The Duke Knows Best

by Jane Ashford

  “He was just here,” Flora replied. “He wants to stay with you always, but he has to sleep a bit. He’ll be back soon.”

  The duchess’s hand dropped. Her eyes closed. She looked desolate, and it tore at Verity’s heart.

  “She’ll be quiet for a while now,” Flora whispered. “These…episodes wear her out.”

  “To see her this way.” Verity blinked back her tears. Flora nodded.

  The duke appeared in the doorway. He was still dressed in the clothes from dinner, and it was obvious he hadn’t slept. He looked wretched. “I felt she needed me,” he said. He came in, sat beside the bed, and took his wife’s hand. She showed no reaction. The fear in his face was so stark that Verity took a step backward.

  “It’s very kind of you to play for her,” the duke said without looking around. “For us all.”

  “I’m happy to, sir.”

  “You have all you need?”

  “Yes.”

  Verity didn’t think he heard her. He held the duchess’s hand as if it was his whole world, and he could think of nothing else. Verity backed away. Flora moved with her into the corridor. “She’s always calmer when he’s there,” she said. “Even when she appears insensible.”

  “He loves her so,” Verity murmured.

  Flora nodded. “I wanted that kind of love. I was so happy when I found it. I didn’t quite realize the danger of that kind of pain.”

  The nurse returned carrying a pot of broth on a tray. With a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach, Verity went back to the pianoforte.

  Seventeen

  Randolph tossed and muttered in his bed, fighting a nightmare that seemed to have gone on forever. His mother lay dying, and he was desperate to reach her. In a corridor whose walls moved in and out like an infernal bellows, he ran toward her room—on and on and on. But he couldn’t get there. Each time he seemed close, the floor steepened, and he stumbled and clawed and slipped backward. Over and over, he found himself back where he’d started. He was helpless, and time was running out. Unless he could defeat these hellish obstacles, she was doomed.

  And then, suddenly, he was at her doorway. She was right inside, wondering that he hadn’t come to see her. He could hear her asking why he’d abandoned her, and it drove him nearly mad. But the opening was blocked by a great shadowy figure, arms held out to catch him. Randolph pushed and punched and shouted. After what seemed an eternity, he knocked the creature aside and fell into the chamber.

  To find that she was gone. Mama lay perfectly still, hands crossed on her chest, her face waxen and empty. It was too late. He hadn’t been able to do anything; he hadn’t been there for the end. Randolph collapsed to his knees by her bed. And then he was looking at Rosalie’s face as he’d seen her in her coffin, a doll with all her warm animation stripped away, lost to any farewells he might have made. Desolation ripped at him and pulled him down.

  Randolph struggled awake with a gasp, sweating and wild. He panted. For a moment, he didn’t know where he was or when it was. Then reality seeped back to him. His mother was dying. No, she was only ill. She would not die!

  He shoved back the twisted bedclothes, stood, and jerked on his dressing gown. Barefoot, he lurched down the hall to his mother’s room, still half in the dream. There, by a dim light, he saw his mother, pale and breathing with some difficulty, but not still and dead. He picked up her hand from the coverlet. It was clammy but not cold.

  “Randolph?” His father sat on the other side of the bed, shadowed, holding her other hand.

  “How is she?” Randolph asked.

  “The same.”

  Tragedy couldn’t happen with his father present, or so some young part of Randolph had always thought. Papa’s face said that might not be true. An unbearable idea. He backed away from it.

  Randolph heard music. He went toward the music. Still disoriented, trying to shake off the dream, he entered the room where Verity played the pianoforte. She looked up, startled, then stiffened and half rose. “What’s happened? You look dreadful. Is the duchess…?”

  He’d reached a place of refuge; in his dazed state, that was all Randolph knew. “I dreamed she died,” he murmured. “Just like Rosalie. I dreamed Mama was dying, and I couldn’t get to her room. They wouldn’t let me see her, speak to her, tell her I loved her. They kept me out.”

  “Who are they? Who is Rosalie?”

  Randolph scarcely heard her. “A simple inflammation of the lungs, that’s what all the doctors said. But it got worse and worse. And they wouldn’t let me in her room. We hadn’t even had time to announce our engagement, and that foul disease came along and killed her.” His fists clenched at his sides.

  “Killed who?” Verity asked.

  “Rosalie.” Randolph felt a reminiscent brush of crushing grief. He began to pace. How small this room was! “Her parents thought it improper for me to be in her bedchamber. Improper! As if I would…as if it mattered by that time. We were to be married, and I wasn’t allowed to sit with her! I should have been by her side as she faded out of the world. They were cruel, barbarous! I wouldn’t stand for it now. I wouldn’t be some obedient boy, subsisting on secondhand news and relayed messages. She died without me.” And there was the agony again. “If Mama slipped away, and I couldn’t reach her…” He put his hands to his head.

  “Didn’t you look in on your mother just now?” Verity said.

  “Yes.”

  “And she’s alive.”

  “Yes. Yes, she is.”

  “And no one stopped you.”

  Letting his hands drop, Randolph shook his head.

  “She was a bit better today. Flora said so.”

  “Did she? Was she?” Randolph blinked and finally came more fully awake.

  “The doctor agreed. The duchess took a whole bowl of broth, and she spoke to your papa. She knew him.”

  Randolph took a deep breath.

  “And you can sit with her whenever you like,” Verity added. “No one will keep you from her.”

  “No.” Randolph relaxed into a combination of relief and gratitude. How comforting she was. “I shouldn’t have come rushing in here half awake. I beg your pardon. Sometimes a nightmare can seem more real than life.”

  Verity nodded. She sat on the bench before the pianoforte, looking at him. Her blue-green eyes seemed doubtful. Well, of course she was shaken. It was the middle of the night, and he’d burst in on her practically raving. What exactly had he said? The whole incident was fading now, as dreams did on waking. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

  “You were very upset.” It seemed half a question.

  “I was.” He gave her a rueful smile. “Thank you for listening to me. I don’t normally have nightmares.”

  “These are difficult circumstances.”

  Randolph only nodded. He didn’t want to speak of his mother’s illness again. And he wanted to forget the dream. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Walking back to his bedchamber, he decided he wouldn’t try to sleep any more. Sleep was treacherous. He’d get out the lute.

  Verity sat on after Randolph was gone, puzzling over his disjointed confidences. Randolph had been engaged before. Why had he never mentioned this? Why had no one else told her? There was never any shortage of busybodies to share such information. People couldn’t resist. “Rosalie,” she murmured. Who was this Rosalie who’d died? Randolph had spoken as if she knew, when he must know she didn’t. Verity felt a brush of…humiliation?

  She began to play again. The music soothed her as well as the others.

  A previous engagement didn’t matter, of course. It had obviously been some time ago, and Rosalie was gone. Nothing to do with her. But there’d been such anguish in Randolph’s face and voice when he spoke of Rosalie. It had sounded as if his feelings were very much alive. Granted, his nightmare had been about his mother. Still.

  Verity
wasn’t jealous. She would not be jealous. She was…unsettled. A situation that she’d regarded in one way was suddenly different. It was like turning and discovering that the ground dropped away a few feet behind your back. There was a moment of dizzy realignment. She’d begun to feel part of the Gresham family, and now she discovered that they’d been keeping secrets from her. Unless they all thought she knew. Which brought her back around to wondering why Randolph had never mentioned this significant piece of information.

  She’d ask him, as soon as things were more settled at Langford House. The duchess was getting better, so it wouldn’t be much longer. As the crisis began to wane, Verity was more and more conscious of the great many things she and Randolph had to talk about.

  The next morning, Verity found herself alone in the breakfast room with Sebastian. Since they took turns sitting with the duchess, no one in the family was keeping regular hours. One never knew who would turn up where, except when they all gathered at dinner.

  Oddly, despite his bulk and martial bearing, Sebastian was the most approachable of Randolph’s brothers. Or so it seemed to Verity. There always seemed to be a spark of sympathy in his blue eyes. She knew he liked plain speaking, and practiced it himself. So when he smiled a good morning, she made a snap decision and said, “I didn’t realize Randolph had been engaged before.”

  Sebastian stopped loading his plate and gazed at her. “What’s that?”

  “To Rosalie?”

  “Rosalie who?”

  Verity passed over this missing piece of information and tried again. “When he was younger.”

  Sebastian frowned. “How much younger?”

  She didn’t know that either. “So sad that she died.”

  “Died? I never heard anything about this. Rosalie, you say?” He shook his head. “Why don’t I know?”

  Verity wondered if she’d made a mistake. No, Randolph had said engaged. He’d said they were to be married. She remembered then that he’d said they never had a chance to announce it. Had he conducted a clandestine courtship? Why? If he had, she’d just exposed the fact, she realized.

  “Mama would know,” Sebastian said. “Whatever it is. She knows everything.” His face shifted, and Verity easily followed his thoughts. The duchess was the font of knowledge except when she was very ill and delirious.

  “I may have misunderstood,” Verity said. She didn’t want to reveal Randolph’s secrets, except to herself.

  Her large leonine companion examined her. “Randolph seems very fond of you,” he said.

  The kindness in his tone and the lukewarm nature of the phrase shook Verity. She remembered the emotion vibrating in Randolph’s voice last night. She saw again the duke holding the duchess’s hand as if it was his only lifeline. The comparison disturbed her.

  * * *

  The turning point came the following night. After another day when the duchess tossed and muttered in her bed, her fever broke in the wee hours, and she fell into a deep natural sleep. Verity didn’t hear the news until the doctor confirmed the nurse’s opinion when he visited in the morning. “The crisis is past,” he told the family group hovering in the hallway. “From now on, the disease will ebb. Her Grace must still take care to eat and rest, of course.”

  “As if I can do anything but rest,” came a hoarse, thready voice from the room. “I’ve never been so weak in my life.”

  They rushed to surround the bed. The duchess looked back at them, recognition and intelligence in her eyes once again. She was gaunt and pale, but she smiled. The duke took her hand, turning his back on the rest of them, his head bent.

  Randolph understood; his father’s feelings were overwhelming. He couldn’t let anyone but Mama see. Randolph sent up silent thanks, in the wake of all the prayers he’d made through his mother’s illness. His heart swelled with joy and gratitude, and he saw the same sentiments in the faces of his family. Tears ran down Flora’s face; Robert pulled her closer to his side. Nathaniel swallowed and blinked even as he smiled.

  Randolph caught Verity’s eye. How splendid she’d been through this dreadful time! He tried to put his appreciation into a smile. Sebastian’s fist tapped his shoulder, and Randolph turned to meet his brother’s grin. The room, and Sebastian in particular, buzzed with celebratory energy. Randolph could tell that even Alan wanted to leap and laugh.

  “No rowdy games in the house,” the duchess murmured, clearly aware of the bubbling mood.

  All the Greshams burst out laughing. “Not even a tug of war in the gallery?” asked Robert in a cajoling voice from their youth.

  “Or sliding down the waxed floor,” added Sebastian in similar coaxing tones. “Just a race. No flying cricket balls involved.”

  Their father choked. Randolph couldn’t tell if it was a suppressed laugh or a stifled sob. He found he didn’t wish to know.

  “Only ruined stockings,” the duchess answered. “No, not even leapfrog.”

  Randolph felt like leaping. Normality had been restored after a terrifying interval. Except that Mama looked so very tired.

  Dr. Loughton seemed mystified. “Her Grace needs quiet,” he said. “I must suggest fewer visitors at one time.” He made a herding motion.

  As the duke sat down beside the bed, Randolph followed the rest of them out. He saw his father bury his face in the coverlet and his mother rest her hand in his hair. His throat grew tight. If Papa had lost her…but he hadn’t. They hadn’t. After a period of recuperation, Mama would be the center around which they all revolved once again. With that reassurance, exhaustion hit Randolph like a roundhouse blow. When had he last slept more than a couple of hours? He was dazed with fatigue. He headed back to bed.

  * * *

  Dinner that night was loud. The released tension came flooding out in mock disputes and lively stories. “Remember that Christmas joust we staged in the upper gallery?” Sebastian said. “We were meant to be the flower of chivalry.”

  “You brought horses into the house?” asked Flora.

  “No, no, we three eldest were the steeds.” He indicated Nathaniel and Randolph. “We put the younger ones on our shoulders. I got Alan, who had no proper grip on his lance at all.”

  “I was four,” said Alan. “Or so you tell me. I don’t remember this one.”

  “You had Alan because you were the tallest,” said Nathaniel.

  “We had to handicap the lists,” Sebastian agreed. “Nathaniel took James, and Randolph had Robert.”

  “Who kicked me on the nose,” Randolph observed. “It hurt like blazes.”

  “Excitement of the moment,” said Robert. “And we won, didn’t we?”

  “The final score was never satisfactorily resolved,” said Nathaniel.

  His eyes twinkled, but Verity noticed that his chin had come up.

  “I don’t believe I heard about this exploit,” said the duke. He looked much better, Verity thought. An improved appetite would soon restore him completely.

  “Because we stole cues from the billiard room for our lances,” Nathaniel said.

  “What?” The older man put down his wineglass. “You might have put someone’s eye out. Good lord, how did all six of you survive to adulthood?”

  His oldest son nodded. “Now that I am about to be a parent myself, I shudder to think of it.”

  “The rule was a touch to the chest,” muttered Sebastian. “No one was poking at eyes.”

  “I should hope not,” said his father. “But there are such things as accidents.”

  “Well, we promise never to do it again, Papa,” said Robert, his eyes glinting with mischief. “You know best.”

  “Doubt I could carry Alan for long these days,” said Sebastian, half seriously.

  The table dissolved in laughter. Sebastian took it good-naturedly.

  “I don’t know how the duchess did it,” Flora said to Verity a little later. The ladies
had decided to stay with the festivities in the dining room rather than leave the gentlemen to their port. But people had shifted their seats, and they were now side by side. “Six boys! Every time I think of it, I’m in awe.”

  Verity nodded. “At least they’re more subdued now that they’re grown up.”

  “You think so?” replied Flora with raised eyebrows. “They stranded Nathaniel with nothing but a moth-eaten wolfskin to wear on his wedding day.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You well may. But you heard me correctly.”

  “Where did they find a wolfskin?”

  “This is your first question?” Flora asked with a smile. “Rather than why?”

  Verity smiled back. “The reasons…unfolded in my mind. I assumed it was the sort of idiotic prank that men play on one another. The details were the puzzle.” Verity looked down the table. It was difficult, and then too easy, to imagine the heir in nothing but a tattered scrap of fur. Yet he was such a dignified, reserved man. “Nathaniel?”

  Flora nodded. “I know. My point is, the six glorious Greshams haven’t abandoned the habits of their youth. And they have greater ingenuity now, and resources. I took steps to make sure my wedding included no…surprises.”

  The more she knew Flora, the more she liked her, Verity thought. “How?”

  Flora ticked off points with her fingers. “I gave them no warning. I sent Robert for a special license ahead of time, and I made arrangements with the local clergyman when we were all down at Langford for Christmas. One morning, I had my mother gather them up.” Flora smirked. “Even though Mama is the kindest person—she’s spending three months with her sister right now so that Robert and I can have our house to ourselves—she has a fierce reputation. She…overawed the brothers when they were young, and the effects linger.”

  “So you had no special gown or wedding breakfast?” Verity wasn’t certain she’d have liked that.

  “Of course we did. The duchess knew all about it.”