“Nonsense,” the lady said briskly. “It has done me a world of good to have company, and the ladies will add to the mix splendidly. It could not be any better.”
For a moment Kittie had forgotten the gentlemen, but she turned to Rebecca and Hannah and said, “Yes, I have forgotten; Lady Eliza’s nephew, the Duke of Alban, has opened his hunting box—that is Boden House, the estate you must have seen as you drove here—and he brought some friends with him.”
“Friends? Men?” Lady Rebecca sat up straighter in her hard chair. She was tall and dark-haired with brilliant green eyes. Though not accounted pretty, she was remarkable in many other ways. “Are they single?” she asked, her gaze turning from Kittie to Lady Eliza. “Are they good-looking? Are they young?”
“Rebecca!” Hannah remonstrated. She raised her voice and said loudly, “Do not mind her, Lady Eliza. She is forward and pert.”
Lady Eliza frowned. “I am not deaf, my dear Mrs. Billings, just blind.”
Rebecca snorted and Kittie hid her smile behind her hand. Hannah looked disconcerted.
“And as to your questions, Lady Severn,” Lady Eliza said, turning in the widow’s direction. “Yes, they are all single, to my knowledge, unless one of them has a secret wife hidden somewhere. My nephew is, of course, the duke, but his friends are, in order, an earl, the third son of an earl, and a baronet. They are all in their thirties, I think, except for the earl, whom I surmise from his voice to be somewhat older. I am the wrong person to ask about their looks, except I can tell you that Alban is exceptionally handsome, and that Bartholomew Norton is a very pleasing lad, though a little long in the jaw.”
Rebecca gazed at her admiringly. “I think, my lady, that you and I will enjoy talking. I very much like your concision.”
Hannah, her lip trembling, looked ready to cry.
“Oh, Hannah,” Kittie said, moving to her and slipping an arm around her shoulders. “Lady Eliza did not mean to be brisk with you.”
“It . . . it’s not that,” she sniffed. “It has been so long since we were all gathered. I am . . . I am so h-h-happy!” And with that she wailed.
“What is wrong, what’s going on?”
That was Mr. Bartholomew Norton himself bursting into the room. He immediately crossed to Hannah and knelt at her side. “Are you ill, madam? How can I help?”
Kittie bit her lip. How to explain that Hannah was crying over an excess of happiness?
The other men entered, too, at that moment. The duke said, “Heard some whimpering in here and Bart would not wait to be announced. Rushed to the rescue.”
“Mr. Norton is a true gentleman,” Kittie said, not bothering to conceal the asperity in her voice. “Mr. Norton, that is my friend Mrs. Hannah Billings. She is merely very happy.”
The duke snorted, greeted his aunt affectionately and then strolled to the window.
Kittie made the rest of the introductions and watched, in amusement, as Rebecca made a dead set for the duke, certainly the handsomest and most imposing figure in the room. Lord Orkenay joined Kittie, as he had the day before, and Sir John, his youthful face set in a cheery smile, sat down by Lady Eliza.
Conversation was general for a while, with no way to distinguish individual words or phrases in the pleasant confusion. Lord Orkenay was, unlike the day before, not behaving in any way that could make Kittie blush and she was pleased at his attentions.
“Do you like living in Yorkshire?” he asked.
She considered her answer. “I do. There are disadvantages, of course. The winters are dreadful and it can be lonely, but it is so very beautiful.”
“Do you find it so?” His forehead wrinkled and he pursed his lips. He leaned back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other. “I cannot see the beauty. I know people rave about the picturesque aspects of the looming fells and wild countryside, but I suppose I prefer a tamer aspect . . . not so gloomy.”
“And what do you consider that tamer aspect to be?”
“London,” he answered promptly.
Kittie laughed. “London? I thought we were talking about picturesque countryside.”
“London is beautiful this time of year . . . not so many people. Even the parks are clear of folks parading.”
“And yet you came up here. Are you a special friend of the duke’s, to make such a sacrifice?”
He shrugged. “We are part of the same set and we both followed the prince to Brighton this year. When Alban suggested going hunting, I thought it would make an agreeable change.” He leaned toward her and murmured, “I must say, now I’m very glad I did.”
There was no other way to take that but as a compliment to her and she smiled.
“You have the most delightful smile,” he said, chucking her under the chin. “And you blush adorably.”
Kittie shifted in her seat. There was no possible response to that bit of impertinence. She glanced toward the window and saw that Rebecca had the duke cornered and was flirting up at him, reaching out occasionally to pluck a stray thread from his jacket and to touch his arm. The duke, clearly discomposed, was looking his haughtiest. He was using every polite method in his no doubt formidable array of ways to freeze out a social-climbing mushroom, but as he didn’t know that nothing would ever deter Rebecca once she was set on an objective, he was doomed to fail unless he was willing to be horribly rude in his aunt’s drawing room.
Kittie would have bet that a man like the duke would consider that beneath him, to behave in any way other than strictly decorous, and it appeared that she was right. He was frozen in distaste, but he was doing nothing other than trying desperately to ignore Lady Severn. Kittie stifled a smile, wondering if a brewer’s widow had ever had the temerity to flirt with the haughty and disdainful Duke of Alban. Judging from his demeanor of puzzled outrage, she would guess not.
“Mrs. Douglas, I am feeling a trifle annoyed with you, this moment.”
“Uh, pardon, my lord?” Kittie’s attention was reclaimed by the importunate earl.
“You have not been listening to a word I said, and I was telling the most delicious story just now.”
“I’m so sorry, my lord, but . . . but I have to go talk to Cook about dinner tonight,” Kittie said, standing. She could not bear any more society. It was a quirk of hers that at times so many people gathered together and talking, and expecting her to talk, would overwhelm her; an unbearable tension would build up and she felt as though her head was in a vise. A few moments’ solitude and she would be able to return to the company with a refreshed tolerance. But for now, she just needed that few moments alone.
She whispered to Lady Eliza that she would be back momentarily, and fled the room, escaping down the dark hall to the library, which overlooked the enclosed garden at the back of the house. She had intended to come here anyway, to choose a couple of books to place by the bedsides of her friends so they would have something to while away the hours should sleep desert them. It was one of her favorite rooms in the house, even if it was dark and small.
But no such task was possible at that moment with her head buzzing and her mind racing. Sitting down in the dark stillness with a sigh, Kittie rested her head back on the cushion of the divan in the corner by one high bookshelf. She loved her friends, and it was going to be heaven to have them there for a couple of weeks, but it was going to be tiring as well. That was so partly, she supposed, because she had become so accustomed to solitude and quiet in the last three years. Where had the lighthearted girl gone who could visit all day, dance all evening and play cards all night? She had been that girl once, when she was young and happy and married to a dazzlingly handsome young man.
Poor Roger. They had never been wealthy, but without his gambling they would have been able to make do on his small inheritance. Their poverty had worried Roger more than it had her, she supposed, at the time. But then she was young and foolish and fancied herself in love. Had it been love? What was such an emotion? Could one love a man truly, or was all love an illusion based on fancifu
l notions of the nobility and perfection of the other?
She had fallen into almost a trance, staring at the dusty window and the sun streaming through, motes dancing in the warm beam. The door opened and a figure backed in, and then turned.
It was the duke.
“Your grace,” Kittie said, leaping to her feet.
“Mrs. Douglas!”
Caught, as they were, both where they really shouldn’t have been with a room full of their guests to be attended to, they both, unexpectedly, at the same moment, grinned.
“Are you, perchance, escaping, Mrs. Douglas? Do you find all the chatter a bit much?”
She sighed. “I . . . I suppose that’s what it is.”
“Your friend is . . . persistent.”
Kittie chuckled. Of all the things she had expected he would have to say about Rebecca, the word persistent seemed mild. “She is.” In the dim light from the window, she could trace the youthful outline that was the base for the stubborn, powerful man the duke had become. She watched him as he circled, touching books in the bookcase, examining titles with apparent interest.
“I thought you told the earl that you had to attend to some household matter, though,” he said over his shoulder.
“I think I just needed a moment alone. I’m a little overwhelmed at all the socializing. We live a very quiet life here.” She stood, thinking she ought to leave.
He turned, then, and stared at her. “I find myself in the unaccustomed situation of having to thank you, profusely, for your care of my aunt. I have been lax in my attentions, and I regret it. But it seems that you have filled the void admirably.”
“She never blamed you, sir, for not coming up in the three years. And you have been most attentive in every other way. Your letters were a comfort, and you never let a month go by without some attention or other. Mr. Lafferty has followed your orders, too, and has been very good to us.”
“But I should have come up myself. If I had had any idea that she was truly going blind . . . but she concealed even some of the encroaching darkness from me when last I was here.” His face was set in a brooding expression of melancholy. “I remember, now, that she seemed clumsier than normal that month.”
“She is a very proud woman,” Kittie said, watching uneasily as the duke approached her. “It would have been difficult to tell you, and she would have felt that you had . . . that is, your last visit . . .” There was no way to finish that sentence without referring to his wife’s desertion and subsequent death.
When he finally stood in front of her she looked up, directly into his eyes. She was a tall woman, but he towered over her easily by seven or eight inches, and it was an odd feeling, as if she was standing in a hole.
He took one of her bare hands in his and raised it to his lips, laying a soft kiss on the back. “Still, I want to thank you. I’m not without imagination and I know that this has not been an easy time for either of you. She is a proud woman, as you say, and so her descent into darkness would not have been accomplished without a good deal of anger and frustration on her part. It cannot have been easy.”
Oh, this was terrible. As long as she could look at him and see disdain in his eyes and haughtiness in his manners, she could feel her emotions cool, the feelings she had built up in three lonely years as she read his warm letters and gazed at his handsome portrait receding, but now, with him being so kind to her, she felt all those warm feelings bubbling again. She involuntarily moved forward until she was close to him. And she could see in his dark eyes a blaze of responding feeling. Was it true? Was he attracted to her as well?
How much more awful if that was true, for she was under no illusion. She was the widow of an unsuccessful gambler and with no distinction in her name or past. He was a duke, second only to the royal dukes in prominence. She could never be anything more to him than a friend. She stepped back again. “I should go see about my friends’ rooms,” she said, hating the breathless tone in her voice, but helpless against the flood of warmth in her heart and through her body.
The door opened and a maid scurried in to the fireplace. With just one glance at the other inhabitants of the room she went directly to her work, brushing out the ashes from the fireplace, and the moment ended. Kittie had to be grateful to the little maid, Maggie, and promised herself to make sure the child had a treat that Sunday.
“And I should return to the drawing room.” He bowed. “I will see you there, Mrs. Douglas, when you finish your . . . household arrangements.”
Seven
The gentlemen left soon after, set to tour the area in preparation for the hunting they had come north for. The ladies spent a pleasant, lazy day getting to know their hostess, Lady Eliza Burstead, and her, them. As Kittie attended her in her chamber late that night, Lady Eliza pronounced herself well-pleased with the company, and even had found something to appreciate in Hannah Billings. At least, she told Kittie, the woman spoke softly once she got over the notion that her hostess’s impairment was to her hearing.
Kittie was still chuckling over that the next morning as she walked in the garden after a solitary breakfast with Lady Eliza. After the journey they had suffered the ladies were having a long lie-in and were not expected to appear until noon or later. The hours she spent on a September morning in the garden at Bodenthorpe Cottage were the finest Kittie had ever experienced, and she considered each one precious, like an individual gem to be treasured for its uniqueness. Every birdcall, each blossom, even mist drifting over the stone garden wall, each sight was made more cherished by the knowledge that here, at the cottage, she was loved and needed.
Her early years were spent with her family in a small village in Devonshire; she still had a brother there, a busy lawyer with a large family, though they did little more than exchange letters once a year. Her married years were mostly spent in London and Bath. She had made many friends . . . or rather, acquaintances, during those cheerful, thoughtless days, but when hard times came they blew away like chaff on the breeze. All except Rebecca and Hannah.
Yorkshire was so very different from Devonshire, London or Bath, and yet, though she had had no choice when she was offered a position of such great worth and had come north to accept it, it had turned out that Yorkshire was very much to her more mature liking. She may not have appreciated its loneliness and isolation when she was twenty and newly married, but as a widow and a woman of thirty-one, it was very much to her taste.
She had wandered the moors and fells many a time, but it was to the garden that she always returned with a satisfied sigh. She had transformed it in the three years she had been there. Lady Eliza had never cared overmuch for gardening and had left it to her staff to keep it tidy and neat. But for Kittie it bloomed, roses climbing the walls of the cottage and daisies rioting in the garden beds, herbs scenting the Elizabethan knot garden and even the privet hedge thickening with glossy green leaves.
The cottage was enclosed by a stone wall, several feet high. Against it Kittie had planted more roses and Lady Eliza had learned to love them, able to identify each by scent now, in her blindness. September was a mellow time of year, with thoughts turning to the winter ahead; it would be the second winter with Lady Eliza completely blind. They would need to find ways to amuse a woman of her intelligence, since she could no longer read nor write.
Kittie wandered the garden, laying her basket on a stone bench to receive the flowers she cut for her friends’ rooms and for Lady Eliza’s bedside vase. She crouched down by one bush and examined it closely, worried by the yellowing of the leaves.
“A rose by any other name . . .”
She looked up to see the duke leaning over the wooden gate to the garden. She stood and brushed her skirts back into place.
“Don’t let me stop you, Mrs. Douglas.” He opened the gate and moved through, shutting it behind him. Bernard, the ancient male tabby cat, beyond anything but milk and friendship, brushed up against him and the duke picked him up, cradling the old cat in his arms.
Kittie w
as arrested by the sight. Of all things, she would not have thought the duke was one to appreciate cats. Though she could picture him astride a hunter with a pack of baying hounds at his feet, she had not imagined him in his present guise, as a man stroking the old tom, chucking it under the chin until it purred loudly.
“You are oddly silent, Mrs. Douglas. I’m sorry if I startled you.”
“I wasn’t startled, your grace.”
He put Bernard gently down in a patch of sunlight that leaked through the close trees, and the cat rolled over and struck a strangely inelegant pose, stretching luxuriously after such a proper petting. The duke brushed off his elegant morning coat, ridding himself of Bernard’s fur, and said, “I’m glad I caught you, actually, Mrs. Douglas. I have been deputized by my friends to come and ask the ladies of Bodenthorpe Cottage if they would be so kind as to join us for dinner tonight.”
“I cannot say for certain, but I think the ladies would be delighted.” She tried to stifle a smile, knowing how Rebecca would greet the invitation.
“I am on my way inside to speak to my aunt. If you’ll talk to your friends and send a message up to me this afternoon, I would be grateful.”
“I am almost certain of acquiescence. I will send a message only if it is a negative.”
He nodded approvingly and Kittie waited for him to go inside. Instead he lingered. “What are you doing?”
She took a deep breath. Really, she was being ridiculous. She must learn to breathe normally in this man’s presence. “I’m cutting roses for vases,” she said, gesturing to the basket on the bench. “It is almost time to cut them back for autumn, but I like to enjoy all the blooms I can this time of year, before winter sets in. Last year was a hard one.”
He strolled closer, off the pathway and toward her. “It must get lonely at times, here. I know my aunt, for some strange reason, has chosen to mire herself here in Yorkshire all year long. But you . . . why are you here?”
“I am making my living,” she answered swiftly, not hiding the vexation in her voice. Really, what a question! Did the man have no common sense?
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