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‘This.’ Jack swept his hand round in a gesture to encompass the entire hideous gilded mess. ‘This abomination.’
‘I instructed Mr Lansing to refurnish in the most modern taste. Is this not correct in some way? I carried out the most extensive research on what was fashionable.’
‘It is hideous. Appalling.’
‘I know nothing about fashionable interiors, but—’
‘That much, Miss Aylmer, is evident. You ordered this? Have you no taste whatsoever?’ She opened her mouth, but he swept on. ‘Where are the original contents?’
‘Partridge?’ She said it calmly enough, but her eyes were wide now and her cheeks white.
‘Everything was moved to the upper floors, Miss Aylmer. As I said, only this floor has been completed and there were sufficient rooms to store everything until we had orders about its disposal.’
‘Nothing will be disposed of except for this...this tawdry rubbish. Get whoever was responsible for the decoration and the furnishings back here, have it all reinstated as it was. Starting with the study.’
‘Mr Ransome, if I might have a word?’
And a knife in my back by the sound of it.
A faint tremor underneath the taut words made him stop, breathe. Jack had his anger under control by the time he turned back to her. ‘Of course, Miss Aylmer.’ He followed her into the drawing room, winced at the crocodile couch and closed the door.
Madelyn sank down on to a hard, upright chair, her back perfectly straight, her head up. Her hair had been curled, crimped and piled up, leaving her neck naked and vulnerable.
She looks like a plucked bird, he thought.
Lady Fairfield was presumably responsible for the eau-de-Nil travelling dress she was wearing. Neither the hair style or the gown suited her and she seemed unlike herself, as though she was dressing up. For some reason that only increased his bad humour. He had not realised his wife-to-be was quite so plain, quite so awkward.
‘Where am I to reside while this work is carried out?’ she asked. Somehow, she was keeping her voice steady, but the hem of her gown moved. He assumed she was controlling anger with an effort, trembling with indignation. He did not care. Let her have a shouting match if that was what she wanted.
‘They can do it room by room. I imagine that will not discommode you too much. There are enough apartments on this floor to provide alternative dining and drawing rooms and I assume you can manage without the use of the study.’ He sat down on something that appeared to have been looted from a pharaoh’s tomb. At least sitting on it he did not have to look at the thing.
‘Certainly I can. I regret that my assumption that you would wish your London house to be in the latest mode was so far misplaced.’
Anger at the shock at finding everything so changed was subsiding into a roiling stomach and a strong desire to down half a bottle of brandy. He hadn’t felt this bad since his grandfather died, he realised. It was like losing him all over again.
Jack looked across at his betrothed and felt a pang of guilt. This was still Madelyn’s house and she was trying to do the right thing. Probably, at this moment, she was wondering what she had done to promise herself to such an angry man.
‘I apologise for swearing. You meant it for the best, no doubt.’ He was a gentleman, he reminded himself. He should not take out his disappointment and temper on a lady, even if she was the cause of that disappointment.
She turned that wide blue-grey gaze on him, and he found he could manage to get the scowl off his face if he really tried. ‘This was my home, but why I should imagine it would stay unchanged for so many years I do not know.’ It was an explanation and, he supposed, a poor sort of apology.
‘Your home? But I had assumed that Dersington Mote would be the house that was of chief importance to you.’
‘That was where my father and brother lived. My mother died when I was ten and my grandparents did not think it was the right place for a child.’ That had been on the day when his grandmother had arrived to find he had a black eye and bruised cheek as a result of disturbing his father by crying at night over the loss of his mother. He tipped his head back against the hard, uncomfortable upholstery, closed his eyes and wondered why he felt so weary.
‘Your father’s parents?’ When he nodded she said, ‘But did they not live at the country house?’
‘My grandfather became confused with age. This smaller house was easier for him and, in London, my grandmother was closer to her friends who supported her.’
‘Oh, I understand now.’ There was a rustle of fabric, and he blinked. Madelyn was sitting on the footstool by his knees, hands clasped in her lap, ruffled skirts pooling around her. ‘I will speak to the workmen myself, make certain everything is just as you want it again.’ The faint scent of old roses and warm female drifted up.
‘You have a great deal of experience making certain that the men in your life have exactly the surroundings they desire, haven’t you?’ He found he was irrationally irritated by that. That was what ladies did, after all. The household was their kingdom but they were managing it for their husbands, fathers and, sometimes, brothers.
‘Yes.’ She tipped her head to one side, clearly puzzled at this sudden change of mood. Those ugly curls bobbed, but the movement sent up another disturbing waft of fragrance, a memory of her secret garden behind the massive stone walls. ‘But not men. There has only ever been my father to please.’
‘And what do you want? Where do you want to live? How do you want to live?’
‘Me?’ The suggestion that she might express a preference made her rock back on the stool as though to get him into better focus. ‘What is the point of wondering that? If I want children, a family, then I have no choice in the matter.’
