“But, Mama,” Lady Matilda protested with an inelegant hiccup of a sob. “You have had a severe shock. We all have. And you know what the physician said about your heart.”
“The man is a quack,” her mother said. “I do not have heart palpitations; I have a heartbeat, which I have always thought a good thing, though today I am not so sure of it.”
“Swallow this down, Mother-in-Law,” Molenor said as he approached from the sideboard with a glass of brandy.
Mildred, Lady Molenor, looked as though she needed it more. She was seated beside her sister, the duchess, her head thrown back, her handkerchief spread over her face and held there with both hands, while she informed anyone who cared to listen that the late Humphrey had been every nasty beast and insect the world has ever produced, and that was actually an insult to the bestial and insect kingdoms. The duchess was patting her knee but showing no inclination to contradict her. She was looking like thunder.
Mrs. Westcott—Cousin Althea—was hovering behind the sofa, gazing down in obvious concern at the backs of the heads of the three seated there and assuring them that all would be well, that everything always turned out for the best in the end. For a sensible woman—and Avery had always considered her sensible—she was talking a pile of rubbish. But what else was there to say?
Alexander Westcott—the new Earl of Riverdale—was standing with his back to the fireplace, his hands clasped behind him, looking elegant and commanding, though his face was a bit waxy. His sister, standing a few feet away from him, was telling him that it was impossible, he could not refuse the title, and even if he could, it would not revert to Harry.
Of Harry himself there was no sign.
“Harry would not stay,” Jessica announced in tragic accents just as Avery was noticing his absence. She was standing in front of the sofa, literally wringing her hands and the thin handkerchief clutched in them and looking like a youthful Lady Macbeth. “He laughed and then ran away down the servants’ stairs. Why would he laugh? Avery, it cannot be true. Tell everyone it is not. Harry cannot have been stripped of his title.”
“Jessica,” her mother said firmly but not unkindly, “come and sit quietly here beside me. Otherwise you must return to the schoolroom.”
Jessica sat, but she did not stop twisting her hands and pulling at the handkerchief.
“I certainly wish it were not true, Jessica,” the new earl said. “I would give a great deal to find that it was not. But it is. I would return the title to Harry in a heartbeat if it were possible, but it is not.”
And the devil of it was, Avery thought as he strolled farther into the room, that he meant it. He was genuinely upset for Harry’s sake and just as genuinely without ambition for himself. It was actually difficult to find a good reason to dislike and despise the man—an irritating realization. Perhaps perfection was inevitably irritating to those who were themselves imperfect.
The three on the sofa looked rather as if they had been bashed hard on the head but not quite hard enough to render them unconscious. Cousin Althea had stopped talking in order to listen to her son.
“Has that dreadful woman gone back to Bath where she belongs?” Camille asked Avery. “I wonder she did not come up here with you to gloat over us.”
“Cam.” Her mother laid a hand over hers.
“Oh, how she must be rubbing her hands in glee,” Camille said bitterly.
“I thought her the most vulgar of creatures,” Lady Matilda said. “I wonder that Avery allowed her inside the house.”
“She is my granddaughter,” the dowager said, handing the empty brandy glass back to Molenor. “If she is a vulgar creature, it is Humphrey’s fault.”
“Whatever are we going to do, Mama?” Abigail asked. “Everything is going to change, is it not? For us as well as for Harry.”
That was probably the understatement of the decade.
“Yes,” her mother said, laying her free hand over Abigail’s. “Everything is going to change, Abby. But pardon me, my mind is rather numb at the moment.”
“You will all come to live with Matilda and me, Viola,” the dowager announced. “The only good thing Humphrey did in his life was to marry you, and he could not even get that right. You are more my daughter than he was ever my son.”
“You can come here to live, if you would prefer,” the duchess said. “Avery will not mind.”
“Abby is coming here to live?” Jessica brightened noticeably. “And Harry? And Camille and Aunt Viola?”
Would he mind? Avery wondered.
“Uxbury is to call at Westcott House this afternoon,” Camille said. “We must not be late returning home, Mama. I shall put off my mourning before receiving him, and I shall inform him that we no longer need wait until next year to celebrate our nuptials. He will be delighted to hear it. I shall suggest a quiet wedding, perhaps by special license so that we will not have to wait a full month for the banns to be read. Once I am married, it will not matter that I am no longer Lady Camille Westcott. I shall be Lady Uxbury instead, and Abby and Mama may come and live with us. Abby may be presented next year, even perhaps this year, under my sponsorship. She will be the sister of the Viscountess Uxbury. You are quite right, Cousin Althea. All will turn out well in the end.”
“But what about Harry?” Abigail asked.
Camille’s forthright, almost cheerful manner visibly crumbled, and she bit her upper lip in an obvious effort to fight back tears. Her mother clasped both sisters’ hands more tightly.