“Yes, well, you might, but the fact is— Look, it’s complicated. And I can’t go into it, but you can take my word for it that one day, when I have a chance, I’m going to break his bloody neck. I wouldn’t have sat there listening to him speak like that to my father’s guests at my father’s table if I didn’t have to.”

“That doesn’t sound awfully good, Jimmy.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“Why on earth did you invite a houseful of people under these circumstances?”

“I didn’t,” Jimmy said explosively. “I wanted a bit of peace and quiet with a few decent human beings—you, Preston, Bill—while I still could. Fen invited herself, Victoria was meant to have left before Maurice arrived, and Jack Bouvier bloody Lynes wasn’t invited at all except that Anna asked him to pop along without telling anyone until it was too late!” He made a strangled noise of frustration. “Sorry, Pat. You came here for partridge and I’m piling my family troubles on you.”

“That’s all right.” Pat hesitated, but Jimmy was clearly in need. “This engagement of yours—”

“Fen is a lovely girl. Any man would be lucky to have her.”

“She is lovely.”

“Beautiful, rich, awfully jolly. I’m terribly fortunate she accepted me, though I can’t imagine why she did.”

“Er—”

“Well, you’ve met her. She’s quite the butterfly, and I’m not interested in Society parties and so on. Her last two fiancés were both men-about-town.”

“Maybe that’s why she’s picked a countryman,” Pat said. “If the modern man-about-town is anything like Mr. Haworth, I don’t blame her.”

“He’s a thoroughly nasty piece of work and I’m sorry to bring you into his orbit but, frankly, we had no choice but to shut the London house over summer. Couldn’t afford to keep it running, couldn’t afford to send Maurice and Anna off to Brighton or Bath or Baden-Baden, and since Maurice has run out of hosts willing to tolerate him, here they are.”

“Are the finances that bad?”

Jimmy made a face. “The agricultural depression has hit rents hard across the board, of course, but on top of that Father was the biggest investor in Maurice’s firm and we lost rather a lot in the crash. We need to take drastic action to repair matters, sell some land and invest in other industries, but the old man is set in his ways. He won’t accept that things have to change, or hand the reins to me. It’s not marvellous, honestly.”

“But when you marry...”

“Oh, yes, my future father-in-law has proposed a very generous settlement.” Jimmy looked less excited about this than one might have expected. “Which means Father won’t have to make any decisions like selling land, or asking Maurice to get a blasted job.”