Ellen was content to let her stepdaughter prattle on happily about the morning’s events until they were in the carriage with a rather tense Dorothy on their way to Sir Jasper Simpson’s residence on Clifford Street. And her own heart began to thump again.
She would have known he was Charlie’s father, she thought later as they were ushered into the drawing room, even if the room had been full of people. The same height and build. The same open, jovial face. His head was somewhat balder.
She curtsied and felt her stepdaughter doing the same beside her.
“My dear!” The elderly gentleman crossed the room and took Ellen’s hands in both of his. He stood shaking them up and down and looking into her face. “So you are Charlie’s wife. So young and so pretty. You are looking at a foolish old man, my dear. A foolish old man.”
Ellen smiled uncertainly at him. He was dressed in deep mourning, she noticed. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, sir,” she said. “I promised Charlie that I would, if it was possible.”
“If it was possible!” he said, wringing her hands. “I am a foolish old man, my dear.”
Dorothy had already presented both of them to her father. But Ellen turned her head toward Jennifer and smiled. “Will you not meet your granddaughter?” she asked.
Sir Jasper released her hands and turned to Jennifer. “Let me look at you, my dear,” he said. He nodded. “Very pretty. Very pretty indeed. So you are Charlie’s girl, are you? Well, do you have a kiss for your grandpapa, child?”
“Yes, Grandpapa,” Jennifer said, leaning forward to place a kiss on Sir Jasper’s cheek. “You look very like Papa.”
“Do I?” he said. “Even to the bald head? Did your father lose his hair?”
Jennifer nodded.
Sir Jasper turned to the couple standing silently behind him with Lady Habersham. “Meet your aunt and uncle, my dear,” he said. He took Ellen’s hand in his as Jennifer curtsied and smiled uncertainly at the strange couple. “Meet your brother-in-law, Phillip, and his wife, Edith, my dear. It is high time, is it not?”
Mr. Phillip Simpson took Ellen’s free hand in his and laid his other on top of it. He looked closely into her eyes. “You are Ellen?” he said. He did not smile. He was not wearing mourning, though there was a black band on the sleeve of his coat. “I am glad you have come. Old quarrels should not go on for twenty years and more.”
Edith Simpson pecked her on the cheek and expressed pleasure at meeting her.
Ellen was directed to a seat, and found herself in conversation with her brother-in-law and his wife while tea was served. Phillip did not look anything like Charlie, she thought. He was thin and narrow-faced and sandy-haired. His wife looked remarkably like him.
They were a perfectly civil couple even if there was no great warmth in their manner. They told her about their two sons, both away at school. Charlie’s nephews. Ellen wondered how much Phillip regretted not having seen his brother again before his death. They had been close as boys. Most of Charlie’s stories had included his younger brother.
Jennifer, she was pleased to hear, was chattering with some animation to her grandfather. From the few snippets of their conversation that she heard, Ellen gathered that the girl was telling him about her schooldays and about her stay in Brussels.
“Well,” Sir Jasper said eventually, his raised voice drawing the two groups together, “we must repeat this pleasure. We must have tea again. And perhaps I will organize some sort of dinner and evening party that will be suited to our state of mourning. Something to celebrate my reunion with my daughter-in-law and my granddaughter.”
Lady Habersham took his words as a signal to rise and take their leave.
“I must not lose you again now that I have found you,” he said to Ellen as he was squeezing her hand at the doorway of the drawing room when she was leaving. Dorothy and Jennifer had already started on their way down the stairs. “I have been a foolish old man. I have been all these years without my own son. But I will not be without his children. I swear it.”
Ellen smiled and swallowed. “I am glad we have met,” she said. “Charlie would be glad.”
“Is this one to be a son?” he asked, patting her hand.
Ellen shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said.
“Well,” he said, “we will hope so, my dear.” And he leaned forward to kiss her cheek.
Ellen scurried down the stairs in pursuit of the other two.
MADELINE HAD FINALLY PERSUADED her betrothed to venture beyond the doors of his cousin’s house. He was to take tea with her at the Earl of Amberley’s town house. Her mother was to be there too.
But if he was feeling nervous, then she was feeling no better, she thought, seating herself beside him on a love seat, almost but not quite touching him, resisting the urge to take his hand in hers. She was chattering brightly to Alexandra and Edmund and to her mother.
Edmund had chosen a downstairs salon in which to entertain his guests, Madeline had been relieved to discover. And he had not offered to help Allan into the room. Neither had she, but she had hovered at his side as he had moved awkwardly on his crutches, ready to help him if he had needed her assistance.
“I can manage,” he had said to her, looking somewhat tight-lipped. He had thought she was about to reach out to him. “You need not concern yourself, Madeline.”
So she had smiled brightly and seated herself beside him and begun to chatter. Thank goodness Dom was not there. She had forbidden him to come, but whether for Allan’s sake or for her own, she did not know.
She was not doing very well, she knew. She was taut with worry that someone would ask her betrothed some personal question that would embarrass him. She found herself jumping in with answers to every question directed his way. She knew she was doing it, but she could not stop herself. She could feel him growing tenser beside her.
“I hope you do not mind our children being in the room, Lieutenant,” Alexandra said with a smile. “We always have them with us at teatime. I am afraid we are unfashionably attached to our offspring.”
“Oh, no,” Madeline said cheerfully, “Allan does not mind, do you, Allan? They are such well-behaved children. One would hardly know they were in the room.”
“It seems that the Battle of Waterloo is going to be seen as something of a landmark in history,” the earl said to the lieutenant. “One does wonder what Europe will do without Bonaparte to worry about any longer. How long will it be, I wonder, before someone else comes along to take his place?”
“One would like to believe in universal and everlasting peace,” Lieutenant Penworth said. “Unfortunately, human nature inevitably gets in the way. It is my feeling-”
“Goodness,” Madeline said, smiling about her, “must we be so gloomy? I think we should all take a drive out one afternoon to see the trees before they have dropped all their leaves. Has anyone noticed how lovely they are?”
“Your home is in Devon?” the dowager asked a few minutes later. “Your family must be quite anxious to see you again.”
“But Mr. Foster quite insists that Allan stay in London a little longer, doesn’t he, Allan?” Madeline said.
She noticed the look Edmund and Alexandra exchanged across the room and bit her lip. This was not working at all. If Allan was ready for such a visit, she certainly was not.
The earl got to his feet and went to stoop down in front of his daughter, who was sitting on the floor playing with some toys. “Why do you not fetch that letter from your brother, Alex?” he said. “I am sure Mama and Madeline and the lieutenant will be interested in hearing of his adventures. My brother-in-law has been in Canada for more than three years, Lieutenant, or rather, far inland beyond Canada.”
“Will you be interested?” the countess asked with an apologetic smile. “I naturally find the letter quite exciting and fascinating. But then, I am partial. James is my brother. And this is the first letter I have had from him this year.”