“I dare say, my love, but that’s nothing to the point. I have other plans for Juliana.” She gave her laces a little shake, and went on airily: “I am sure we have spoken of it often enough, you and I, and I cannot help feeling that it would be a charming match, besides fulfilling my dearest wish. And I have always thought them remarkably well suited, and I make no doubt at all that everything would have been on the road to being settled by now had Juliana not taken it into her head to flout me in this way, though to be sure, I do not in the least blame her for appearing cold to him, for it is no more than he deserves.”
She paused for breath, and shot a look at Avon out of the corners of her eyes. He was quite unperturbed; a faint smile hovered over his thin lips, and he regarded his sister with an air of cynical amusement. “I find your conversation somewhat difficult to follow, my dear Fanny,” he said. “Pray enlighten me.”
Lady Fanny said shrewdly: “Indeed, and I think you follow me very well, Justin.”
“But I don’t,” Léonie said. “Who deserves that Juliana should be cold? It is not the poor nobody?”
“Of course not!” replied her ladyship impatiently. She seemed strangely loth to explain herself. Léonie glanced inquiringly at the Duke.
He had opened his snuff-box again, and held a pinch to one nostril before he spoke. “I apprehend, my love, that Fanny is referring to your son.”
A blank look came into Léonie’s face. “Dominique? But — ” She stopped and looked at Fanny. “No,” she said flatly.
Lady Fanny was hardly prepared for anything so downright. “Lord, my dear, what can you mean?”
“I do not at all want Dominique to marry Juliana,” Léonie explained.
“Perhaps,” said Lady Fanny, sitting very erect in her chair, “you will be good enough to explain what that signifies.”