Who Wants to Marry a Duke - Sabrina Jeffries Page 0,77
evening’s menu.
Olivia smiled at her stepmother. “Now that I’ve finished my experiments, Mama, I can go home with you tomorrow.” She looked at him. “If that’s all right with His Grace, that is.”
“Whatever you wish to do is fine. But I’ll accompany you both to London.” When Olivia shot him an odd look, he added, “So I can gain the baron’s permission to marry you, of course.” There was no way in hell he would risk having Olivia caught in their villain’s snare, especially since he still had no idea who their villain was.
“Lady Norley,” he went on, “I do need to discuss one more matter with you while my sister is out of earshot.” He walked over to the settee. “Please, have a seat. You too, Miss Norley.”
Soon to be the Duchess of Thornstock. His duchess. How odd was it that those words sounded amazingly satisfying?
When they were all three seated, he said, “When you told me years ago about my father’s mistress, to whom were you referring? And how reliable was your source of that knowledge?”
Lady Norley colored deeply. “I’m afraid I may have . . . er . . . exaggerated a bit about how much I knew.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, leaning forward.
“I mean it was plain old gossip. Something bandied about in society that no one had proof of.”
“Mama!” Olivia said. “You trumped up false information just to blackmail Thorn into offering for me?”
The baroness thrust out her chin. “I don’t know for sure that it was false, just that it wasn’t necessarily . . . well . . . true.”
Olivia shook her head, obviously none too happy with her stepmother’s answer.
Thorn was, however. He sat back, feeling his heart lighten for the first time in a long while. But he couldn’t bask in it. He still had to uncover the truth. “So you didn’t get the information from my mother.”
“No,” she said firmly. “Your mother wouldn’t ever have said a bad word about your father. She adored him.”
“That’s not in question,” Thorn said. “What I need to know is did he adore her?”
“I believe he did. It’s difficult for me to say for sure,” she said archly, “given that I’ve never experienced such a thing, but he did seem to adore her.”
Thorn let out a breath. All these years of thinking his mother had either outright lied to him or had been deceived, and it was based on nothing but rumor and innuendo. Coupled with what the constable had told him, it solidified his conviction that his father had done nothing to deserve whatever nonsense the rumormongers had been spreading about him in his final days on this earth. “Can you tell me who the gossips believed was his mistress?”
This time Lady Norley looked positively mortified. “She’s a friend of your mother’s, actually, and was at your sister’s ball. Eliza. Lady Hornsby.”
“Lady Hornsby,” he repeated. “With my father? Did you . . . ever see anything between them that might have lent credence to the rumor?”
“Not really. He did court her briefly when she was still Miss Rundle and your mother was preparing to marry the Duke of Greycourt. That was the seed of the rumor, I believe, that began growing once Eliza and your mother had married their respective husbands. In fact, I think Eliza might have introduced your mother to your father a few years later. But beyond that, I don’t know.”
“It’s unusual for such a young, respectable woman to be rumored to be anyone’s mistress, so why did people even believe it possible?”
Lady Norley shrugged. “Eliza was always rather fast. I mean, there’s a reason people call her a merry widow behind her back. But she doesn’t care. She does as she pleases. Always did.”
“An admirable trait,” Olivia muttered under her breath.
Thorn stifled a laugh before turning to Lady Norley. “So you really don’t think there was anything going on between her and my father.”
“I doubt it. Eliza was already married to Lord Hornsby by then, and I don’t think he would have tolerated any misbehavior on the part of his wife, if you know what I mean. Though she didn’t have to put up with the old devil for long. He died only a few years into their marriage as I recall.”
Thorn looked at Olivia, whose quick glance told him they were thinking the same thing: that it was odd how Lady Hornsby’s husband had died so soon after their marriage.