Chapter Fourteen

      ‘Ah, Farenze, can’t say I expected you to come since you’re supposed to be busy with that ramshackle old place you bought off your brother-in-law. Is this your viscountess? Good evening, my dear. Delighted you could join us after all the invitations your husband has refused on your behalf. I dare say he wanted to keep you to himself.’ The Earl of Trethayne bowed to the mystery lady the ton had been so eager to meet all Season and preened himself that they’d had to wait until his granddaughter’s ball to do it.

      The latest Trethayne chit and this grand waste of money his daughter-in-law had forced on him would be the talk of the town after tonight and for once he didn’t begrudge the money all this show and frivolity was costing him. His gaze drifted onward to gauge what effect this social triumph was having on whoever was next in the receiving line, then sharpened abruptly, as if he’d been replaced by a statue of a grumpy old cheeseparing aristocrat instead of the real thing.

      ‘The chit must know she ain’t welcome here, I told her last time she was here never to bother me or mine again,’ he managed to stutter out between stiff lips as the statuesque lady dressed in the first stare of fashion reached him and looked as if she wasn’t quite sure why she had bothered.

      ‘I’m not a chit any longer, if I ever was, and I don’t know why you imagine I need your welcome now, sir—I found none when I came to you and begged for help when I was seventeen and alone in the world but for three little brothers.’

      ‘French whelps,’ he almost spat at her as if she had suggested he helped her to look after a litter of unwanted puppies rather than three then very small children.

      ‘Half-French,’ the stripling at her side informed him with nearly as much brass-faced impudence as his sister.

      ‘I can assure you the other half is pure Trethayne,’ the next gentleman in line said with his usual casual impudence and Earl of Trethayne frowned at the Marquis of Mantaigne and wondered why he’d never told the idle fool exactly what he thought of him before tonight.

      ‘What the devil do they have to do with you or the Farenze connection?’

      ‘Lord Farenze and I were brought up together, so we share a lot of family feeling, Trethayne. I’m sure you know the ones I mean—love, loyalty and caring for the welfare of others even when you don’t always want to? I hope you don’t expect Lord Farenze and I to ignore each other as our wives make their first forays into the ton tonight. That would be downright unnatural for such close connections, don’t you think?’ Tom asked silkily.

      His host paled and flashed a glance from one to the other of the striking group taking up so much of his guests’ attention there was near silence in the overcrowded ballroom. For a moment he seemed about to admit that the unlikely group of people in front of him were indeed connected in some way he didn’t understand, then he gathered his senses and his long-standing conviction he was right and they were all wrong and fought back.

      ‘What’s that sentimental rigmarole got to do with them?’ he said with a dismissive wave of his hand at Polly and Toby Trethayne, who stood surveying the glittering ballroom as if they were far more interested in the spectacle of the ton at play than anything their reluctant host might have to say about them.

      ‘Firstly there is the fact we all value the company of your great-niece and great-nephew and would not go anywhere they are not welcomed. Secondly—’

      ‘Thank you, my lord, but we are quite capable of speaking for ourselves, are we not, Tobias?’ His beanpole of a great-niece had the effrontery to interrupt an even more important nobleman than his lordship knew himself to be. ‘Pray don’t splutter like that, sir, it isn’t becoming and since we’re related it won’t reflect well on us for it to be known our great-uncle cannot string two words together without recourse to cursing or roaring and ranting like a lunatic.’

      ‘I don’t know how you got in here...’

      ‘No, I’m quite sure you don’t, since you have done your best to make sure we all went straight to the devil. I may have begged you for help and been turned away time after time seven years ago, but I didn’t have to walk here with a babe in arms and two little brothers at my heels this time. Nor do I need to plead with you to help me put food in their bellies, because I have somehow managed to do that myself for the past seven years, since you threw us out of your house as if we carried plague. You don’t need to worry, my lord, we’re not here to beg for help you have no intention of giving us tonight. I know from past experience it would not be forthcoming.’

      Now the silence that had greeted the delightful surprise of Lady Farenze making her first public appearance at this débutante ball was giving way to a flurry of delighted speculation, and Lord Trethayne didn’t have to turn round to know whispers that he’d let such youthful members of his own family all but starve were sweeping about the ballroom as the witch paused for a moment, as if selecting the best spot to slip in the killing knife blow.

      ‘What do you want?’ he managed to grab enough presence of mind to ask, before any further revelations could fall from the giant female’s mouth and ruin the night he’d paid out so much to bring about.

      ‘An apology would do nicely to begin with,’ she told him softly. By now his guests were straining so hard to hear her he was surprised they didn’t just pitch up and form a circle.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured with a furious glance at his open-mouthed daughter-in-law and that wispy little chit he’d gone to so much trouble to get off their hands.

      ‘I didn’t quite catch that, Trethayne,’ Mantaigne very nearly bellowed with that almost-an-idiot grin of his that Lord Trethayne suddenly realised he’d always found so damnably irritating.

      ‘Sorry,’ he barked more loudly.

      ‘Such a gracious manner as you’ve always had with us, don’t you agree, Tobias?’ the woman murmured and had a dowager or two reaching for their ear trumpets.