Page 25 of A Much Maligned Miss

“I don’t know either,” Caroline admitted in a rush. “I suppose I feel disloyal talking about it so openly. Some mothers do favor their sons. I do not think it is all that out of the ordinary.”

“Perhaps not. It is the degree to which your mother takes her partiality that makes your own case unusual.”

“I think it is because my father was cruel to her, whereas Edgar’s was kind.”

“Oh? What do you actually know of your father?” he asked, drawing out his cigarette case.

“Very little.” She shrugged. “Mother does not care to talk of him. She always says that period was the darkest time of her life.”

“I see. And you have never had cause to doubt her account of him?” He struck a match and Caroline stared at him.

“I—well…no,” she admitted. “It seemed to make a sort of sense why she might…dislike me so much. If I remind her of him, I mean.”

“I see,” he responded, placing a cigarette between his lips.

“Besides, she never speaks poorly of Mr. Needham, her second husband,” Caroline said, and even she could hear the defensiveness in her tone.

“Father of the saintly Edgar? Ah yes. He has been dead how long?”

“Oh, a long time now. I scarcely even remember him.”

“And how old were you when he died?”

“I was three.”

“Hmmm.”

“What of your parents, my lord?” she ventured to ask. “Is your mother still living?”

“She lives in Italy with her third husband,” he answered promptly.

“And have you no half sisters or brothers?”

“I have not, much to my mother’s relief. She has no interest in children, though she likes me well enough now, whenever our paths should happen to cross.”

“When did they last do so?”

He waved his cigarette around. “Oh…it must have been some four years ago now. Or was it perhaps five?” He screwed up his eyes with the effort of remembering.

Caroline deduced they were not close. “If it is not impertinent, how old were you when your father died?”

“I was six,” he responded easily enough.

“You became Lord Atherton at six years of age.”

“I did.”

“What is your actual rank?” it occurred to her to ask. “I don’t think you have ever told me.”

“I am an earl,” he responded dryly. “Earl of Atherton.”

“And is that a place?”

“Not anymore,” he answered with a puff of smoke. “There are no lands and no properties attached to the title, alas. The entailment on the estate had wound up by the time it reached my grandfather. He consequently sold the family pile in Norfolk and then willed everything he could away from my father, leaving it all to his younger son, my uncle George. He got all the money, the townhouse, the jewelry, the family portraits, etc. etc.”

Caroline sat up. “That seems rather unfair on your father.”

“Doesn’t it? But you see, when Grandfather died, my father had no issue. The old man had been very keen on acquiring a grandson. My mother had been selected for her bloodlines, in the expectation that she would produce said heir. However, from the start their marriage was somewhat contentious. They spent a good deal of their time apart. After six years of marriage, my grandfather decided it was most dissatisfactory all round and decided to disinherit my father. Then Grandfather died only three months later, and by the time I materialized, Uncle George had inherited the lot.”