Chapter 25
“… a
nd they all lived happily ever after,” Nathaniel finished the story and closed the book.
“You don’t read it as well as Cecily,” Lilian said critically.
Nathaniel laughed uncertainly and put down the book on the bedside table. As he had promised Cecily, he had come upstairs tonight to read Lilian a bedtime story. He had thought it was going rather well until now.
“I suppose I don’t. Now, go to sleep.”
“But I want another story!”
“I’ve already read three stories, and it’s getting late, Lilian. Cecily said that you should be asleep by now.”
The clock had struck eight, and dinner would have started downstairs.
“Why won’t you read me another story?” Lilian demanded, sitting up in bed.
His heart sank as he recognized that firm tone; it signaled that one argument would only lead to another. Cecily did not approve of such disputes with the child, although Nathaniel himself was unsure how to avoid them. They just seemed to happen whenever the two of them were alone.
Thankfully, one of the nursemaids poked her head around the door, and Nathaniel beckoned her in.
“Maisie will read you another story, and I will come back after dinner to make sure you are asleep,” he told Lilian, handing the book to the nursemaid. “You don’t want all the food to go to waste now, do you?”
“But I want you to read to me!” the little girl protested loudly, too young to care very much about the adults in her life eating a cold or burned dinner. “It’s not fair!”
“Goodnight, Lilian,” Nathaniel said firmly, sighing as he left the room and telling himself that despite his daughter’s hollering, she was safely in the care of someone else.
Cecily, Mary, and Patrick were sitting at the dinner table when he came back downstairs, although the food had not yet been served. Patrick and Mary were bickering over some foolish detail in an earlier game of cards, so he tuned them out.
“We waited for you,” Cecily told him, nodding to a footman to indicate that dinner might be served. “Did it take Lilian a long time to go to sleep?”
“Three stories and still wide awake,” Nathaniel reported wearily. “I left her with Maisie for the night. I can’t understand how you get away with only one story, Cecily.”
A flash of impatience crossed his wife’s otherwise calm features. “Lilian is trying to keep you with her for longer, Nathaniel, because she is still unused to having you around,” she explained. “She is still very young. It will pass once she knows she can rely on you.”
“Will it?” he returned without such optimism, doubt still lingering in his mind.
“Yes, it will. That reminds me, you must not forget her piano recital tomorrow at three o’clock.”
Nathaniel had to think for a moment before he remembered what she was talking about. “Ah, yes, Lilian was talking about the piano at breakfast, wasn’t she?”
Cecily sighed, as if his vagueness on the subject hurt her.
He looked down the table at her. She looked both sweet and regal in her gold evening dress, with loose golden-brown ringlets framing her face. From a distance, she was still hard to read. Only when he touched her, kissed her, or held her in his arms did he feel certain of anything.
“Lilian has been learning a new piece on the pianoforte and wants to play it for you at three o’clock tomorrow. You told her that you would be there.”
“Of course,” Nathaniel acknowledged with a nod. “Yes, I remember now. What a good memory you have, Cecily.”
* * *
“Fine ponies, Sir Charles,” Nathaniel commended his neighbor, Sir Charles Bath, as they walked around the two small white Shetland ponies cropping the grass in the paddock outside Sir Charles’s stables.
It was a little before noon on the day after his not-quite-successful attempt at reading a bedtime story to Lilian. When the head groom at Greyhaven Park had mentioned the ponies to him, Nathaniel had immediately thought of acquiring them for his daughter. He really wanted to make her happy.
“No use to Elizabeth and Grace now, though,” Sir Charles mused. “Plenty of life left in them nonetheless, and sturdy creatures too.”
“Yes, I can see that they are too small for your granddaughters,” Nathaniel agreed. “They must be twelve or thirteen now.”
“Great tall girls, both of them,” the white-haired man replied with a loud guffaw and tweak of his bushy mustache. “Their feet would touch the ground if they tried to ride these poor beasts. How old is Lady Lilian?”
“Seven years old.”
“Perfect age for these two, I’d say. We’d be glad to see them go to a good home, too. If you’re sure you want them, I’ll have them delivered at your convenience.”
“Yes, I’ll take both,” Nathaniel decided. “It would be a shame to break up the pair, and Lilian has been badgering me for a white pony for her collection for months now. Two of the creatures ought to satisfy her.”
“A collection of ponies, by God! Most little girls collect ribbons or flowers, but Lady Lilian collects ponies.”
The good-natured old man slapped his thigh and roared with laughter as though this was the funniest thing he’d heard in a long time.
“Well, now, you must come back to the house with me for a celebratory sherry and a spot of luncheon. Lady Bath would never forgive me if I didn’t invite you in, although she’ll be sorry you didn’t bring your new wife with you.”
“Maybe next time,” Nathaniel replied. “I’m sure Cecily would be happy for Lady Bath to call on her at any time.”
“Oh, you know how women are, Your Grace. Lady Bath says she can’t call on a duchess until a duchess calls on her. Nonsense, I say to her. The poor young woman doesn’t know anyone in the neighborhood yet and will be glad of a friendly face. But will she listen? No, of course she won’t…”
As they walked from the stables to Sir Charles’s manor house, Nathaniel smiled back sincerely at the bluff old man whose straight-talking irritated him far less than the polite manners of many members of the ton.
“I’ll be sure to tell Cecily about it,” he assured him. “My wife has no more clue about being a duchess than I have about being the Queen of Sheba, and I don’t think I care to teach her.”
His turn of phrase set the elderly baronet off into fresh peals of laughter.
“Damned right, young man. When you find a good woman, you love her just as she is, don’t you?”
“Quite,” Nathaniel agreed uncomfortably, suddenly taken back to that awkward moment in the kitchens the other evening when Lilian had asked Cecily if she loved him.
Cecily had completely changed the subject without any apparent reaction, saving them both from awkwardness. Yes, she was a good woman indeed.
“Euphemia?” Sir Charles called out merrily as they walked in through the front door. “Are you there, Euphemia? The Duke of Greyhaven has come to call. Bring out the best sherry!”
A small, well-rounded woman, just as jolly as her husband, bustled out of the parlor and threw up her hands with an expression of surprised delight.
“Why, Your Grace, what have you been up to? As if we couldn’t guess, but we haven’t heard a peep from Greyhaven Park since Mrs. Barnes sent over that generous slice of wedding cake.
Now, there was a surprise! You must tell me everything about the new Duchess of Greyhaven, for I hear that she is already esteemed in the neighborhood and supporting all kinds of good causes. ”
With a laugh at the old lady’s energy and volubility, Nathaniel bowed his head. The couple had known him since he was a boy and never complained when he trespassed on their land or even helped himself to fruit from their orchards.
“I would be delighted to tell you everything you wish to know, Lady Bath, if you would tell me which question I should start answering.”
Two hours later, Nathaniel was sprawled on the couch in Sir Charles’s old-fashioned but comfortable drawing room, full of sherry, roast chicken, buttered vegetables, and a supposedly “light” white wine that had gone to his head even more than the sherry.
While much of the conversation was carried by Lady Bath, who required only occasional grunts, yeses, and nos from her husband or guest, they had managed to cover the recent history of both families to her satisfaction. Now she returned to the subject of the new Duchess.
“An orphan herself,” she clucked sympathetically. “No wonder she is keen to support the orphanage. Well, they’re very lucky to have her patronage.”
“Cecily has great sympathy and understanding for children,” Nathaniel remarked. “I wish I did!”
Both of his hosts appeared to find his remark hilarious, to the point where he laughed himself, almost convinced that he had said something unintentionally funny. Then, the carriage clock on the mantelpiece struck three, and something stirred in his brain.
“Three o’clock,” he said aloud, knowing that this was significant but not quite understanding why.
“Yes, Your Grace. That is the time,” Sir Charles chortled. “Well, this has been a merry few hours.”
Nathaniel nodded absently and rose to his feet, a sense of urgency and foreboding lurking at the back of his mind.
I feel like I am forgetting something important.
“Oh, you have to excuse me. I was meant to listen to Lilian’s piano recital at three!” he suddenly exclaimed, striking himself on the forehead.
“Dear me!” Lady Bath gasped, also rising to her feet. “Shall we get you the carriage? You ought not to be riding too quickly after such a luncheon.”
“No, thank you. I must go home,” Nathaniel replied, already hurrying to the front door with Sir Charles close beside him. “It’s quicker to ride, and my horse knows the way.”
Befuddled, he tried to recall how far the distance was from here to Greyhaven Park. It was not a journey he had ever tried to make at speed. It was surely less than half an hour, but even that was too long.
It seemed to take forever for the groom to fetch his horse from the stables and check the saddle. Then, with the carefulness of a man who knew he had had too much sherry and did not want to make a fool of himself, he slowly swung himself up into the saddle.