Read Online The American Earl by Joan Wolf - Free Book Online Page A

paintings; the few that hung upon the walls were mostly landscapes. He wondered what Julia would say about them – were they good or were they mediocre? He himself had no idea.
    Evan took a seat on one of the spectacularly uncomfortable French chairs that were placed in front of the marble fireplace and prepared to wait.
    In a remarkably short time, a tall, handsome, blonde-haired woman came in the door. “Evan, my dear,” Lady Barbara said as she crossed the pale ivory and blue rug to greet him. “How lovely to meet you.”
    He blinked as he stood up to greet her. She looked just like his father. “I am happy to meet you as well, Aunt,” he replied, and bestowed a chaste kiss on the cheek she presented to him.
    Lady Barbara looked up. “Goodness,” she said. “You wear your lineage on your face, Nephew. You are all Marshall.”
    Evan thought of the portrait hanging in the drawing room at Stoverton and of his shock when he had first beheld it.   “So it seems,” he said mildly.
    Lady Barbara bade him be seated and once again Evan took one of the uncomfortable silk-covered chairs. 
    She sat beside him. “I’m sorry my husband isn’t here to greet you, but he has gone to visit his brother. If he had known you were coming, he most certainly would have remained at home. The family has been eagerly awaiting your arrival.” She looked at him piercingly. “I imagine you have learned by now of the disaster Philip left behind when he shot himself.”
    She didn’t even wince when she mentioned her brother’s suicide.
    “Yes,” Evan said, looking into the familiar yet strange face next to him.   He decided to be honest and added wryly,  “I must confess I’m finding it a bit disconcerting to meet relatives I didn’t know I possessed.   My parents brought me up to be one hundred percent American, you see.   My father maintained no connection to his English family - it was as if they didn’t exist.  So you can imagine how stunned I was to receive a letter informing me that I was the new Earl of Althorpe – with all the attendant obligations.” 
    He couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of his voice as he pronounced the last words.
    Lady Barbara sighed. “I’m afraid that my father and yours quarreled badly, my dear. Do you know the reason why your father emigrated to America in the first place?”
    “I recently learned the history of my parents from Cousin Flora,” he replied steadily.
    “Then you will know that my father was outraged when Tommy eloped with Emma. I was only a schoolgirl, but I can still remember his anger. He said that Tommy was no longer his son and that he had made his bed and he could lie in it.”
    “Nice of him,” Evan commented dryly.
    “Tommy was Papa’s favorite,” Lady Barbara said. “He felt that Tommy had betrayed him and his family by marrying so far beneath his station.”
    I’m glad I never knew the old bastard. Evan thought.  Maybe it’s poetic justice that my mother’s son is the one to inherit his precious earldom.
    Lady Barbara was going on, “Apparently Tommy did quite well for himself in America.”
    “Let us just say that my father was wiser with his money than my uncle was with his,” Evan said.
    At this point, the butler came in with a tea tray. A table was set up in front of the chairs and Lady Barbara asked Evan polite questions about his journey from America while she poured. When the butler closed the door again, she got down to business. “I know my brother was deeply in debt. How bad is it?”
    Evan told her. Then he told her about the condition of the cottages and the unpaid retirees. She was not surprised. Then he brought up the subject of Julia and Maria. “I am very concerned about their futures,” he said.
    “They still have their dowries, of course.”
    “No, they don’t. My uncle went through the funds that were supposed to be set aside for their dowries. They have been left with nothing.”
    “Damn Philip!” Lady Barbara