HUSBAND


"Now Dorian! What's this I hear?" The Dowager Countess of Gloria swept into the drawing room, where Dorian was reading The Times.

"I don't know, Mother. You'll have to give me a clue."

The Countess sat down opposite her son, pulling off her gloves. "Poor Amanda came to see me yesterday. She was in tears, Dorian. In tears. She told me that she was leaving you."

Dorian drew an exasperated breath. "Mother, you can hardly be surprised."

"I knew it would come to this. I knew it."

The door opened, and a young blond man - a very pretty young blond man - leaned in. "Dorian, do you think-" Catching sight of the Dowager Countess, who was looking at him in a most disapproving manner, he stammered, "Oh, I beg your pardon. I didn't realise. Sorry, Dorian- er- sorry, my lord. Excuse me."

Blushing crimson, he closed the door and hastened away.

The Countess now turned her disapproving gaze on her son.

"Well! I might have known. You are your father all over again. In your own home! In front of your children!"

Dorian heaved an exaggerated sigh. "Peregrine and Lucinda are both at school, as you very well know, Mother. And, as this is my home, I shall do what I like in it." He crossed to the sideboard that held a cluster of cut-crystal decanters. "Would you like a drink, Mother? Sherry, perhaps?" He poured himself a glass of brandy.

"No, thank you," the Countess said stiffly. "Dorian, I can't express how disappointed I am about this. I think you owe it to your family to try to stay together with Amanda. Think of the children."

Dorian's eyebrows rose. "Think of the children? Mother, you left Father when I was thirteen. You packed us all up and took us away to live in Berkshire."

"I hoped to give you a better life. Your father was setting you a very bad example, what with his endless parties and his money-wasting and all those young men hanging around the house all the time." She shuddered in disgust. "I thought if I got you away from him there might be some hope of your turning out normal. I see now I was mistaken."

Sipping his brandy, Dorian gazed out of the window at the soft green fields and the orchards pink and white with early spring blossom. He'd loved that view as a child, gazing from his nursery window. But the Castle had been sold to pay his mother's divorce settlement, and the late Earl, Dorian's father, had gone off to live in Cornwall.

When he made his first million on the London stock exchange, Dorian bought the Castle back in a sudden rush of sentimental enthusiasm. His mother had been overjoyed. She took it as a sign that her son was going to put the fortunes of the Gloria family to rights. Dorian's marriage to Amanda Fitzwilliam, and the subsequent birth of their two children, were further reassurances that the world was as the Dowager Countess would like it to be.

"Look, Mother." Dorian turned back to face her. "Amanda and I have nothing in common. We're better off apart. The children won't want for anything. It's 1997, Mother - divorce is socially acceptable these days."

He couldn't resist rubbing salt into that old wound. Her status as a divorced woman had cast enough of a shadow on her social life to make her resentful.

He downed the last of his brandy. "At least I'll be able to stop pretending."