your mother having to trouble herself over my affairs."
"It's no trouble, I assure you," Peter said with alacrity.
Vanessa gazed at her cousin's narrow face coolly, forcing herself not to wring her hands and thus betray her nerves. "I'm only assured of one thing. If I were to accept your offer, it would only be a matter of time before my name was linked with one or the other of you as my intended. You have no need of my fortune, Peter, but wealthy people are seldom content with what they have and always seek to acquire more."
"But you could do far worse than--"
She ignored his attempt to plead his case with a rapier-like glance, and fixed her sharp gaze upon his dissolute brother. "As for you, Toby, you have only a small allowance, and would be more than eager to marry me to secure your own future. Your rakish habits must be rather costly. And please don't protest that my lovely person would be a treasure in its own right. Not when you've just thrown my bad name and supposed madness in my face."