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Susannah had noticed Alex escorting Celia Chase. She knew that the liaison was unlikely to last till the end of the year. Her son’s mistresses tended to see him as a challenge because he was notoriously changeable. Each successive young beauty seemed to believe she’d be the one to enslave and shackle him to her side, thus her behaviour became too possessive and hastened her departure from his life.
But that night Susannah had also glimpsed her son encircled by a gaggle of genteel ladies, some of whom appeared to be débutantes. It had been so unusual and noteworthy a sight that she had been impatient for an opportunity to bring it up. ‘Are you looking for a wife, Alex?’
Alex spluttered a laugh and placed down the teacup he’d just filled from the silver pot on the table. He slanted his mother a quizzical look. ‘You may rest assured that I have no plans to propose to my new friend.’
‘I don’t mean her.’ The fêted beauty was dismissed with a flick of an elegant finger. Susannah approached the table against which her son was resting and gazed up into his handsome features. ‘I noticed you with some sweet-looking young ladies at Vauxhall; there seemed to be quite a crowd of them. Were you interested in one in particular?’
Alex shot her a look. ‘I’m interested in one of the families...but not in the way you mean, ma’am,’ he answered with mild amusement on noticing a glimmer of optimism sharpening his mother’s dark eyes. ‘There were two sisters with their aunt, Dolly Pearson, and Hugh’s aunt, Edith Vickers.’
‘The Dewey girls?’ Susannah asked abruptly, with a frown.
‘Yes...you know of the family?’
‘Mmm...’ Susannah strolled to look out of the window on to a rose garden. It was late May and some beautiful blooms had unfurled to perfume the air. She drank in the scent wafting in through a half-open sash.
‘And? What do you know of them?’ Alex got the impression his mother wasn’t keen on elaborating and that was making him determined to have more information.
‘There was rather a scandal some years ago when the girls’ parents went their separate ways.’ Susannah turned to face her son. ‘Mr Dewey took his daughters with him and moved out of town. I know Dolly Pearson is Walter Dewey’s sister.’
Alex continued to gaze at his mother in an attempt to extract further news, but she seemed to have sunk into her own thoughts.
‘I’m guessing there was more than that to the calamity. Are you going to tell me what it is?’
‘Why do you want to know?’ Susannah asked.
‘Because your late brother has bequeathed me a list of his debts to clear.’
A tut of mingled anger and astonishment was Susannah’s initial response. ‘Thomas is a devil to do that! You must throw it on the fire, Alex. It is a dreadful thing to expect you to clear up after him.’ She paused to consider. ‘Does this list have anything to do with your interest in the Dewey girls?’
‘In a way...my late uncle has noted that he owes their father a wife and an amount of cash.’
A spontaneous giggle escaped Susannah before she frowned and shook her head. ‘Obviously you could pay back the cash if you’d a mind to, but a wife? What in the Lord’s name does he expect you can do about that now?’
‘I wish I were able to ask him,’ Alex said. ‘For I haven’t the vaguest notion.’ His mother’s surprise on being told of her brother’s odd bequest hadn’t been as pronounced as he’d expected.
‘Did Uncle Thomas steal Mrs Dewey from her husband? Is that why the couple went their separate ways?’ Alex sensed his mother was veering between fibbing and telling all. He’d considered the possibility that his uncle’s roving eye had landed on Mrs Dewey and an affaire de coeur had ensued. If the woman had been as attractive as her daughters, Alex could understand his uncle’s temptation. According to Hugh a scandal had blighted the lives of more than the adults involved; the girls had been affected, too, by having their family name sullied.
‘Thomas did have an affair with Arabella Dewey,’ Susannah said slowly, ‘but it was not a lengthy liaison. She went on to become Lord Reeves’s mistress, then passed away. Officially, she expired of influenza in Norfolk, having gone there for bracing briny air to aid her recovery.’
‘And unofficially?’
‘It was rumoured she died in labour, being too frail for another pregnancy. She had turned forty some years previously. If I had to choose between my brother and Lord Reeves, I know which of them I would say owed Walter Dewey a wife.’ Susannah snapped a nod, her loyalty to Thomas obvious.
