Read Online The Earl’s Mistletoe Bride by JOANNA MAITLAND - Free Book Online

dear Lady Portbury will find that quite delightful, sir. You are such an excellent whip,’ said Miss Mountjoy.
    George preened a little. ‘As it happens, ma’am, I was just about to take my pair for an airing, to take the edge off them before I drive out with my mother. She prefersplacid horses, you know. Perhaps I could drive you to the village?’
    ‘Why, Mr Foxe-Garway, that would be such a treat!’
    Jon kept his face impassive. He bowed and watched as the pair walked out into the hall, arm in arm. He could have sworn that the woman whispered something in George’s ear as soon as they were beyond the doorway. Was something going on between them? No, impossible. Mountjoy had no interest in men. Yet that encounter had been much too neat. Might they be conspiring together to drain money from the estate?
    Jon would need to be even more on his guard. Against his own brother. He sighed, for such suspicions were not new. He stared into space, his coffee cup half-way to his lips. There was no point in agonising over George’s failings. He had become totally set in his selfish, spendthrift ways. He would do almost anything for money. Even the Dowager had stopped making excuses for him.
    ‘Good morning, Jon.’
    Startled, Jon put his cup down with a clatter and sprang to his feet. ‘Good morning, Mama.’ As Jon helped her to the seat next to him, the butler disappeared to fetch her usual pot of chocolate. ‘May I ask what brings you down so early?’
    ‘As hostess, it is my duty to see to the welfare of our guests. Besides, George is to take me out driving this morning. Is he down yet?’
    ‘Ages ago, Mama. He’s just…er…driven out to take the edge off his horses. He knows you are a nervous passenger.’
    ‘Nothing of the sort. But I do like to drive behindwell-schooled horses. George persists in buying unruly beasts. “High-couraged”, he calls them.’ She snorted in disgust. They both knew that George bought horses he could barely handle because he fancied himself as good a whip as Jon. It rankled with him that he was not.
    The butler returned with the Dowager’s chocolate. She dismissed him with a nod. ‘I will ring if I need anything more.’ The man bowed and left the room, closing the door silently behind him.
    Jon looked up from his plate. Her face was set. He resigned himself to what was to come.
    ‘Jon, I need to talk to you. About…about things.’
    He reached for the coffee pot to pour himself a refill. It proved to be empty, but he did not ring for more. Instead, he sighed and leaned back in his chair. ‘I am listening,’ he said, in a flat voice.
    ‘Jon, I have filled the house with the most eligible young ladies of the ton . You have played your role as host impeccably, as always, but I have not seen you—’ She sighed impatiently. ‘Does none of them take your fancy? What about Miss Danforth? Now, there’s a delightful girl. And Lady Cissy, too. Even you will acknowledge that she is a glorious creature.’
    He stared at the ceiling for a moment. Then he picked up his cup and began to turn it in his fingers, admiring the fineness of the porcelain. ‘Mama, they are both pretty, beautifully behaved, and without a single interesting thought in their empty heads. After all those years in the schoolroom, you would think they would have learned something. But apparently not.’
    ‘That is because they are young, Jon. They are only just out.’ She laid a hand reassuringly on his arm. ‘Ayoung wife can be moulded by her husband,’ she said stoutly. ‘In a few years, you can make exactly what you want of her.’
    ‘Can I?’ His father had been all in favour of moulding, too. Brutally, on occasions. Jon would never follow such an example. He wanted a restful woman, but a woman of principle—her own principles, too, not a straitjacket of her husband’s design. ‘Mama, these chits are young enough to be my daughters. I can’t take a child to wife.’
    She was clearly shocked by his