Molly was sure she'd learn later, whatever they found out in Havers Town, but right now she really couldn't care less. With her cheeks still heated, she slipped out of the room unnoticed. And it was already going through her mind, what she was going to say to Jason when she got him alone tonight.
That had been too close by half. If his relatives hadn't all been so interested in the subject at hand, at least one of them would have noticed the way he had looked at her. And that would be the end of their secret.
But what good would it do? It still wouldn't change her mind about marrying him, though that was something she wished she could do, with all her heart. But one of them had to remain sensible about this. Even if he did marry her, she'd never be accepted by the ton. She'd be nothing but another Malory scandal.
As it happened, the trip to Havers Town turned out to be utterly unsatisfactory. John Markus was indeed still living at the advanced age of ninety-six. He was bed ridden, yet his mind was quite lively for his age, and he did indeed recall the grave.
"I tended that grave for nigh on sixty-eight years," John proudly told the group gathered about his bed.
"Goodness!" Reggie exclaimed. "That's long before even you were born, Uncle Jason."
"Aye." John nodded. "Since I was a lad of thirteen myself. Turned the task over to my nephew when I retired fifteen years ago. Wouldn't trust anyone else to do it proper. He ain't been slacking, has he?"
"No, John, of course not," Jason assured him, though he hadn't a clue, since he hadn't been out to see that grave in over thirty years himself. But he didn't want the old man worrying about it, so he added, "He's been doing an excellent job, indeed he has."
"We're delighted to have found someone who knows about that grave, Mr. Markus," Reggie told him, getting to the matter that had brought them there in mass. "It's been a point of curiosity for all of us, to know who is buried there."
The old man frowned. "Who is? Well now, I don't rightly know that."
The surprised silence that followed that answer was full of disappointment. It was Derek who finally asked, "Then why did you keep care of it all those years?"
"Because she asked me to."
"She?" Jason inquired.
"Why, your grandma, Lord Jason. Wasn't anything I wouldn't have done for that kind lady. Everyone at Haverston felt that way. She was well loved, your grandma was—not like your grandpa. Or at least not as he was regarded when he was young."
Up went a half dozen brows, but it was Jason who said indignantly, "I beg your pardon?"
The old man chuckled, too old to be intimidated by Jason Malory's ire. "No disrespect intended, m'lord, but the first marquis, he was a stiff one, though no different from other aristocrats of his day. He was given Haverston by the crown, but he had little care for it or its people. He preferred London, and came only once a year for an accounting by his estate agent, who was an arrogant coxcomb that ruled Haverston like a tyrant when the marquis isn't there."
"A rather harsh testament against a man who can't defend himself," Jason said stiffly.
John shrugged thin shoulders before saying, "Merely the truth as I saw it, but that was before the marquis met and married Lady Anna. She changed him, she did, taught him to appreciate the little things in life, softened his edges. Haverston went from being a dismal, bleak place to work, to being a place her people took pride in calling home. A real shame about the rumors, though ..."
"Rumors?" Reggie frowned. "Oh, you mean about her being a Gypsy?"
"Aye, that one. Just because she looked and sounded foreign, and there happened to have been Gypsies in the area just before her appearance, some folks got that silly notion. But the marquis, he put a stop to that rumor when he married her. After all, a lord like him would never marry so far beneath him, now would he?"
Jason intercepted his son's grin just before Derek remarked, "Depends on the lord."
Jason gave him a quelling look. The rest of the family didn't need to know—yet—that he, too, hoped to put his heart first.
John shook his head. "Back then it just wasn't done, Lord Derek. Today, maybe, but eighty-some years ago, a scandal like that would ruin a man."
"Well, rumor was all it ever was," Jason pointed out, "since it's never been proven, one way or the other. The rumor wasn't completely put to rest, though, or it wouldn't still be known. But as you say, it hardly matters in this day and age, whether Anna Malory was Gypsy or of Spanish descent, as most assumed. Only she could answer that, but my grandparents died before I was born. I'm sorry I never knew them."
"I've always wished to know the truth about her myself," Amy said. "I can remember being fascinated by the possibility when I was a child, and before you ask why again, recall that I take after her, or so I've been told. I wanted to think she really was a Gypsy—I still wish it was so. That would at least explain where I got such unusually perceptive instincts from, that are never wrong. And it must have been true love."
"Hell, if it's true love, I'm glad our ancestor realized it," Derek put in. "For some men, it takes years . . . and years . . . and—"
Jason didn't miss the subtle prodding directed his way, but before anyone else noticed, he said pointedly, "Didn't you say you had a bit of shopping to do while we were in town, Derek?" To which his son just grinned again, unrepentantly.
Jason sighed inwardly. He knew Derek was just teasing him. Actually, Derek was the only one in the family who ever dared tease him. And no one else, being aware of who Molly really was, would guess that he was teasing his father. But then Derek knew that Jason had been after Molly for a long time now to say yes to marrying him.
"Hmmm, wonder why I never thought to do that with Anna Malory," Amy remarked to herself, drawing everyone's attention again.
"Do what?" more than one Malory asked in unison.
