Chapter 14
“Now we’ve come to it,” Winifred said, blinking back the beginnings of anxious tears. “Your very last night at Kingston! Oh, how I shall miss this estate!”
She looked fondly around the room. Caroline pulled her evening shawl closer around her shoulders.
“And you’ve packed everything?” Aunt Olivia asked.
She had been a formidable whirlwind of effort all day—moving parcels, checking bags, and generally causing little confusions wherever she went.
In her haste to assist in packing that night at dinner she had absentmindedly spread jam on her potatoes.
“Is there anything else you might need?”
“If there is anything else, I’ll send for it,” Caroline said. “Or, better yet, I’ll come myself and have another reason to visit.”
The wedding, distant at first, had hurried toward them at last. Carlyle, true to his word, had picked up the package from Mrs. Gray’s containing Caroline’s wedding garments. The dress, manteau, and gloves were set out upstairs, ready to garb their mistress in the morning.
Caroline, on the one hand, looked to the next day with relief. The wait would soon be over, and the uncertainty set aside for solid conviction. On the other hand, she had no idea what that conviction—with all its certainty—would bring.
“You know my home is always open to you, dear,” Lady Olivia said. “Anytime you feel inclined to visit, please do.”
Caroline leaned back into the couch cushions. Now that the hurry and scurry of the last day was done, she felt oddly peaceful and innervated at the same time, like a settled glass of champagne sitting on the sideboard. Lady Olivia took a seat opposite her.
“Well, now that it’s come to it, there are—there are some things that you should know.”
Her ears turned a delicate primrose pink. Caroline looked at her curiously. She couldn’t think what else needed to be said, but Aunt Olivia looked as if she was going to confess to robbing a pie from the kitchen.
“The duke—well, he’s a man,” she started, bravely. Caroline raised her eyebrows.
“Yes?”
“And you—you’re a woman.”
Aunt Olivia’s face blotched with patches of white and purple. She licked her lips.
“And the duke—is also a duke.”
Perhaps Caroline had severely underestimated how much stress her aunt and Winifred had been carrying. She looked to the lady’s maid, who was clasping her hands earnestly in her lap.
“What your aunt means, dear, is that the duke, as a man and a husband, will likely be hoping for an heir—someone to look after Blackmore when he’s gone.”
Aunt Olivia chimed back in.
“An heir that you can provide—as his wife.”
Caroline blushed.
“I suppose it is reasonable for a newly married couple to hope for children to bless their union.”
“Yes, of course, dear—”
“Absolutely natural.”
Aunt Olivia rang the bell. Martha entered.
“Ratafia, please, Martha—and biscuits.”
Martha curtsied and left. Winifred looked down her nose at Aunt Olivia, who bristled.
“To toast the wedding! It’ll be good for all of us.”
Winifred sighed and nodded. Aunt Olivia turned back to Caroline.
“What we were hoping to do, dear, is tell you a little about how your wedding will be.”
“Oh!” Caroline’s awareness sharpened. “I see.”
Her heart fluttered a little with an odd sense of anxious anticipation.
“Weddings are marvelous, glorious unions, ordained by God and sanctioned by man,” her aunt began.
“For the most part,” Winifred chimed in.
Aunt Olivia glared at her.
“Mostly glorious and sanctioned and for good reason.”
Winifred folded her arms.
“I didn’t mean that they oughtn’t to be sanctioned, but that they aren’t always.”
Martha brought the tray of red ratafia, biscuits, and jam which she had thoughtfully included as a consolation.
Aunt Olivia accepted them gratefully. Caroline waited without tapping her fingers while the repast was distributed.
Whatever her aunt and Winifred had to say, it was apparently very difficult and would require some time.
“A man and a woman come together,” Aunt Olivia said, once her mouth had emptied of biscuit, “so that children may bless the earth.”
“Or at least have the chance to bless it. Not all children are a blessing, to be sure.” Winifred beamed at Caroline. “You were ever so much a blessing to us, dear.”
Aunt Olivia waved the comment aside with a half-eaten biscuit.
“Indeed, she was—and is and likely will be. But the nature of your role is changing, dear.”
“Changing very much.”
“It may be—it very likely will be—expected that you spend—time— with your new husband.”
Caroline knitted her eyebrows. That seemed self-explanatory, at least from what she knew about marriage. Aunt Olivia ate another biscuit.
“You’ll spend time with your husband as a woman—”
Winifred dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief.
“Our little girl grew up so quickly to be a woman!”
Aunt Olivia reached for her empty plate. She stared at it and rang the bell.
“More biscuits, Martha.” She turned back to Caroline. “Up until now, you’ve been our dear little girl and our lovely lady—” Winifred sniffed heavily. “But from your wedding forward, your first responsibility will be to your husband and to your future family.”
They looked at her, as if expecting some kind of comment. It felt like they were trying to offer her valuable information.
“I—yes, thank you,” she said. This must be the good wedding advice she had sometimes heard other girls mention in knowing whispers. “I am very grateful to you both.”
Martha entered with a generously heaping plate of biscuits. Winifred blew her nose into her handkerchief. Aunt Olivia took a healthy bite.
“I remember when she was just a little thing—”
“We were speaking,” Aunt Olivia said firmly, “of a husband and wife, not of us. And of a husband and wife coming together.”
Winifred nodded knowingly.
“Coming very close together, you know.”
“It will be expected, of course, that you will live at Highcastle which will assist in this process.”
“Living in the same house most certainly helps.”
“You and your husband will come together frequently which is to be expected.”
“As expected as anything, or so they say.”
Caroline smiled quizzically but said nothing. She had not shared her distancing plans with her aunt and Winifred, but thus far, they hadn’t said anything to counter her inclinations—at least, she thought they hadn’t. Her aunt continued in a slightly more lucid vein.
“The wedding itself will be a simple affair,” Aunt Olivia said. “The ceremony, vows, and marriage lines—and all of the necessary paperwork is in order.”
Winifred put up a trembling hand.
“I do hate to be one to doubt, but do we know all of the papers are in order? What a horror to get to the altar itself and fault but for a signature!”
She shuddered. Aunt Olivia took a hearty sip of ratafia.
“The duke did say that all was in order. I expressly questioned him on the day of the picnic.”
Caroline winced. She had little doubt that Frederic endured that experience with equanimity, but felt for him, nonetheless. Winifred nodded approvingly. Aunt Olivia loaded her plate with two more biscuits.
“The bans were published.”
“One may as well be single if the wedding is not in print.”
“Yes, thank you, Winifred. In any case—”
“I had a cousin once, a Mrs. Hendricks, who failed to publish her bans with sufficient time, and—”
“Winifred! We were speaking, if you’ll remember, of coming together.”
“Oh yes—yes, of course.” She turned to Caroline. “We will be there with you, dear, every step of the way.”
“No, we won’t!” Aunt Olivia looked as if she might turn into a turnip. “A couple needs quiet space, Winifred—intimate space—in order to produce a child.”
Winifred hadn’t blushed, Caroline was sure, in several years.
She made up for the dearth now by coloring a hearty crimson.
Caroline could feel a similar blush spreading across her own cheeks though she couldn’t think why.
Aunt Olivia seemed to have run out of words and ratafia at the same moment and was at quite a loss for both.
“It’s about this intimate space that you’d like to speak?” Caroline prompted. “Is there something I ought to—know?”
Aunt Olivia nodded. Winifred took a deliberate sip of ratafia, pursing her lips primly. Aunt Olivia chewed her biscuit then swallowed hard.
“Yes, well—in this intimate space, it’s a special time to be close together—”
“Very close or so I’m told.”
“You’re very correct, Winifred. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to another person, saving perhaps a midwife, and that because a child was born breach.”
Caroline couldn’t help but feel that her aunt’s information was somewhat dated, considering the child in question was now the acting lord of the estate. She was obviously trying with all diligence to help.
“It’s likely your husband will be quite fervent,” Aunt Olivia said.
“Yes, very.”
“Like a prayer, only with much more passion.”
“A good deal more if I’m any judge.”
“That would depend on the passion of your prayers, Winifred.”
Caroline twisted her fingers in her lap. Winifred patted them.
“Don’t be worried, dear. A few nerves are completely natural before a wedding.
Why, Mrs. Earl told me that her eldest daughter didn’t sleep a wink the night before the wedding—she stared at her wallpaper and counted every floret on it until sunrise.
And here she is, happily married five years later with two children. ”
Caroline adjusted her skirt. Ought she to stay up counting florets? She didn’t even know if her bedroom had them. She hadn’t felt nervous at first. Now, she wasn’t sure.
“Then there was Mrs. Hampton,” Winifred continued. “She knew as much about weddings as a musk ox. When it came time for the ceremony, she was so nervous she walked right past the church in her hurry and had to be led back to the altar. She was so flustered!”
Aunt Olivia polished off her second tumbler of ratafia. It seemed to be helping. Her color returned somewhat to normal, and her eyes drooped affably.
“We are very excited for you, dear. If you have any questions for us, please ask. We are here to navigate the journey—inasmuch as we can—with you.”
Caroline set aside her untouched biscuits.
“I—yes, thank you. I think I understand. Thank you, ladies, for your concern and your—information.”
Winifred nodded benevolently, like she was presiding at a service in church.
“Of course, dear—anything to help you.”
She helped Aunt Olivia to her feet.
“Come, m’lady—to repose with all of us. We’ll have an early morning of it tomorrow.”
Both Winifred and Aunt Olivia embraced her in turn, clinging to her as if in premonition of a funeral. Caroline tried to smile as they left, but the concerns—which had not at all been allayed by whatever they had been trying to say—crimped her face into a well-meaning wince.
She wrapped her shawl a little more closely about her. This was it—the last night, the last fleeting moments before her name and station changed forever.
She looked forward with sanguine hopes toward being the Duchess of Blackmore—the woman who would leave the church tomorrow shortly after she entered it. The woman she would become. What would she be like? What would she say, and do that would be so different from Lady Caroline tonight?
She looked into the mirror above the sideboard, tracing the familiar lines of her face, and the path of her scar. Whatever she was, she would also be a duchess—the lady of Highcastle and wife to the duke. She would have no reason to hide her face.
She walked slowly to her room. On her way, she passed the portrait hall where Winifred had come to stand after depositing her aunt in her room.
“Oh, what precious paintings,” Winifred said, dabbing her eyes as she hovered under the hook-nosed painting of Viscount Oscar Drebbing. “What precious faces I shall look upon no more!”
Caroline passed her in silence, leaving her to her own reflections and adieus.
In her room, she ran her hand over the gown, manteau, and gloves.
They were meant for her—for the duchess—the woman who could hold her head high in the face of rumor, who had nothing but sadness or grief to regret.
A thoughtful look crept into Caroline’s eyes—thoughtful and determined.
Tomorrow, the duchess would wear them.