‘She is opposed to the thought that I might father an heir. She would be opposed to anyone I married,’ Ivo said. ‘Her husband died some ten years ago and she has one son, Alfred, who is the heir presumptive. I like Alfred, he’s a good fellow, although how he manages it with that harpy as a mother I do not know. There is the slight problem that he is not likely to marry and she nags him constantly on the subject.’
‘Ah. Not the marrying kind?’ Jane asked, sounding understanding.
‘You can guess why?’ He was surprised.
‘My friend Prudence is a Classical scholar and encountered Greek...um...attitudes in the course of her researches and we discussed it within our reading circle,’ she said matter of factly.
Ivo blinked. Perhaps he had been imagining a greater degree of innocence—at least, of knowledge—than was actually the case with his betrothed. ‘Well, you may imagine the frustration of his mama who is exceedingly ambitious and doubtless sees herself as the mother and grandmother of marquesses. I always thought that she was sending a weekly remittance to Napoleon on the understanding that he direct his cannon at my head.’
‘Goodness, how very Gothic! Perhaps you should employ a food taster.’
Chapter Thirteen
As Ivo waited for Jane to return from tidying herself before luncheon he found he was still amused at the thought of his Aunt Augusta, stalking the corridors bent on his destruction like some villainess dreamt up by Horace Walpole.
* * *
Jane’s smile when she came back down ten minutes later was different, forced. She was being brave about something and she should not have to be, not if he could help it.
‘What is wrong?’
‘My suite—it is vast, I shall get lost in it. The reality of this is beginning to sink in, Ivo. I am not used to all this splendour and I am going to disgrace you by staring open-mouthed at everything like some provincial miss.’
That strange feeling of protectiveness swept through him again and he put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a quick hug. ‘Neither am I used to it again, not yet. I have been away from here a long time and most of it living rough under canvas, in half-ruined billets, under the occasional hedge in the rain. We will make our own home, Jane, and we will emerge into this other one on our own terms, when we are ready.’
She tipped her head on to his shoulder for a second, relaxed into the hug, then they were walking side by side, perfectly properly, and footmen were opening the double doors into the Small Dining Room.
Luncheon had been set out on the round table which separated Jane and his aunt. It made the meal seem more informal and he wondered if this was an example of Mrs French’s tact.
With his grandfather discussing landscape gardening with Jane, and his aunt keeping her acid opinions to herself in the presence of her father-in-law, Ivo relaxed a little, took a mouthful of clear soup. He should have known better.
‘That Parris girl has thrown her cap over the windmill with a vengeance, I hear,’ Aunt Augusta said, with a distaste that held a trace of relish in it.
Ivo swallowed the soup the wrong way.
‘Her poor father must be turning in his grave—his son dead and his daughter making a scandal of herself with a card-sharping rakehell,’ Augusta went on. ‘The Parris family have always been respectable, so it must be bad blood on the mother’s side coming out, of course, not that anyone knows much about them, they were so obscure. One never knows with these families of no pedigree.’
Was it his imagination or had his aunt shot a glance at Jane with that comment?
‘Charles Parris was my friend and an officer and a gentleman of great courage. His sister has been led astray, no doubt, but that can occur in even the best families, can it not, Aunt?’
Personally he thought that Alfred’s preferences had been clear for many years and had nothing to do with the bad influences for which his mother blamed her son’s reluctance to marry, but he was not prepared to let that slur on the Parris family go unpunished.
‘Such a good thing that you had the sense not to marry the girl,’ Augusta said, ignoring his question. ‘Such a pretty little thing she was, all blonde curls and cherry lips. You were like April and May, the pair of you. I can remember saying to poor dear Frederick that, much as one deplored you being army-mad, at least it kept
you away from that misalliance, at least. The girl has turned out to be a strumpet.’
Ivo heard a buzzing in his ears as he fought to keep his temper. Lady Parris had been a perfectly respectable clergyman’s daughter and if he had married Daphne, a baronet’s daughter, that would have not been a misalliance, simply not a grand match. And Daphne was not a strumpet. She was free-spirited, sensual, impatient and he had neglected her. Loved her and taken her for granted.
‘As we know nothing of the circumstances we can hardly comment on Daphne’s actions, I would have thought,’ he said through gritted teeth. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jane’s look of startled comprehension then, almost as quickly as her eyes had widened and her lips parted, she was composed again.
Hell and damnation, I forget she was there for a moment.
And a moment was all it had taken for his betraying instant defence of Daphne.
‘I so much admired the buildings that ornament the park, Lord Westhaven,’ Jane said, apparently ignoring what Augusta and he were talking about. ‘Have they been there long?’
His grandfather also showed no sign of listening to his daughter-in-law, but Ivo knew he had heard and was not pleased. ‘They were erected on the orders of my grandfather,’ he told Jane. ‘Now the trees are becoming mature I think I may have another avenue cut and place something at the end of it. Another obelisk, perhaps.’