Brothers at Arms Page A

stared at him in the most insolent way.”
    Jane smiled to herself, and felt an affinity with Sophie. She too had the same problem maintaining a polite tongue in her head where Lord Cardington was concerned. He was a person who always knew best, and Clarissa was the perfect wife for him, because she never questioned his judgement, whereas Jane could not imagine a worse fate than being married to such a man.
    She spent several interminable days listening to Clarissa’s childhood reminiscences of life at Littlemore House, on two afternoons of which Kate deigned to visit them for almost half an hour, before suddenly standing up and leaving the room without a word. Clarissa looked astounded, but for once Jane was in accord for her sister’s imperfect recollections brought her more pain than pleasure.
    Normally active in household duties and visits around the estate, Jane found the perambulating schedule that Clarissa favoured unbearably dull, and her sister viewed the prospect of visiting the sick with distaste. How could two sisters be so different?
    The only thing that alleviated her boredom was the knowledge that Humphrey Cardington was not of their number, having at the outset demanded of Tom a tour of the estate, during which he compared the ten thousand acreage of Linmore unfavourably with his property, which was half as large again. Tom bore his pomposity with greater equanimity than Jane would have done.
    She knew that the peer had never understood or forgiven her poor taste in preferring the loving friendship of the heir to a lapsed barony, to an offer of marriage from an earl who was named after a royal duke of the Plantagenet line, whom he boasted amongst his ancestors.
    When she declined, Lord Cardington had married Clarrisa on the rebound and Jane supposed with a chuckle that she was intended to regret it to her dying day. She annoyed him again, several years later, by refusing to marry his younger brother, a neck-or-nothing rider to hounds. It was just as well she did for shortly afterwards, Granville came to grief on the hunting field.
    By then she was considered to be beyond redemption and relegated to the status of being called “Poor Jane”
–
a situation that suited her well.
    “My dear Jane…” Clarissa uttered the same words each morning when they met to take breakfast.
    What had Humphrey Cardington said now?
Jane wondered, and knew that she was about to find out.
    “Humphrey thinks it is most unkind of Tom to keep Kate locked on the other side of the house…”
    That Jane would not allow. “The doors are not locked, Clarissa,” she said, gritting her teeth. “Kate is free to run her household as she wishes without interference from us.”
    “No, you misunderstand, my dear. Humphrey believes that if Tom and Kate were reconciled, he would be able to accept a title, and life would be much more comfortable for everyone. Just think of the inheritance it would be for Matthew.”
    Everyone…? The thought almost deprived Jane of breath.
    “Yes, just think about it,” she said in a dry tone. Kate and Matthew would decimate everything at Linmore within five years, and they had no legal claim to it. She sighed, knowing what would come next.
    “If only you could persuade him… ”
    “No, Clarissa,” she said, resisting the temptation to raise her voice. “I cannot and will not do it. Nor will I argue with you. I will simply ask you politely not to intercede in things that you do not understand.” She almost said interfere, but had no wish to offend before they had agreed to take Matthew and preferably Kate and Caroline to Rushmore. Until that was achieved she would tread softly. It seemed dreadful to be plotting to have a few weeks of freedom, but it was the only way.
    She wondered what Humphrey Cardington would say if he knew that Kate’s father, Matthew Stretton, had ended his days on the scaffold, after being convicted of deliberately shooting dead a young man who accused him of cheating at