Rules For A Proper Governess (MacKenzies & McBrides #7)(28)
Author: Jennifer Ashley

He could always stay overnight at chambers, Sinclair thought as he snatched up his robes and followed Henry out. He never had, always wanting to return home to his young family, but knowing Bertie slept so near him every night was going to drive him mad.

Henry helped Sinclair settle his robes and look respectable before he strode from Essex Court across the way to Middle Temple Hall. The brown brick building, its white corner trim and windows soot-stained, stood like a cathedral on the green of the gardens, an imposing edifice of the law. The walls told the outside world that here was an important place of learning and weighty decisions. If Sinclair hadn’t known many of the men inside it so well, he might believe it.

His lordship, Sir Percival Montague, whom Sinclair had enjoyed confounding over the case of Ruth Baxter, didn’t rise when Sinclair entered the room he’d commandeered for this meeting. Sir Percival, Old Monty to both friends and detractors, had a cadaverous look, though Sinclair knew he was fond of meat and drink. He had watery blue eyes in a sunken face, thin lips, grayish skin, and wisps of hair across the top of his balding head.

Sir Percival snapped his fingers at a lackey waiting nearby and signaled him to pour two glasses of sherry. “I’m sorry I have no Scots whiskey,” Old Monty said, not looking one bit sorry. “But I like a bit of sherry in the morning. Settles the digestion.”

Sinclair thought sherry overly sweet and cloying, but he politely accepted a glass.

“You know why we’re meeting,” Sir Percival said. He drained his glass and held it up for the lackey to pour more.

“Either you want to admonish me for switching from prosecution to defense in the case of Ruth Baxter,” Sinclair said calmly, “or you are measuring my backside for a place on the bench.”

Old Monty looked pained. “You always have a blunt way of putting things, McBride. This endears you to some of my colleagues who find you rustic and amusing, but not to me. Take care to remember that. You were perfectly right, of course, in the Baxter case—the man taken in arrest has confessed to all and should shortly meet his maker, or else the bleakness of Dartmoor. But there is no secret that you are moving swiftly in your profession. You’re young for a silk, aren’t you?”

Sinclair was in his thirties. “I worked hard. Not much else to do, is there?”

“Not really.” Monty drank his sherry and held the glass up again to his footman. “I like to see a barrister take keen interest in his work. You’re a family man? Married, are you?”

Sinclair had known this man since his arrival at the Temple, but Old Monty was notorious for remembering no detail of anyone else’s life, barely even of his own. “I have two children,” Sinclair said. “My wife . . .” He stopped, and swallowed. Forgive me, Maggie. “My wife passed on seven years ago.”

“Ah? Well, I am sorry to hear it.”

Whether that was sympathy or he was sorry to hear that Sinclair was no longer married, Sinclair couldn’t say. “Thank you,” he managed.

“I like to see a barrister settled. A wife keeps a man at home and out of mischief, doesn’t she?”

Sinclair decided to nod. Sinclair hadn’t always been a dull man confined to his job, as Bertie had implied this morning. Andrew’s antics had been inherited—both Sinclair and Elliot had been the wild McBride boys, impossible to tame. Patrick had despaired of them but felt better when they’d each joined the army—Elliot going to India, Sinclair to Africa.

Sinclair had done well as an officer, but he’d retained his wild streak off duty. After Maggie had taken him in hand, Sinclair had given up such enjoyments as filling an obnoxious English officer’s tent with goats. Actually, she’d laughed uproariously when Sinclair had told her the tale. The English officer in question had cruelly beaten one of the Egyptian boys assigned to help him. Sinclair had made sure the goats created the worst possible mess, then took the English captain a little way from camp and explained his feelings, with his fists.

“You’re young, as I observed,” Monty said. “You can always remarry.”

Sinclair’s anger stirred. Of course. When one wife goes, uproot her and replant another in her place. Choose one that looks well and goes with the furniture.

“Perhaps,” Sinclair said without inflection.

“You take my advice, my boy. The committees like to see a man settled. They want no fear of a judge getting into scandal. If you don’t mind me saying so, your name is already associated with enough scandal as it is.”

Sinclair blinked. “Is it?” He led a model life, at least these days. His liaisons in the last few years had been conducted with utmost discretion.

“Your brothers and sister.” Monty put his fingers together, now seeming to remember every detail of Sinclair’s life. “One nearly mad, hiding himself in the wilds of Scotland. Then there was your youngest brother and that scandal he recently caused with the Duchess of Southdown. And your sister, of course, marrying into the notorious Mackenzie family. Lord Cameron Mackenzie has a terrible reputation, rumored to have killed his first wife, and there was your sister—a lady-in-waiting to the queen, no less—eloping with him.” Monty shook his head. “Some of us on the bench were not keen to even consider you, but there are those who persuaded me to give you a chance.”

Sinclair’s irritation rose, the darker side of his sense of humor starting to itch. “Maybe you’re thinking I should replace my brothers and sister with new ones too.” He let his accent grow thick. “Mebbe made to order.”

“No use you taking offense, McBride,” Monty said, looking down his nose. “It’s not bad advice. Marry a respectable young woman, and your wife’s family will cancel out any embarrassment yours have perpetrated.”

“Debts and credits, eh?” Sinclair asked.

“Exactly.” Monty almost smiled. “You have grasped it. I know several eligible young women, from excellent families, who might suit.”

“So do my brothers and my many sisters-in-law,” Sinclair said, trying to keep the annoyance from his voice. He thought of Clara Thomalin from the night before, with her cold skin and colorless face. Perhaps a fine enough woman, but not as a life mate. “I’m inundated with eligible bloody women.”

“No need to swear, though I suppose it’s the Scots way.” Monty sat back in his chair, lifting his hand in dismissal. “You think on what I’ve said, McBride. If you want to move up in the world, don’t sneer at your betters and their advice.”