Heirs of the Body by Carola Dunn

recognising the limits of her ability to control her husband. “If Raymond wants to ask nosy questions about your finances, as I gathered from Mr. Pearson, it might be an idea to sic him on to Cousin Edgar.”
    “Edgar knows next to nothing about … Ah yes, an excellent idea. Perhaps a lecture on British lepidoptera will send him quickly back to South Africa, or at least to London, where he can pursue his claim through the proper channels.” Geraldine sighed. “It would be so much easier just to refuse to see him, but I suppose that would be unthinkably discourteous.”
    “Probably not wise,” Daisy agreed. “You won’t want to deliberately alienate him. He may, after all, turn out to be Cousin Edgar’s heir.”

 
    EIGHT
    “A jeweller, an innkeeper, and a seaman.” The Dowager Lady Dalrymple’s lip curled. “Each worse than the one before. And descended from a black sheep! Wasn’t it bad enough when a mad schoolmaster set himself up in your father’s place?”
    “Cousin Edgar is not mad, Mother.” Daisy’s protest came automatically, having been repeated many times over the past nine years. She didn’t know why she bothered. “Nor did he ‘set himself up.’”
    “At least he wasn’t in trade, I’ll allow him that much. But he could have chosen an acceptable heir. Tradesmen!”
    “A millionaire, the owner of a luxury hotel, and an officer of the Merchant Navy. They’re our relatives as much as they’re his.”
    “Had your father lived, he would never have permitted such a disgraceful state of affairs.”
    Daisy thought it wiser, as well as kinder, not to point out that her father had left a mess of a different kind. Shattered by the death of Gervaise, he had failed to alter his will to provide for Daisy, having earlier assumed that her brother would take care of her. Though, when the flu pandemic bore him off in his turn, Edgar had been willing to correct his omission, Daisy had not been willing to sponge on her then newly discovered relative.
    Choosing to work for her living had led to her meeting Alec, so all had turned out for the best—in her eyes, if not the dowager’s.
    Avoiding her mother’s outraged look, Daisy took a sip of sherry, which she didn’t really care for, and glanced round the sitting room. It was somewhat larger than Geraldine’s, but the Dower House didn’t have a separate drawing room, another source of continual complaint. The furnishings were equally elegant, however, since the dowager had bagged the best of the smaller pieces when forced to move—“forced” by her own refusal to reside with the usurper, as he had proposed.
    Having done likewise, Daisy didn’t blame her for refusing. It was about time she stopped complaining, though.
    A bowl of glorious pink and yellow roses caught Daisy’s eye. Eager to change the subject, she got up and went to smell their fragrance. “Gorgeous!”
    “That little Welsh gardener you recommended to me is still with me, surprisingly. Of course, my little plot is nothing like the Fairacres gardens. It’s so tiny, Morgan doesn’t have a great deal to do. He has no excuse for anything short of perfection.”
    “Mother, no garden can ever be perfect, what with insects and diseases and weeds and the vagaries of the weather.” Not to mention that the Dower House boasted a sizable vegetable plot and orchard, not just a lawn surrounded by flowering shrubs and borders.
    “Don’t change the subject. It’s a bad habit I have had to reprimand you for since you were a child. You say this jewellery pedlar is calling tomorrow afternoon? I’m free until six, I believe. It’s time I paid that woman a visit.”
    “I didn’t know you and Cousin Geraldine were on visiting terms.”
    “ I know my duty.” Drawing herself up, the dowager spoke frostily. “I’m aware that my accommodations are vastly inferior to Fairacres, but when my daughter prefers to stay with Edgar and Geraldine—” Her tone suggested that though it pained her