First Comes Marriage by Mary Balogh Page B

brothers.

    “Ah,” he said, “the new earl, I presume? And his . . . entourage?”

    Viscount Lyngate released Vanessa’s arm and strode forward, his heavy greatcoat swinging against his boots. He came to a halt only when he was almost toe to toe with the other man. They were almost exactly the same height.

    “You were supposed to be gone by now,” he said curtly and with undisguised annoyance.

    “Was I?” the other gentleman said, his smile still in place but his voice transformed into a drawl of what sounded like boredom. “But I am not, am I, Elliott? Introduce me if you will be so good.”

    The viscount hesitated but then turned back to face them.

    “Merton,” he said, “Miss Huxtable, Mrs. Dew, Miss Katherine, may I present Mr. Huxtable?”

    Not a brother, then?

    “ Constantine Huxtable,” the gentleman said, making them all an elegant bow. “Con to my friends.”

    “Oh, I say!” Stephen exclaimed, stepping forward to shake the gentleman heartily by the hand while the ladies curtsied. “You have our name. You must be a relative.”

    “I must indeed,” Mr. Huxtable agreed while Vanessa and her sisters looked on with interest. “Second cousin to be exact. We share a great-grandfather.”

    “Indeed?” Stephen said. “Nessie has been telling us about our family tree, something the rest of us have sadly neglected, I am afraid. Great-Grandpapa had just two sons, did he not?”

    “Your grandfather and mine,” Constantine Huxtable said. “And then there were your father and mine. And then my brother—my younger brother, who is recently deceased. And you. Earl of Merton. My felicitations.”

    He sketched Stephen another bow.

    So Constantine Huxtable and Viscount Lyngate were first cousins—their mothers were sisters. But it was another relationship that Vanessa was working out in her head. So were her siblings by the looks on their faces. Stephen was staring at their second cousin, his brow knit in thought.

    “There is something here I do not understand,” he said. “You are the elder brother of the earl who just died? Ought not you to have been—? Ought not you to be—?”

    “The Earl of Merton myself?” Mr. Huxtable laughed. “I missed my chance for glory by two days, lad. That is what comes of being too eager in this life. May it be a lesson to you. My mother was Greek, daughter of an ambassador to London. She met my father when she was visiting her sister, who had married Viscount Lyngate and lived with him at nearby Finchley Park. But it was not until after her return to Greece with her papa, my grandfather, that she confessed to being in an, ah, interesting condition. He marched her back across Europe in high dudgeon. He demanded that my father do the decent thing—which he did. But I would not wait for the fairy-tale ending—or beginning—to my own story. I bowed to the stress of a sea crossing that had incapacitated my mother, and I made my squalling appearance in this world two days before my father could procure a special license and marry her. Thus I was and am and forever will be an illegitimate son. My esteemed parents had to wait another ten years for the arrival of a live and legitimate heir. Jonathan. He would have been more than delighted to make the acquaintance of all these new cousins. Would he not, Elliott?”

    He looked at Viscount Lyngate, one eyebrow cocked in what Vanessa suspected was mockery.

    Clearly there was no love lost between the cousins.

    “But he died a few months ago,” Mr. Huxtable continued, “several years later than the physicians had predicted. And so, here you are, the new and legitimate Earl of Merton and his sisters. I assume these ladies are all sisters, including Mrs. Dew? Mrs. Forsythe, we will have tea in the drawing room.”

    He spoke with absolute authority and with an aristocratic ease of manner, as if after all he were the Earl of Merton and owner of Warren Hall.

    “That is the saddest story I have ever heard,”