Rejection Runs Deep (The Canleigh Series, book 1: A chilling psychological family drama), Carole Williams [ebook reader 8 inch .TXT] 📗

the Canleigh twins.  Oh, Charles, I am so looking forward to this.  I am going to spoil these two terribly. I do hope they are a boy and a girl.  Naturally with the boy being born first … and I do hope they grow up to be just like you.”

Charles gave his mother a quick glance.  “Like you,” she had said.  Not like Margaret.  He was fully aware of how she felt about his wife.  The two women had never been comfortable together, not since the day he brought his stunningly beautiful dark-haired fiancé, accompanied by her frosty Aunt Sarah, home to Canleigh for a visit.

Charles had felt so sorry for Margaret and often wondered after their marriage if pity had something to do with him falling madly in love with her when she told him of the few tumultuous years she endured before she met him.  Her father, a captain in the army, had died in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.  Her mother, Caroline, having endured years of waiting to hear news of her husband, turned to drink to dull her pain once they received the dreadful information he was dead.  Then, when Margaret was fifteen, her mother could bear no more of the grief that consumed her and swallowed all the sleeping tablets her doctor had given her, washed down with a bottle of gin.  Margaret had been taken in by Caroline’s brother, Viscount Arthur Fitzpatrick and his wife, Aunt Sarah, to live in their splendid Georgian mansion in Kensington, along with their two daughters, Elizabeth and Beatrice.

It was during the London season when Charles met her and fell crazily in love.  They were engaged before Charles had even spoken to his mother, who had declined an invitation to join him in London.  So, as soon as it was feasible, he invited Margaret and her Aunt Sarah to Canleigh to meet her.  They stayed for a weekend and although his mother was naturally courteous and polite, she displayed no real warmth towards the two women.  Unable to drive them back to London as he had a prior engagement in Harrogate on the morning of their departure, he and his mother said their goodbyes on the front steps of the Hall where Perkins was waiting with the Rolls to take them into Leeds to catch the London train. It was a difficult moment.  Aunt Sarah and his mother were icy cool with each other and he felt awkward kissing Margaret goodbye, albeit it was only a swift peck on her cheek.

Within minutes of the Rolls disappearing down the drive, his mother had launched into attack, leaving him stunned and miserable as she was normally such a kind, fair person but this was different.  This was her son’s future and she wasn’t happy.

“What on earth do you think you are doing, Charles?” she exploded.  “I know I wanted you to marry but to … to this young floozy?  You must be mad!  She will bring nothing but misery to you and I dread to think what she will do to the reputation of the family.  Can’t you see, my boy, she is man-mad and is in no way a suitable wife for you.  You need someone who will place you and your heritage first, someone quiet and kind and who has compassion towards others, who will support you in all things.  I can’t see any of that in her … can you?”

He had felt like a small boy again, instead of a grown man; the tenth Duke of Canleigh, with a first-class honours degree and a medal for bravery in the war.

“I’m sorry if you don’t approve, Mother, but I love her,” he announced defensively, knowing how pathetic it sounded.  But it was true.  He had been swept up in Margaret’s magic as soon as he set eyes on her at Lady Balantine’s ball, which he hadn’t particularly wanted to attend but being in London on business for a few days and a highly eligible bachelor he was swamped with invitations as soon as he arrived.  He had declined most of them but the Earl of Balantine was one of his old Etonian friends with whom he had also shared the dangerous years of war in the Royal Air Force and incarceration in Colditz Castle and it would have been churlish to refuse.

Margaret’s tinkling laugh and sparkling dark eyes, flashing a smile of delight at him when she tripped down the main staircase and neatly fell into his arms, her stunning figure in a pale blue chiffon ball gown and then the way in which she listened afterwards to every word he uttered as if it were of the utmost importance, sent his senses reeling.  Previous to that evening he hadn’t much interest or experience of women.  All those he had grown up with were fine as friends but there had been no-one he wanted to share his life with and he was always aware that many of them only simpered up to him because of who he was and what he could provide for them.  Margaret, he feared, was the same but what was different were his feelings.  He was in love for the first time and dearly wanted to make her his wife.

“Love!  Love!  I thought you had more sense,” his mother had raved.  “It’s so important you chose the right woman.  You know that.  You know you are the only hope for Canleigh to continue as it has done for the last 450 years, being the last in a long line of splendid men who have nurtured and treasured it, married well and sensibly to keep it going.  You have a duty to them and to Canleigh.  For goodness sake, Charles.  There are a number of young women in this country who would fit the bill perfectly, who know how to behave and what is required of a Duchess and would be an asset and not a