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Pressure built in her throat. “Poor matches?”
“Indeed. Few hear our family name without thinking of Uncle Eugene and his running off to Italy forlove. And it’s that match that deprived us of parents. We wouldn’t have been orphaned had they not sailed off to visit Uncle.”
Clara’s mouth parted. She’d not heard this sort of bitterness from David before.
Undeterred, he continued. “And Adrian’s marriage has been abject misery, hasn’t it? Every time I see the man, it’s clear how the agony eats away at him.”
She sighed, nodding. “His eyes of late. To see a childhood friend suffer so…”
“You know that I hold the Sideris family in high esteem, but this marriage plan of theirs for all of Adrian’s life, to pair a merchant family with a high-born one—inadvisable in the extreme.”
Clara averted her eyes. Their parents had not only accepted Vassilis and Sirena Sideris as neighbors when the wealthy merchant family purchased a home next to the Chadbourne London residence, they’d become close. Their mother and Sirena had been especially dear friends.
David and their son Adrian were already friends before becoming tighter at Cambridge, and their other son, Nick, was David’s right-hand man at his firm.
“It’s a common scheme now, pairing merchant wealth to an impoverished aristocratic family,” Clara reminded him in a thready voice. “Surely you’re being too harsh on the cause of their troubles.”
“Look no further than Mother and Father. You know very well the reason for their match; they jested about it when we were children! Anterleigh is our family pride, a beautiful estate”—his hand sliced through the air—“and it hasn’t been sustainable in two generations. Father married Mother for the funds.”
“Yes, and look at them! They became a love match, David, though it didn’t begin that way!”
“Precisely.Becausethey were well-matched—both from families of good birth.”
Nothing David had said was surprising or controversial, yet sadness weighed her shoulders down.
“Oh, Clara, I’ve distressed you with these indelicate matters, and you haven’t touched your pudding! Please forgive me.”
David departed, lighter in mood than when he arrived.
After Loudon handed him his top hat and Clara was left alone with her thoughts, a dark mood settled over her.
