movement of her neck causing the ostrich plumes in her hat to quiver. “As one does wonder, you know. Having never met your mother myself. And not knowing any of her family.”
St. Clare looked steadily back at her. He’d known this was coming. His grandfather had prepared him for it. They were to meet such accusations head on. Calmly, but decisively, and without undue protestation.
At least, that had been the plan.
“How would you know them?” Allendale bellowed. “My son was living in exile! He wasn’t courting girls at Almack’s!”
“Oh dear. I have put it badly, haven’t I?” She looked to her son for assistance. “Lionel?”
At nearly thirty years of age, Lionel Beresford bore little resemblance to the “young pup” that St. Clare had heard his grandfather raving about for so many years. He was, in fact, a fairly large gentleman. His height was only an inch or two below St. Clare’s own, and his width was presently straining at the confines of a brightly striped waistcoat and skintight pantaloons.
He had light brown curls brushed into careful disorder. A fleshy chin resting on an elaborately folded neckcloth. And he bore about himself an air of well-practiced indolence.
St. Clare had initially identified him as some manner of aspiring dandy. Within fifteen minutes of meeting him, however, it had become clear that Lionel Beresford was another sort of creature altogether.
“Madre means no offense,” he said lazily. “She’s simply curious. As are we all.”
Allendale glared at Lionel from under ominously lowered brows. “Curious, are you? Damn your impudence. What right do you have to be curious about my heir?”
“We are family, Uncle.”
“Uncle, is it!” Allendale exploded. “I’m no uncle of yours, you encroaching young jackanapes!”
“Oh,” Mrs. Beresford tittered again, this time at St. Clare. “How coolly you look at us, my lord. What you must think. That I would cast aspersions on your parentage! I daresay your mother was an excellent sort of woman, if not, perhaps, as gently bred as one might like. And as for your father, well, he was always wild. Up to all manner of pranks, I’m told. And what he did, dueling with that poor feebleminded boy of Penworthy’s was—as many still say—dishonorable—” She stopped and tittered once more at her own tactlessness. “But I shall say no more on the subject. The past is such a delicate subject for us Beresfords, is it not? And yet”—she paused, smiling—“one cannot help unearthing it at every turn.”
“Can’t they?” Allendale growled. “If you’ve come up to town to dig up some sort of a scandal, Lavinia—”
“Scandal? But surely you don’t expect anything like a scandal? People may talk, naturally. But you must rest assured, Lionel and I shall do our parts to put down any doubts—that is to say any rumors—about Lord St. Clare’s legitimacy. Won’t we, Lionel?”
Lionel paused in the act of perusing a valuable-looking curio to pronounce himself at St. Clare’s service. “I stand ready to assist you on every front. We Beresfords must stick together.”
“You? A Beresford?” Allendale gave a crack of laughter. “Your distant ancestor was a Beresford, I grant you, but what you are, my boy, is the descendant of four generations of tradesmen. You’re no more a Beresford than Jessup here.”
The elderly butler, who had just entered the drawing room, graced his employer with a deferential bow. He then proceeded to announce the arrival of Lord Vickers and Lord Mattingly.
“Show them in, Jessup,” Allendale said. “The only thing this farce lacks is an audience.”
“Tradesmen?” Mrs. Beresford echoed when Jessup had withdrawn. “It is true that my late husband’s great grandsire married an heiress, but—”
“A cit’s daughter.”
“Oh no,” Mrs. Beresford protested. “Her father was a wealthy gentleman, yes, but he was no cit. He might have dabbled a bit in trade, but—”
“He owned a manufactory in Leeds,” Allendale said.
St. Clare had heard the story frequently. There had been four Beresford brothers all those generations ago. Charles, the eldest, had inherited the earldom. Harold, the youngest, had married a cit’s daughter. Harold’s own sons had prospered in trade and their sons too, thus supplying the fortune on which subsequent descendants of Harold’s line had lived.
But this, by itself, wasn’t the source of the present earl’s prejudice. As he often said, “Everyone knows that Harold Beresford bore more resemblance to one of the footmen than to his own father.”
Whether Lionel Beresford was, in fact, a blood relation to him, St. Clare couldn’t be certain, but at face value there didn’t seem to be one drop of Beresford existing