Jason was the only one to notice when Amy's attention centered on the present that had garnered everyone's curiosity. He would have thought nothing of it, except for her expression. Her brief frown made him wonder if she was getting one of her feelings about it. This niece of his had phenomenal luck, never having lost a wager in her life, which she attributed to these "feelings," as she called them, that she got. Jason considered such things as feelings exceeding strange, which was why he would as soon not hear if she was getting one now. So he was relieved when her frown eased and she gave her attention back to his brother.
"Uncle James hasn't arrived yet, then?" Amy surmised from Anthony's last response.
Anthony did some mumbling himself. "No, and hopefully he won't."
"Oh, dear. You two are fighting?" Amy surmised again.
"Me? Fight my dear brother? Wouldn't think of it," Anthony replied, then, "But someone bloody well ought to tell him this is the season for good cheer."
Derek chuckled at his uncle's sour expression. "Heard a rumor Uncle James was out for your hide. What's set him off this time?"
"If I knew, then I'd know how to defuse him, but I'm deuced if I know. Ain't seen James for a good week, not since I dropped off Jack after the outing I took the girls on."
"Well, James would have let me know if he wasn't coming," Jason pointed out. "So when he gets here, kindly take any altercations outside. Molly seriously objects to blood staining the carpets."
No one would think it strange that he called Haverston's housekeeper by her first name. After all, Molly Fletcher had held that position for more than twenty years.
That she was also Jason's very longtime mistress—and Derek's mother—was not something that everyone in the family was aware of, however. In fact, only a couple of members had ever learned or guessed the truth. Jason had only told Derek, his son, about this time six years ago.
And around that Christmas, Jason, who deplored all scandals attached to the family, was willing to create one in giving his wife, Frances, the divorce she wanted, just to keep her from revealing what she knew about Molly.
But since then, Molly had remained the housekeeper. Jason had tried, ever since Derek found out the truth, to get her to marry him, but she was still refusing.
Molly didn't come from gentry. She had in fact been just a parlor maid when she and Jason fell in love more than thirty years ago. And although he was willing to make one of the worse scandals possible, that of an esteemed lord marrying a commoner, she wasn't willing to let him.
Jason sighed, thinking of it. He had been forced to come to the conclusion that she would never give him the answer he so wanted to hear. Which didn’t mean he was giving up, not by any means.
He was drawn back to the conversation when Amy said, "There is a little idiosyncrasy our twins have developed. Strangest behavior. When Stuart wants Warren's attention, I might as well be a stranger to him, he ignores me so thoroughly, and vise versa, when he wants my attention, Warren can't do a thing with him. And Glory does the same thing exactly."
"Least they do it at the same time," Warren, who had finally arrived, added as he reached for Stuart and handed Gloriana to Amy.
"I've been meaning to ask Uncle James and Aunt George if they're having the same problem with theirs," Amy said with a sigh.
"Has he gotten used to them yet?" Jason asked Anthony, since Anthony, being closest to James, saw him the most often, and Jason didn't get to London often.
"Course he has," Anthony assured the family.
Yet they all still remembered his reaction when Amy had borne twins and he'd asked his wife Georgina, who was Warren's sister, where they came from. "Good God, George, you could have warned me that twins run in your family every other generation. We are not having any, d'you hear."
Georgina had been pregnant again herself at the time, and had given birth to just that, twin boys.
Yes, the Malorys at Christmas were a wonderful sight, Jason thought. His life only lacked one thing to make it perfection.
As the housekeeper, Molly usually wasn’t present when the Malorys dined, but today she was supervising a new maid who was serving for the first time. By long practice, she managed to keep her eyes away from Jason's handsome face, sitting at the head of the table. It wasn't that she-thought she might give herself away if she was caught staring at him, though she supposed that was a distinct possibility. Sometimes she simply couldn't keep her feelings from showing, and she had a lot of feelings where Jason Malory was concerned.
No, she wasn't so much worried that she might give herself away, it was that lately, he was revealing too much when he looked at her, and he didn't seem to care anymore who might notice. And with the house rapidly filling up with his entire family, there were a lot more people around who just might notice.
Molly was beginning to suspect that he was doing it on purpose, that he was hoping they would be found out. Not that it would change her mind about anything, but he might think it would.
It wouldn't, and she was going to have to assure him of that if he didn't return to his usual show of indifference when others were around. They had always been so careful, never giving away by look, word, or deed what they meant to each other, at least when they weren't alone. Until their son learned the truth, the only one who had ever come upon them in a moment of intimacy had been Jason's niece Amy, when she'd caught them kissing. And that wouldn't have happened if Jason hadn't been foxed at the time.
Keeping their relationship a secret had always been important to her. She wasn't gentry, after all, and she loved Jason too much to cause him embarrassment. Her lack of social status was also why she had convinced Jason that Derek should never know either, that she was his mother, though he hadn't wanted to keep that from his son. Not that Jason had considered marrying her back then. But he'd been young and, like anyone else of his class, adhered to the fact that a lord did not marry his lowborn mistress.
He had instead married an earl's daughter, just to give Derek and his niece Reggie a mother figure. Which had ended up a disastrous decision, since his wife, Frances, had been anything but maternal. A pale, thin woman, Frances hadn't wanted to marry Jason in the first place, had been forced to it by her father. She'd deplored his touch, and their marriage had never even been consummated. She had lived most of it separated from him, and had finally insisted on a divorce, which she had ultimately used blackmail to obtain.
Frances had been the only other member of the family to figure out that Molly was Jason's mistress and Derek's mother, and she had threatened to tell Derek this if Jason didn't end their marriage. The family had weathered that scandal fairly well, and six years later, it was rarely if ever mentioned anymore. Jason could have stopped it—Derek had actually learned the truth before the scandal of the divorce reached the gossip mills—yet he hadn't.
"This is something that should have been done years ago," he had told her at the time. "Actually, it's a marriage that never should have been. But then it's rarely easy to correct the mistakes one makes in one's youth.”
