Someone to Care (Westcott #4)(63)
“Certainly,” her mother said. “Was there ever any doubt?”
In the north of England, Mildred Wayne, née Westcott, was still in her dressing room having the finishing touches put to her morning coiffure when Lord Molenor, her husband, came in with their invitation dangling from one hand. He waited until his wife had dismissed her maid.
“Dorchester’s young daughter is inviting us to a betrothal party for Viola and her father at Redcliffe,” he said. “We have just returned home from Bath. With the boys away at school, perhaps behaving themselves, perhaps not, we have more than two months of quiet conjugal bliss to look forward to before we all take ourselves off to Brambledean for Christmas and the wedding. But I suppose you will insist upon going to Redcliffe as well.”
“Well, goodness me, Thomas,” she said, taking one last look at her image before turning from the glass, apparently satisfied. “Of course.”
“Of course,” he said with mock meekness, and offered his arm to escort her downstairs for breakfast. “And you may answer the invitation, Mildred.”
“Of course,” she said again. “Don’t I always?”
He thought about it during the time it took them to descend five stairs. “Always,” he agreed.
And at the home of the Dowager Countess of Riverdale, one of the smaller entailed properties of the earl, Lady Matilda Westcott, spinster eldest sister of Humphrey, the late Earl of Riverdale, offered her mother the vinaigrette that she took from the brocade reticule she carried everywhere with her to cover all emergencies.
“We will not go, of course,” she said. “You must not upset yourself, Mama. I shall write and decline the invitation as soon as we have finished eating.”
“Put it away,” her mother said, batting impatiently at the vinaigrette. “The smell of it makes my toast taste vile. Viola is an important member of this family, Matilda. She was married to Humphrey for twenty-three years before he died. It was not her fault the marriage turned out to be irregular. I have loved her as a daughter for twenty-five years and I will continue to do so until I go to my grave. What I need to know is whether she is making a foolish mistake. Again. I understand this young man has a reputation every bit as disreputable as Humphrey’s was.”
“I would not know, Mama,” Lady Matilda said, holding the vinaigrette over her bag, reluctant to let go of it. “I have always been assiduous about avoiding him and gentlemen like him who really do not deserve the name. And he is not so young either. But Viola has no choice, you know.” She flushed deeply. “They were caught living in sin together.”
“Ha!” the dowager said. “Good for Viola. It is about time that girl kicked up her heels a bit. But I am concerned about her marrying the rogue. Why should she when all she did was kick up her heels? Half the ton—the female half—will feel nothing but secret envy if they ever find out, which I daresay they will. We will go, Matilda. You may write to Lady Estelle. No, I will do it myself. I want to take a good look at the young man. If I do not like what I see, I shall tell him so. And I shall tell Viola she is a fool.”
“Mama,” Lady Matilda protested. “You are overexciting yourself. You know what your physician—”
“Nothing but a quack,” the dowager said, thereby signaling an end to the entire discussion.
Fifteen
After two weeks at home, Marcel was still feeling savage. He had never spent so much time at Redcliffe. He had spent enough time here now, however, to have learned something disturbing about himself. He was nothing but a weakling. It was a nasty realization for a man who had always prided himself upon being just the opposite.
He had come home to assert himself, to restore his household to order, to put an end to all the petty bickerings, to make himself master of his own domain. But he wondered at the end of the two weeks if he had accomplished anything at all—and this was even before his life was to be further disrupted by the arrival of Viola Kingsley.
His aunt Olwen, the marchioness, was a very elderly lady. She did not move about with any great ease, but her mind was sharp and there was something stately about her heavy figure. Her daughter, his cousin Isabelle, Lady Ortt, was an overblown blond fading to gray and liked to bully all around her, including her daughter, Margaret. And including her husband. Irwin, Lord Ortt, was a reedy individual, one-quarter head shorter than his wife, with receding fair hair, a chin that had never been anything else but receded, and an Adam’s apple that bobbed with unfortunate frequency since he swallowed whenever he was nervous and he was habitually nervous.
It should have been the easiest thing in the world to gather them all together and announce a move to the dower house for the lot of them. It would not even have been a cruel pronouncement. The dower house was within the park one mile away from the main house on the far side of the lake. It was sizable and in good repair—he had taken a walk there and looked it over for himself. There was room to spare for all of them. They would be away from the constant aggravation of Jane and Charles Morrow’s presence in the house with their adult children.
“Those people,” Isabelle told Marcel when none of those people were within earshot to defend themselves, “do not possess a title among them, Cousin Marcel, and they are not even Lamarrs but only relatives of your long-deceased wife.”