Free A Countess by Christmas by Annie Burrows Page B

troubles,’ Aunt Bella explained darkly. ‘His father is not a wealthy man. But because of the title he expects to inherit once Bridgemere dies, he tends to live well beyond his means.’
    An idiot, then, as well as a fop, thought Helen as she watched the youth saunter across the room and take a seat in between two damsels who blushed and simpered at him. One of them Helen recognised as the young lady who had been flirting with Aunt Bella’s dinner partner the night before.
    ‘I wonder if he is sitting with them on purpose, to annoy his aunt?’ mused Aunt Bella aloud. ‘Oh—I should perhaps explain that those are the two of Lady Thrapston’s daughters not still in the nursery. Octavia and Augustine.’
    Even as he acknowledged the adulation of his female cousins, she could still detect a faint sneer hoveringabout the heir’s mouth, which unhappily put her very much in mind of his Aunt Thrapston.
    ‘Which are his parents?’ Helen whispered. ‘Are they here?’
    Aunt Bella made a motion with her fan, to indicate a very ordinary-looking middle-aged couple perched on the edge of a pair of spindly-legged chairs. The lady had been sitting beside Lord Bridgemere at dinner the night before. Talking non-stop and irritating him, she saw on a flash of insight. As much as his other sister had managed to irritate him from the foot of the table, with her condescending remarks about the quality of the food.
    What a family!
    ‘You know my brother the General, of course, and his charming wife,’ her aunt said sarcastically as the couple strolled into the room arm in arm.
    When the General saw them, his brows lowered into a scowl.
    ‘I wonder why they have come this year?’ her aunt mused. ‘He usually goes to spend Christmas with Ambrose.’
    It was a great pity he had not gone to spend this Christmas with Ambrose, Aunt Bella’s oldest brother, sighed Helen. His estate was just outside Chester. Which would have put him at the very other end of the country.
    ‘I can only assume his pockets are to let.’
    ‘Whatever do you mean?’
    ‘Oh, come! You know full well that none of us comes here without a very compelling reason. Had I no need, even I would have given my cousin’s nephew a wideberth. Indeed, I do not think I have seen him for over fifteen years.’
    Helen shifted in her seat. ‘It sounds a very odd way of conducting family relations…’
    But it helped to explain Lord Bridgemere’s conviction that she had come cap in hand, like everyone else. And when she had been so insistent upon speaking to him in private, to put her case, it could only have reinforced that impression.
    She wished she had not been so quick to take offence. For suddenly she could see exactly why it had been so hard to convince him that she, personally, wanted nothing from him for herself.
    ‘Perhaps I am being a little harsh in regards to his sisters,’ Aunt Bella murmured. ‘Not that it is fondness for their brother that brings them here, either. It is just that neither of them can bear the thought that the other might somehow steal a march if they are not here to keep an eye on their dealings with Bridgemere.’
    How awful! Did nobody ever come to see him merely because they liked him?
    Although her aunt had said he actively discouraged visitors by being purposefully elusive. She could not help allowing her eyes to stray in his direction, her heart going out to a man she now saw as an island in the midst of a sea of greedy, grasping relatives. She wondered which had come first. His reclusive habits, or his family’s attitude towards him as nothing more than an ever-open purse?
    She was startled out of her reverie by the General who, after standing stock still, glaring at them for afew seconds, marched right up to them and demanded, ‘I want to know why you have come here, Bella.’
    ‘I do not think that is any of your business,’ Aunt Bella retorted.
    ‘Still as argumentative as ever,’ he growled. ‘And just as prone to