Alexander looked pleased at her praise. “You will come, then,” he said. “Thank you.”
Yes, she would go, though the very thought made her feel bilious. He was still so very handsome. Charles, that was. Whereas she … well, she was an aging spinster, perhaps even anagedone, and … Well.
“And will you invite Viscount Dirkson’s family too?” her mother was asking. “His son and his daughters?”
“It is hardly likely they know of Gil’s existence,” Alexander said, frowning. “I doubt he would want them to know.”
“Perhaps,” Wren said, “we ought to inform Viscount Dirkson that he is welcome to bring his children if he wishes, Alexander. Let the decision be his.”
“I will do that, my love,” he said, nodding to Matilda, who was offering to pour him a second cup of tea. “Yes, thank you. Youwillcome, Cousin Eugenia?”
“I will,” she said. “Dirkson ran wild with Humphrey as a young man, you know, though he did not have the title in those days. His reputation became increasingly unsavory as time went on. He was not welcomed by the highest sticklers and perhaps still is not.”
“I think we will not hold the past against him,” Alexander said, a twinkle in his eye. “If he had not fathered an illegitimate child when he must have been a very young man, we would not even be planning this dinner, would we?”
“And Abigail would not have found the love of her life,” Matilda said.
“Oh, I think you are right about that, Cousin Matilda,” Wren said, beaming warmly at her. “I believe she and Gil are perfect for each other and perfect parents for Katy. No, no more tea for me, thank you. We must be on our way soon. We have taken enough of your time.”
“But we have not told you our own very happy news,” the dowager said.
“Oh,” Wren said. “We must certainly hear that.”
And Matilda was instantly reminded of why she had been feeling severely out of sorts even before Alexander and Wren arrived with their invitation.
“Edith is coming to live with us,” her mother announced.
“Your sister, Cousin Eugenia, do you mean?” Alexander asked.
“Edith Monteith, yes,” the dowager said. “I have been trying to persuade her to come ever since Douglas died a couple of years ago. She has neither chick nor child to keep her living in that drafty heap of a mansion all the way up as near to the Scottish border as makes no difference. It will be far better for her to come to me. She was always my favorite sister even though she is almost ten years younger than I.”
“And she is coming to live permanently with you?” Wren asked. “That does indeed sound like good news.” But she looked with a concerned frown at Matilda.
Her mother must have seen the look. “It is going to be wonderful for Matilda too,” she said. “She will not be tied to the apron strings of an old woman any longer. She will have someone closer to her own age for companionship. Adelaide Boniface will be coming with Edith. She is a distant cousin of Douglas and quite indigent, poor thing. She has been Edith’s companion for years.”
Aunt Edith had suffered from low spirits since as far back as Matilda could remember, and Adelaide Boniface made good and certain they remained low. If the sun was shining, it was surely the harbinger of clouds and rain to come. If there was half a cake left on the plate for tea, then the fact that half of it was gone was cause for lamentation, for there would be none tomorrow. And she spoke habitually in a nasal whine while the offending nose was constantly being dabbed at and pushed from side to side with a balled-up handkerchief, the whole operation followed each time by a dry sniff. Matilda found the prospect of having her constant companionship, not to mention Aunt Edith’s, quite intolerable. She really did not know how she was going to endure such an invasion of her home and her very life.
“I am very happy for you both, then,” Alexander said, setting aside his cup and getting to his feet. “Are they coming soon?”
“After we go home to the country at the end of the Season,” the dowager told him. “We are certainly happy about it, are we not, Matilda?”
“It will be something new to look forward to,” Matilda said, smiling determinedly as Wren hugged her and Alexander kissed her cheek and bent over her mother’s chair after assuring her that she did not need to get to her feet.
“We will see you both tomorrow evening, then,” he said.
Oh, Matilda thought after they had left, how was she going tobearit all? Coming face-to-face with Charles again tomorrow and spending a whole evening in his company. Going back to the country in one month’s time to a home that would be home no longer. Could life possibly get any bleaker?
But how could spending an evening in Charles’s company possibly matter after thirty-six years? One could not nurse a broken heart and blighted hopes that long. Or, if one did, one was a pathetic creature indeed.
Oh, but she had loved him …
All silliness.
* * *
“He is thirty-four years old,” Charles Sawyer, Viscount Dirkson, was telling Adrian, at twenty-two the youngest of his offspring. “It happened long before I married your mother. Before I even knew her, in fact.”
“Who was she?” Adrian asked after a pause, a frown creasing his brow, one hand clasping a leather-bound book he had taken at random from one of the bookshelves upon which he leaned. “Or perhaps I ought to have asked, Whoisshe?”
