“My lady.”
And then the great cannon boomed, and the shell dropped at Flavian’s feet and exploded in his face. Or so it seemed.
“Her ladyship, your mother, is upstairs in the drawing room, my lord,” Biggs informed him, “awaiting your arrival.” He looked as though he might say more, thought better of it, and shut his mouth with an almost audible clacking of teeth.
His mother?Here?Waiting for him? And if she was here, then so, almost certainly, was Marianne. They had not stayed at Candlebury after all. But was it possible for them to have come in response to his letter? He had written it only two nights ago. Or... did theynot know?
Almost certainly it was the latter, he realized. Biggs had clearly not known, and servants always knew what their employers knew, and often they knew it first.
Good God! He closed his eyes for a moment, appalled. And for that same moment he considered turning and doing an ignominious bolt, dragging Agnes with him. He turned to her instead and offered his arm. She was looking as pasty of complexion as he felt.
“Come up and m-meet my m-mother,” he said with what he hoped looked like a reassuring smile. “Come and g-get it over with.”
He drew her hand through his arm, and they followed Biggs’s stiff, impassive back up the stairs. This, he thought, was massively unfair to both Agnes and his mother. But what was he to do? He flatly refused to feel like a naughty little boy caught out in some childish mischief. Deuce take it, he was thirty years old. He was the head of his family. He was free to marry whomever he pleased whenever and however he pleased.
He had not expected his mother to be alone in the drawing room. He had steeled himself to find Marianne there too and possibly her husband, Shields, as well. And he was quite right—all three of them were there.
So were Sir Winston and Lady Frome.
And so was their daughter, Velma.
15
The sudden realization that Flavian’s mother was actually in London and in this very house almost completely unnerved Agnes, who was already feeling weary after another day of travel and a little overwhelmed at the discovery that Arnott House was a massive, imposing edifice on one side of a large and stately square. When her foot was on the bottom stair, she almost drew her hand free of his arm and urged him to go up to the drawing room alone, while she went... where?
She did not have a room yet, and she did not know where his was. She could not simply turn and flee. Besides... well, besides, she was going to have to go through the ordeal of meeting her mother-in-law sooner or later. She had just not expected it to benow. She had hoped for a few days, perhaps even a week, and some exchange of letters first. It seemed highly unlikely that Flavian’s letter had reached his mother before she came to town. Which meantshe did not know.
It really did not bear thinking of.
And then they were upstairs, and the butler was opening the high double doors of what Agnes assumed was the drawing room, and she was stepping inside on Flavian’s arm—and realizing in some horror that there were people in the room.Sixof them, to be exact.
She slid her hand free and came to a stop just inside the doors, which Mr. Biggs was closing behind her, while Flavian proceeded a few steps farther.
There were four ladies, three of them seated, one standing to one side of the fire that was crackling in the hearth. Of the two gentlemen, the elder stood on the other side of the fireplace, while the younger stood behind the chair of one of the ladies.
All of them looked fashionable and formidable and... But there was no time for any further details to impress themselves upon Agnes’s mind. The lady in the chair closest to the door had risen to her feet, her face lighting up with gladness and... relief?
“Flavian, my dear,” she said. “At last.”
She set her cheek to his and lightly kissed the air beside his ear. His mother, no doubt. She seemed the right age, and he looked a bit like her.
“We were beginning to think you must have delayed your journey by a day or two, Flavian,” a younger lady said, also getting to her feet and hurrying forward to kiss his cheek, “without a word to anyone, which would have beenjustlike you, but most provoking today of all days.”
There was a family resemblance with this lady too. She must be his sister.
One of the other two ladies, the one standing by the fire, took a few hurried steps toward him before stopping, her eyes shining with some barely repressed emotion, her hands clasped to her bosom. She was probably Agnes’s age, perhaps a little older, but she was quite breathtakingly lovely. She was on the small side of medium height, slender and shapely, with a delicately featured, beautiful face, wide blue eyes, and very blond hair.
“Flavian,” she murmured in a soft, sweet voice. “You are home.”
And he spoke for the first time.
“Velma.”
It all happened within moments. Agnes could not go long unnoticed, of course. Unfortunately she was not invisible. And everyone seemed to notice her at the same moment. Flavian’s mother and sister both turned their heads toward her and looked blank. The blond lady—Velma—stopped advancing. The gentleman on the other side of the fireplace raised a quizzing glass to his eye.
And Flavian turned and held out a hand for hers, looking noticeably paler than he had in the carriage a couple of minutes or so ago.
“I have the great pleasure of presenting Agnes, my wife,” he said, gazing unsmiling into her eyes before turning toward back to the others. “My mother, the D-Dowager Viscountess Ponsonby, and my sister, Marianne, Lady Shields.” He indicated the others in turn as he introduced them. “Oswald, Lord Shields, Lady Frome, Sir Winston Frome, and the Countess of Hazeltine, his d-daughter.”
