Chapter Thirteen #2
She turned away from Becky’s importuning look and stared out the window, her brooding gaze again and again returning to her husband’s distant, unreadable profile.
***
By the end of the first day of traveling—which was three hours longer than the six hours Gerrit had allotted due to heavy rain—he was relieved that he had decided to break the journey into two days.
Even though he made frequent stops to allow Kathryn to stretch her legs and take sustenance, she looked exhausted by the time they reached the inn he favored.
“Take your mistress up to her chambers and I will send a meal to her private parlor,” he’d instructed Kathryn’s maid the moment he’d seen the dark smudges beneath his wife’s eyes.
It was a sign of how tired she was that Kathryn meekly obeyed.
Gerrit ate his own meal in the public room and spent the night in his own room half-hard for her. But even an insensitive oaf like him knew she needed her rest far more than he needed a rut.
The following morning, he delayed their departure by an hour to allow her more sleep—an impromptu change to the schedule that made him itch as if he were covered with lice—but she still looked fatigued when they set out.
And by the time they reached Briarly, just after dusk, Gerrit could see that she could scarcely keep her eyes open.
Even though the trip had taken twice as long, he knew that he had still pushed her too hard and should have taken three days.
Guilt and relief vied inside him the closer they got to Briarly. Surely it had been better to spend fewer days traveling? Lord. He’d never given so much thought to a simple bloody carriage ride.
The sound of hooves approaching pulled him from his thoughts. It was Jeremy, whom he’d sent ahead an hour ago to alert the servants that their master and mistress were on the way.
He was surprised the man had ridden back to meet them. As Jeremy came closer, Gerrit felt a stirring of alarm at the grim expression on his normally gregarious servant’s face. “Is aught amiss?”
“The Dowager Duchess is at Briarly.”
“My mother is here?” What a stupid question. What other dowager duchess would the man be talking about?
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Blast and damnation! What on earth was she up to?
She had never come to Briarly before—at least not in his lifetime and only once when the old duke had been alive.
Briarly had always been his father’s sanctuary, the only place he could be sure to avoid his wife’s distracting presence.
Indeed, Gerrit had not seen his parents in the same room—or in the same house or even in the same part of the country—since he was nine years old.
Why was she here now, for God’s sake?
He was seized by an irrational urge to wheel his horse around and ride hell-bent for leather back to London.
The uncharacteristically reckless thought sobered him. He was behaving like a child. If the dowager was here, he would simply need to send her back home. Immediately.
Gerrit’s thoughts had just begun to settle when the brightly lit entrance to Briarly came into view. There, standing on the flagstone in front of the house, torches blazing behind her, was the woman who’d so disordered his mind.
“Your Grace?” Jeremy said, his face wreathed in confusion.
Gerrit only then realized that he’d stopped Centurion a good thirty feet away from the entrance to Briarly. From his mother.
Feeling leaden, he urged his mount into a trot and reached the coach just as Jacob handed Kathryn out of the carriage.
He dismounted and was on the verge of offering his wife his arm when his mother hurried toward them, hands flapping and her typically gauzy, untidy garment fluttering around her as she reached not for Gerrit—she knew better—but his wife.
“Welcome! Welcome!” she chirped. “Oh, look at you!” His mother rarely spoke if she could exclaim.
She reached for his wife’s face, cupping it in her small pale hands.
Gerrit flinched in sympathy although Kathryn looked more surprised than alarmed.
“You are so lovely!” the dowager twittered in the breathless voice that irritated Gerrit almost beyond bearing.
And then she gave one of her brainless, tinkling laughs and stood on her toes.
“I am too short to reach your cheek, my dear. You will have to meet me halfway.”
Kathryn smiled. “Of course, Your Grace.”
“Oh, I do hope you will call me Mama!” his mother insisted, kissing both Kathryn’s cheeks. “If you do not wish to call me that, then please, please, please call me Betje!”
“Thank you, Betje. Please call me Katie.”
His mother looked delighted. “We are going to be the best of friends, aren’t we, Katie?”
Inexplicably, Kathryn laughed, the sound genuine. “Yes, I believe we are.”
The dowager clapped her hands in delight.
Gerrit could not help noticing how soothing his wife’s low-pitched voice and throaty chuckle was in comparison to his mother’s high-pitched twittering and giggling.
He tamped down his irritation and closed the distance between them, holding out his hand before his mother could fling her small body into his arms.
The dowager turned away from Kathryn with obvious reluctance, her smile becoming guarded when she met Gerrit’s gaze. She held out a hand with a tentativeness that both irked and pained him. As always, his mother elicited a flood of confusing, unwanted emotions in his breast simply by existing.
Gerrit bowed over her small, cold hand and released her with more haste than courtesy. “What a surprise to see you here, Your Grace.”
She flinched at his chilly greeting, her foolish smile faltering.
“I wanted to welcome my new daughter into our family.” She paused, her smile turning a bit sour, the expression accentuating the lines that bracketed her mouth and making her look her age.
“As I received no invitation to the wedding.”
Gerrit had no intention of discussing his decision not to invite her, certainly not in front of Kathryn and all his servants.
“But I am delighted to be here now,” she hastily added, reading his thoughts clearly enough.
She held out her hand to Kathryn. “Come, come. It is too late to meet all the servants tonight. I will show you to your chambers. I’m sure you would adore a tray in your room after you’ve had a chance to wash the dust off, wouldn’t you?
Don’t you just abhor traveling? I have always—”
Her voice faded away as she disappeared into the house, towing Kathryn behind her.
A throat cleared behind him, and Gerrit turned to find Cranston, his butler, waiting for him. “Er, welcome home, Your Grace.”
“Tell me the worst of it, Cranston,” he ordered, and then felt a pang of remorse when the old man jolted.
“As you instructed in your letter, I had the Rose suite prepared. But when Her Grace arrived, she instructed me to have the master and mistress chambers stripped, aired, and new hangings and carpets installed.”
Gerrit gritted his teeth to keep from howling. After all, it was hardly his butler’s job to argue with his mother. “How long has she been here?”
“Ten days, Your Grace.”
She must have come directly from Spenwood after he’d sent a messenger informing her of his impending marriage.
Gerrit could almost imagine the struggle that would have gone on in her flighty head as she’d considered disobeying him and traveling to London to attend the wedding.
He tried to be grateful he had, at least, been spared that unpleasant drama.
“I wanted to write to you, Your Grace,” Cranston said in a shaky voice. “But Her Grace commanded me to keep her arrival a secret. Er, she wanted it to be a surprise.”
Gerrit met Cranston’s watery blue eyes, and the older man winced.
“None of this is your fault. I know you could hardly disobey a direct order.”
Cranston’s erect shoulders sagged with relief. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
“You said she wanted the master and mistress chambers prepared. What did she do with all my father’s things?”
“I had it all carefully packed and moved to the Yellow Suite.” He paused and added, “I suggested to Her Grace you would not wish to have your possessions transferred to the master suite, but she was most adamant and—”
“She overrode you,” he finished for the other man, pleased when his anger at his mother did not bleed into his voice.
“Just so, Your Grace,” the older man murmured. “I—I attempted to dissuade Her Grace from moving your things, but—”
“I can imagine,” Gerrit interrupted, not wanting to hear the gory details of what his mother had managed to effect in ten entire days. His feet felt rooted to the gravel drive, and he could not make them move—at least not in the direction of the house and whatever horror awaited him there.
“Go inside,” he told the older man. “I will be in shortly.”
Cranston hesitated, his face a mask of remorse that even Gerrit could read.
“You have done nothing wrong, Cranston.”
The older man did not look convinced but inclined his head. “Will you have your usual tea in the library?”
“Yes, in the library in an hour—” He broke off. “Unless she—”
“Her Grace did not touch the library,” Cranston hastily assured him.
Well, that was something, at least. Gerrit told himself to be grateful for small favors and then turned in the direction of the dower house that was just on the other side of the small, ancient cluster of trees known locally as Echo Forest. It was late, but Amelia would have heard he was arriving today and would still be awake.
He mounted Centurion and urged the big horse into a gallop, directing him toward the tight cluster of trees across the park.
There was nothing like a conversation with Amelia St. Clare to soothe his ragged nerves.
***
“—the prettiest color! And what clever embroidery this is all along the hem. I haven’t seen work of this quality since I was a very young girl. Did you do this?” the dowager asked a stupefied Becky.
Becky blinked. “Er, no, Your Grace, that gown is from—”