“Sir.” Jasper found that his good humor was being restored. “May I have the honor of presenting Lady Montford to you? Charlotte’s great-uncle, Katherine, Mr. Seth Wrayburn.”
Katherine curtsied and Wrayburn looked at her fiercely. She was looking more than usually beautiful in her creased green dress and with her hair down and one long piece of grass clinging to a lock of it behind one ear. She also looked like someone who had been recently tumbled in the hay.
“And have you met Stanley Finley, my father’s brother?” Jasper asked. “And Mr. Dubois?”
“An unfit home?” Uncle Stanley said, ignoring the introduction. He was looking thunderous. “An unfit home when my brother’s own son is heading it with his new wife, who is the sister of the Earl of Merton? Unfit in what way, I would like to know?”
He had turned his frown upon Lady Forester and Clarence.
“Where is Charlotte,” Lady Forester asked pointedly, “while her half brother and his new wife have been off… romping together?” Her eyes raked over them with haughty contempt. “And where are all the houseguests, including all the gentlemen?”
Katherine spoke for the first time since she had murmured to him to be civil.
“They are at tea in the drawing room, I do believe, ma’am,” she said. “All the very young people will be there with Charlotte as hostess for the occasion and Miss Daniels as her chaperone. Mrs. Dubois and Lady Hornsby will be there too-they have come with their daughters to stay with us. You must all be weary after your journey. Allow us to take you up there for some tea while rooms are being prepared for you. And welcome to Cedarhurst.”
“I am surprised, Lady Montford, that you are prepared to appear in the drawing room before guests looking as you do,” Lady Forester said.
“She does indeed look almost too charming, ma’am,” Dubois said. “I quite agree with you. But indeed, my wife and I are charmed by the beauty of all the young ladies here and delighted with the good manners and breeding of all the young gentlemen. It was a splendid idea to gather them all together here in the country for a bit of summer fun. Life can be lonely and dreary for the very young.”
“What makes this an unfit home,” Clarence said, as usual speaking when he really ought to know that the best policy was to maintain a silence, “is that everyone knows Jasper’s marriage is a sham, that he married only because society demanded it of him. And that he married a social upstart who is no better than she ought to be.”
That did it!
Jasper released Katherine’s arm and strolled forward until the toes of his boots almost touched those of Clarence, who could not step back because the carriage was still directly behind him.
“Clarrie,” Jasper said in the soft, pleasant voice he reserved for those with whom he was not pleased at all, “you are a nasty little beast and I have a few scores to settle with you when the time is ripe. That time, for the sake of civility, is probably not yet, alas. But if the time is not to be now, you will apologize to my wife with abject humility so that we may proceed into the house and make you and your mama comfortable as we do with all our guests.”
“You will make the apology, Forester,” Uncle Stanley said, “if you do not want me to knock every tooth in your head down your throat.”
“And make it quick, Clarence,” Wrayburn said, sounding more irritated than ever. “I want my tea even if it does have to be taken in a roomful of people, most of them very young. And silly, I do not doubt.”
Clarence looked at Katherine before allowing his eyes to slide off to one side of her.
“I am sorry, ma’am,” he muttered.
Jasper moved his face half an inch closer.
“With abject humility, Clarrie,” he said in the same quiet, pleasant voice. He was slowly swinging Katherine’s bonnet by its ribbons.
“I beg you will forgive me, ma’am,” Clarence said, his eyes darting at her and then away again. “What I said was uncalled for.”
“How lovely it is,” Katherine said before Jasper could object further, “that Charlotte is to have her family about her for her birthday the day after tomorrow. Do come inside, all of you. You look very weary, Mr. Wrayburn. May I take your arm?”
He still looked irritated, but he allowed her to do so and they proceeded up the steps. Jasper offered his arm to Lady Forester, raising one eyebrow as he did so.
So here he was welcoming Clarrie and his mother beneath his own roof. Because Katherine had asked him to be civil. And because they had had the forethought to bring Wrayburn with them.
Perhaps the moon was made of cheese after all.
Clarence had a new, quite unbecoming bend in his nose. If he did not want another, he had better learn to keep his tongue clamped between his teeth, by Jove.
Jasper hoped fervently that he would not do so.
Provoke me, Clarrie, he thought. Please?
But there had already been provocation enough. There was no need for more.
All there was need of was the right time and place.
The conversation in the drawing room had obviously been lively enough to prevent anyone from noticing the arrival of a new traveling carriage beneath the window. It was still merry with the sort of chatter and laughter only the very young were capable of producing.
Charlotte at first looked thunderstruck when she saw her aunt and cousin appear in the doorway. Then she got to her feet and hurried across the room.
“Lady Forester and Clarrie have come to join in your birthday festivities, Char,” Jasper said.
Katherine noticed that Stephen had also got to his feet, his hands balling into fists at his sides, his eyes fixed upon Sir Clarence.
“Aunt Prunella?” Charlotte smiled at her and curtsied. “Clarence?” She nodded to him with an only slightly fading smile. “How lovely!”
“Charlotte?” Lady Forester looked about the room as if she were gauging the ages of all the gentlemen present. They paused for a moment upon Stephen. “We have come to rescue you.”
Katherine caught Stephen’s eye and shook her head slightly. But Meg already had one hand on his arm, and his hands had relaxed at his sides.
“And here is your great-uncle too, Charlotte,” Katherine said.
“Great-Uncle Seth?” Charlotte’s eyes widened, and then she smiled radiantly. “You have come to see me? You have come for my birthday?”
He looked sourly at her.
“So you are Charlotte, are you?” he said. “And a parcel of trouble you have been to me, girl, though I daresay you are not to blame for that. You are a pretty enough little thing.”
She blushed.
“Oh, thank you, Great-Uncle,” she said. “You must be tired. May I pour you a cup of tea?”
What she ought to have done was offer to introduce him to everyone else in the drawing room. But it appeared that she had done the right thing.
“One small splash of milk and two spoonfuls of sugar, slightly heaped,” he said.
“Let me have the pleasure,” Katherine said while Charlotte went darting off to the tea tray, “of introducing everyone to you, sir. And to you, ma’am, and to you, Sir Clarence, if there is anyone here you do not know.”
She proceeded to do so even though outrage over the arrival of two of them warred for the main part of her attention with a terrible awareness of how she looked-and of how Jasper looked without his coat and with her bonnet still dangling from one of his hands. She did not believe she had ever felt more uncomfortable in her life. She also had a ghastly urge to burst into laughter. She dared not look anywhere near Jasper’s face.