she had tucked into her sleeve, flicking it with one blunt fingernail. “Your father was a good person but a bad businessman.”
“To be fair,” James began, but his mother interrupted him with a wave of her hand.
“Oh, I know, I know,” she said. “It wasn’t entirely his fault. American imports are cutting badly into Seabeck’s output of wheat and corn. Your Andalusians are expensive, and not many people can afford them. You haven’t sold a foal this season, have you? Seabeck’s income isn’t keeping up with expenditures.”
“I had hoped there might be some source of income I didn’t know about.”
“Such as what?” Lady Eleanor straightened, and her face resumed its usual rather fierce nobility, as if none of the anxieties of ordinary people could trouble her. Her nose, short and blunt, thrust up like a terrier’s scenting prey.
James squirmed on the edge of the bed, embarrassed about the nakedness of his long, pale shins. He wished he were dressed so he could pace around the room. “Well, Mother, I don’t know exactly—I had thought perhaps some of the older paintings, furniture we don’t use… Some of it is so uncomfortable, surely we could…” He broke off under the pressure of her narrowed gaze.
“James, listen to me. When a family begins to sell its heirlooms, all is lost. It’s over. Everyone can see that it’s the end for the family, no matter how noble.”
“We could sell the London house,” he ventured, but her eyes blazed with instant fury.
“No, we could not.” She pushed herself to her feet and stood with her hands linked before her. The pose looked contained and calm, but he saw how her knuckles whitened. “The Marquess of Rosefield does not begin selling off his property. Nor—” Her eyes glinted with anger. “Nor does the dowager marchioness part with her jewelry, under any circumstances. These are acts of desperation. Everyone would know it. You’re not even to consider it.”
“Yes, Mother,” James said meekly. He knew his lady mother’s jewel case, and the safe in his father’s library, were both overfull with rings and brooches and tiepins that were never taken out. The house in London maintained a staff year-round, even though they used it only during the season. He had to look away, lest his awareness of all that should show in his face. He wasn’t nearly so good as she at disciplining his expression.
He should, he thought, as he fixed his eyes on the white clouds drifting across the sky beyond his window, stand up for himself. Point out that he was now the marquess and must do what he thought best.
He didn’t have the courage. His father had never found it, either.
Lady Eleanor was not finished. “You,” she proclaimed, her voice vibrating with the authority she had wielded his whole life, “will have to marry money.”
At that his head snapped up, and he stared at her, aghast. “Mother!”
Her gaze never wavered. “There is nothing to be done for it. You’re hardly the only nobleman in England facing the same…
let us call it choice.”
He stood up, careless of his bare legs and the inadequate coverage of his dressing gown, and gazed at her in horror.
She blew out a breath, but her posture did not relax. “You’re old enough to face these things, James. My marriage to your father was hardly a love match. Our properties merged, which has been a good thing, a successful enterprise. At least,” she finished, with just the slightest hint of defeat, “it was until the last decade or so.”
He found his voice, although it was hoarse with shock. “But, Mother—you knew each other from childhood! You weren’t strangers.”
Lady Eleanor’s expression didn’t alter, but she stepped to the window to hold back a fold of heavy velvet drape and gaze out onto the raked gravel drive and the manicured gardens that spread all around the house. The gardens had been his father’s special passion, and more than once he had seen his parents, his mother’s hand tucked under her husband’s arm, strolling together before coming in to dress for dinner. They were talking, sometimes. Other times they were just walking, side by side, enjoying the waning day.
James’s throat tightened with the grief he had been suppressing. “Mother, I’m sorry. I know you’re going to miss Father. I will, too.”
“I know, dear,” she said, in a tone so unaccustomedly mild that he almost went to put a comforting hand on her shoulder. He restrained himself, knowing she would hate it. He had never seen