"Mr. Leighton assured me her motorcar would be close enough to the house but that she'd be stranded. We should make sure to suggest his lordship take a drive around half-past two on Friday. He'll be sure to come across her on the main road."
She hastily read the note herself, grinning a little before slipping it into her dress pocket.
Poor Leo. He was most determined to marry that awful Pepperwirth girl. If all went according to Mina's plans, his intended betrothal would soon be at an end, and her son would fall in love with a woman far more worthy of him. A girl he'd known many years ago, one who'd loved him with all her heart before tragedy had forced their destinies apart.
Ivy Leighton was a modern woman who shared Mina's views on women's rights and would be the best match for her son. Assuming he could see past the fact that she was a suffragette. Mina's lips twitched. No doubt when he met Ivy again, he would find her very grown up and very much changed from the little girl who used to stare at him with stars in her eyes and her heart on her sleeve. She only hoped he would see Ivy as Mina did, as the woman who could save his soul and save Hampton House.
Perhaps I am a meddlesome mama, but Leo should know that I won't leave his choice of wife up to fate.
Chapter 3
Ivy Leighton swiped at the billowing black clouds smothering her. Coughing, she removed her driving goggles and tossed them onto the seat of her new Hudson Speedabout. The broken speedabout. Her father was going to be furious. She'd asked to drive it, and only a few miles from her destination, the engine had made a ghastly screeching sound like a dying falcon. Dark smoke plumed out from beneath the yellow hood, painting a dark picture against the deep blue sky.
"Oh dear," she groaned.
She wiped her brow with the back of a gloved hand and it came away dirty. A cool September breeze teased at a loose tendril of her hair from beneath her flat hat. She tried to brush it away, but the thick veil tied around her hat made it more than a little complicated. She unbuttoned her tan linen duster, feeling a little flustered by the Hudson's sudden failure.
What on earth was she going to do? Walk to Hampton House? Why had she thought coming early by herself was a good idea? Because she was plagued by curiosity. Sixteen years ago she had left Hampton, her mother's body barely cold in the ground. How much had the place changed? How much had he changed?
Leo … his name still made her shiver.
Handsome, charming Leo. When she'd been eight, he'd been sixteen, and a lifetime seemed to have separated them. Now she was twenty-four and he had to be … she did the math. Thirty-two? Would he still have the ability to consume her soul with those fathomless blue eyes? A part of her was afraid to see him again after all these years. Had her girlhood memories been the stuff of fantasies or was he still the man she'd always loved?
After six Seasons in London, she hadn't found anyone who measured up to Leo Graham, the Earl of Hampton, and she feared she never would. But … what if she arrived at Hampton House and found that he wasn't the man she believed him to be?
With a little shake of her head, Ivy recalled the way he used to tease her, tap the tip of her nose with a finger and call her Button.
"Button indeed," she muttered.
Her nose was no longer buttonlike, at least not completely. Leo hadn't seen her since she'd outgrown her oversized eyes, knobby knees, and pert nose. Ivy tried to quell the fleet of butterflies that stormed against the battlements of her stomach.
She was nothing like the English beauties who were so favored by the gentlemen at the balls during the Season. That was the problem with being half Gypsy rather than a full-blooded English rose. Still, she knew she was pretty, in an exotic sort of way, but would Leo think her desirable? Ivy had been a favorite of many men. Her father's position, as well as her own heritage, made them believe she had no morals.
A non-Romani or gadjo's sense of Gypsies was always wrong. Women of the Romani culture were anything but loose. Still, that awful cultural misunderstanding led to more than one man to offer her a position as his mistress. An offer that she had to politely refuse without making a scene, even though such a request deserved a slap.
Hopefully Leo would be different.
Not that I should truly care, she reminded herself. She was only coming to Hampton House to see the dowager countess and to attend a suffragette meeting with her. Lady Hampton had insisted that Ivy stay for the house party. She'd reminded Leo's mother that she wasn't coming to husband hunt but to see old friends. Ivy firmly believed a modern woman couldn't have a husband, at least not a man born into the British peerage. They stood against women's rights and that was something that she could never reconcile.
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