Frances had been the only other member of the family to figure out that Molly was Jason’s mistress and Derek’s mother, and she had threatened to tell Derek this if Jason didn’t end their marriage. The family had weathered that scandal fairly well, and six years later, it was rarely if ever mentioned anymore. Jason could have stopped it—Derek had actually learned the truth before the scandal of the divorce reached the gossip mills—yet he hadn’t.

“This is something that should have been done years ago,” he had told her at the time. “Actually, it’s a marriage that never should have been. But then it’s rarely easy, to correct the mistakes one makes in one’s youth.”

The reasons he had made the match had been good ones. The reasons he had ended it were good ones, too. But ever since it was ended, he’d been asking Molly to marry him, to her utter frustration, when he knew she’d never agree. And her reasons were no different than they’d ever been. She was not going to be the cause of yet another Malory scandal. She hadn’t been raised that way. And besides she was already more a wife to him than Frances had ever been.

But she knew that her continued refusals to marry him, or even let him tell the rest of his family about their love, had been frustrating him as well for a very long time. Which was why she was afraid he was hoping the matter would come to light inadvertently. Not that he was being blatant in looks he was giving her, nothing the servants might take note of, at any rate. Yet his family was different. They knew him too well. And they would all be here soon . . .

More arrived even as Molly had the thought. Jason’s niece Reggie and her husband, Nicholas, along with their young son, appeared in the dining room before lunch was finished. Anthony perked up immediately. Reggie might have been his favorite niece, but that didn’t save her husband. Nicholas was his favorite verbal punching bag, so to speak, and without the presence of his brother James, whom he would just as soon trade barbs with, he’d been sorely missing a convenient target for his satirical wit.

Molly just managed to refrain from rolling her eyes. She knew Jason’s family as well as he did, since he shared everything with her, including all the family secrets, foibles, and scandals.

So she wasn’t the least bit surprised to hear Anthony say to Nicholas as he took the seat across from him, “Good of you to show up, dear boy. My teeth were getting a tad dull.”

“Old age starting to set in, is it?” Nick shot back with a smirk.

Molly noticed the nudge Anthony’s wife gave him before she said, “Remember it’s Christmas and be nice for a change.”

Up went Anthony’s black brow. “For a change? I’m always nice. There’s just nice, and then there’s—nice. The latter gets reserved for bounders like Eden, is all.”