Such antecedents did not mean the high-spirited Gavina could not get up to mischief. Evie secretly hoped, as they turned to ordering the meal Mrs. McKnight declared they all needed, that when Gavina next got up to mischief, she’d include Evie in it.
Jamie knew better than to answer his father’s question with What lady?
He sipped his whisky and wandered to an armchair, sinking into its welcoming cushions. “How did you know I was thinking about a woman?”
Ian seated himself on the sofa, his feet in their casual shoes lined up precisely, the kilt, a threadbare one he wore about the house, falling in neat folds over his knees.
“The train you traveled on reached Victoria Station at five thirty-five. You arrived here at half past eight, saying you’d come directly from the lock-up. It is thirty minutes from the station to the lock-up, considering the traffic load, and another thirty here in the hansom I saw you alighting from. That leaves one hour and fifty-five minutes unaccounted for. You could have been cleaning the car and speaking to Alec all that time, but probably not.” Ian paused to take a sip of whisky. “Also, you let your sister do most of the talking at supper, and that is unusual.”
Jamie heaved an aggrieved sigh. “Save me from a dad good with numbers. Yes, all right. I met a woman today. Her name is Evie McKnight.”
“A lover?” Ian asked.
Another son might be startled that his father mentioned such a thing, but Ian was a practical man and believed in plain speaking. Jamie was plenty old enough to have a lover, and had in fact, taken several in the past.
“A friend. There’s nothing in it, Dad. She’s betrothed to another man.”
Ian thoughtfully studied the light glinting from the facets in his glass. “Your mother was betrothed when I met her.”
Jamie had heard the tale many times. “I know. You saved her from a blackguard, and she fell in love with you instead.”
“I saw that she would be very unhappy with him,” Ian stated. “I knew he would not appreciate what a priceless jewel he had in her, and so I told her the truth about him.”
Jamie took another sip of the glorious whisky. “Mother says it was wildly romantic.”
Ian met Jamie’s gaze. “I was not trying to be romantic. I wanted her to be happy. Would have done anything to make her so.”
“Including coaxing her to marry you one rainy night in Paris.”
Ian shrugged. “It was necessary.”
Jamie let out a laugh. “Necessary, he says. Well, I am selfishly glad you talked her into it, or I would not be here.”
“That is true.” Ian lifted his glass to Jamie. “I am four-fold glad. I have spent my life with my Beth, and you, and Belle, and Megan.”
“Happy Families.”
“Yes.” Ian nodded.
Jamie chuckled. “It’s a card game.”
“I know.”
For a moment, the two men drank in amused silence.
“Are you going to let Evie McKnight marry this other man?” Ian asked abruptly.
“I don’t think it’s my choice, Dad.” Jamie set his glass on the table next to him. “It’s not the same thing as you and Mum.”
“Is it nae?” Ian asked quietly.
The question, in Ian’s rumbling baritone that was much like Jamie’s own, made Jamie pause.
Jamie’s mother, when Ian had met her, had been Beth Ackerly, the widow of a vicar. She’d had a happy first marriage and had decided to marry a second time because she was lonely. She’d come into a fortune and so hadn’t needed to seek a husband to support her. She’d looked for companionship, Beth had told Jamie, but not very wisely.
Likewise, Evie showed no sign of poverty or desperation. Her mother was a practical gentlewoman, disliking extravagance, as she’d made clear, but Evie’s family would never have been able to send her to university or to make a trip to New York so her sisters could meet eligible Yanks if they were destitute.
Therefore, she must be marrying either for love or because it was what young women did. Jamie would discover which was the case.
“I don’t know,” Jamie answered his father. “But I will find out.”
Ian nodded. “Good.”
They drank in silence for a while, Jamie draining his glass, which Ian refilled.
“Dad,” Jamie asked after his father had resumed his seat. “If Mum had been happy marrying Lyndon Mather, would you have left it at that? Not interfered, and let her marry him?”
Ian sipped whisky, his face not changing expression, but Jamie knew he was turning the question over in his mind. Or else, he already knew the answer and was simply enjoying the drink before bothering to speak.
A gleam of gold sparked in Ian’s half-closed eyes. “No.”
Jamie’s resolve strengthened. “But what if Mather had been a good bloke, instead of the idiot he is?” He’d met Sir Lyndon Mather several times in his life—the last instance, about a year and a half ago, when Mather had given Jamie the cut direct. Jamie had pretended not to notice.
Ian set aside his glass and gazed at Jamie directly. “I would have taken my Beth from Mather even if the man had been a saint. I saw her, and I knew I had to marry her. No matter what.”
“Ah.” Jamie hadn’t heard this aspect of the story before, but he saw in his father the stone-hard determination that had let him live through all the things people had done to him because they’d believed him mad. “You had no doubts, then?”
“None at all.” Ian studied Jamie with a quietness that belied the lightning thoughts that went on inside his head. “Look at things more closely,” he advised. “They aren’t always what they seem.”
Meaning Evie might be happy marrying the best man in creation, or she might have accepted the engagement for another reason entirely. Jamie needed to find out which.
“Thank you, Dad.” Jamie raised his glass to Ian. “Very sound advice.”
Ian gave him a nod. They sipped, and then Ian’s gaze went to the Ming bowl, the blue in it exactly matching that of Beth Mackenzie’s eyes.
Chapter 7
Evie took leave of her sisters and mother the next morning with mixed feelings. She would miss them, as they returned to Bedfordshire to soft days in the old brick house, picnics in the garden, lazing in hammocks as the clouds drifted above them.
On the other hand, Evie had much to do in London. Jamie Mackenzie had distracted her, but she’d promised Iris, one of her old rowing teammates, she’d help her, and help she would.
She’d been able to send Iris a telegram at last—running into Jamie had prevented her at Southampton—but the concierge at the Langham had sent it for her, even agreeing to not let her mother know about it. He’d readily conspired with Evie, performing beautifully.
Evie and her family left the suite with reluctance. The bed she’d slept in had been wonderfully comfortable, and Gavina was correct—anything they needed had been eagerly fetched for them. They’d dined and then breakfasted in the suite’s sitting room, the hotel staff whisking the table and all its silver cutlery and wonderful food in and out.
“It’s like a fairy tale,” Marjorie said as she and Evie stood in the suite’s doorway, saying farewell to the high-ceilinged sitting room with its lush sofas and chairs. The chandelier hung dark now, but it had blazed with light the night before, its facets glittering like diamonds.