Chapter Seventeen
The next four days at Briarly followed the pattern of the first one: Katie woke late and sated from a night of passion, broke her fast alone, spent the afternoon learning housekeeping matters, exploring the extensive gardens, visiting the massive succession houses and selecting flowers—which were allowed in the dining room provided there were two arrangements and they were exactly the same—eating dinner with her husband, Betje, and David Sessions, spending a few hours on needlework in the library, and then receiving her husband in her bed.
Every night she tried to initiate conversation with her husband and every night she failed. Dulverton never responded beyond a curt yes or no and Katie took the coward’s way out and did not try to keep him in her bed again.
She also spent some time answering the veritable flood of letters she received from her family.
To the countess she penned her third polite but adamant rejection of her offer to visit.
To her sisters—all except Hy, who was still angry at her because marrying Dulverton was evidently not penance enough for her stickler of a sister—she sent short, cheerful missives about Briarly, deliberately omitting any mention of her marital situation.
Katie spent most of each day with the dowager, who advised her to rest for a week and commence morning calls the following Wednesday.
“People will understand if you take a week to settle in, but you really cannot wait much longer. Although given Gerrit’s insistence on privacy—and the fact that he long ago trained the neighbors to expect little in the way of socializing from him—you might be able to get away with two weeks. But that is the limit.”
Yes, Katie knew exactly how it was to be a duchess in a rural setting.
After all, she had lived with her sister Hy for five years.
Every year it was the same when they’d retired to Chatham Park for the summer and autumn.
Poor Hy was forced to make the social rounds before she could retire from center stage and leave the planning of dinners, house parties, the annual ball, and the public day to her husband’s well-trained secretary.
The only thing that changed on Katie’s fifth day at Briarly was that it was a Sunday and, for the first time, Dulverton was in the breakfast room when she went downstairs.
He stood when she entered. “Good morning, Your Grace.”
He only called her Kathryn when they were alone. She called him Dulverton all the time. Maybe that was something she could change tonight? She could call him Heh-REET. Would he notice? And if he did, would he care?
Her husband was looking at her curiously, making her realize she’d never responded.
“Good morning, Dulverton.” She nodded at Thomas to pour her a cup of coffee.
Once she’d filled a plate with fruit, toast, and a ramekin with a coddled egg, Dulverton closed the newspaper he was reading and set it aside.
“Please do not stop reading on my account,” she said.
“I was finished.” He glanced at the clock.
Katie was instantly on edge. “I was told we would not leave until a quarter to eleven.” She sounded resentful to her own ears.
But Dulverton didn’t appear to notice. “Correct,” he said, as curt as ever. He glanced at the footman. “Please go and see if the dowager plans to join us this morning.”
“At once, Your Grace.”
“You have not ridden since coming to Briarly,” Dulverton said once they were alone.
Katie looked up, surprised he’d initiated a conversation. Had he done so in the past? Only to chastise her, she thought.
“I have been occupied exploring and gaining my bearings.” She didn’t mention the other reason—that she’d hardly felt confident enough to enter her husband’s stables and demand a mount without his permission—because she was revolted by her own timidity.
The last thing Dulverton needed to know was how much his displeasure terrified her.
The duke’s austere face was neither approving nor disapproving.
Katie experienced one of the bizarre flashbacks to the night before and hastily lowered her gaze, as if somehow Dulverton might see that she was imagining his face—more specifically, the expression on it—when he was looming above her and moving inside her.
His eyes rarely left hers, unless it was to inspect her body with a hungry avidity that sent thrills through her.
He left the candles burning, sometimes lighting even more, evidently comfortable in her bedchamber now that there was nothing on the walls to offend his sensibilities.
Plenty of expressions flickered across his normally impassive face when he was in her bed: raw carnality, sensual satisfaction, and masculine possessiveness, and so forth. One of her favorite expressions was the one he wore for the few seconds when he achieved release, when bliss transformed him.
Now he was looking at her as if she was a stranger, and not a very interesting one. He was certainly a stranger to her and seemed determined to remain that way. Betje was deluded to think he wanted more. And Katie was deluded for hoping Betje was right. The best thing she could do is—
“I purchased a mount for you,” Dulverton said, the words pulling her from her unhappy thoughts.
“You bought me a horse?” she said stupidly.
“Yes.”
“Oh. Well, thank you.”
His piercing gaze slid away and then he cleared his throat. “After church we will go for a ride.”
She felt a twinge of irritation at his dictatorial manner but swallowed it down. After all, she wanted to go riding. She was accustomed to going most mornings in the country and had missed it greatly. “I would like that.”
He grunted. “Finish your meal.”
Again, she gritted her teeth but obeyed him without causing a fuss.
A moment later he spoke again. “My mother says she will accompany you on morning calls next week.”
“Correct.” The word slipped out before she could stop herself.
If Dulverton noticed the mocking echo of his own favorite word, he gave no sign of it.
“Two of the neighboring gentry are widowers, so you will not want to leave cards with them. Both have estates touching Briarly so I will make the necessary gesture,” he said, shocking her with his unprecedented garrulousness.
Before she could come up with a response, Thomas entered. “Her Grace begs your pardon, but she will not be attending the service this morning.”
Katie found it passing strange that Betje would ignore an opportunity to get out of the house. She was a woman who enjoyed company and had mentioned her active social life at Spenwood with longing.
If Dulverton found his mother’s decision unusual, he did not show it. Instead, he looked at the clock.
Katie glanced at her half-full cup of coffee with regret and tossed her napkin onto the table and stood. “I am ready.”
Whatever talkative muse had seized Dulverton at the breakfast table deserted him in the carriage and they made the short journey to the church in silence.
The vicarage sat just on the edge of the village of Colton, which was comprised of a few dozen cottages, a quaint inn called the Sleeping Boar, a smithy, a post office, and a tiny mercantile shop. Katie assumed the town had had no reason to grow any larger given its proximity to Lyme Regis.
The carriage deposited them outside the vicarage at one minute before the hour and most of the pews were full as they made their way to the front of the small church.
Katie was not surprised when Dulverton led her to a private box.
It was elegantly appointed with red velvet cushions on the wooden seats, the walls of the box ending just above Katie’s chin.
The top edge had a narrow strip of stained glass that was framed by intricately carved wood.
The slight amount of concealment that was afforded by the high walls of the box was not quite enough to ameliorate the feeling of being watched, so it was only after the service began that she was able to relax and sneak surreptitious glances at her surroundings.
The church was as elegant and snug as a little jewel box and was obviously lovingly cared for. The intricate arched stained-glass windows, she saw by one of the brass plaques, had been donated by a Duke of Dulverton in 1701.
There were six private boxes, two large ones on either side of the aisle and two smaller boxes behind each of those. The two boxes behind Katie and Dulverton were filled by large families.
The large box across the aisle was every bit as lovely and ornate as Dulverton’s, but it was empty and only one of the smaller boxes behind it was occupied. A modestly garbed woman who looked to be the same age as Betje sat alone.
The woman caught Katie staring and smiled at her. She felt flustered but her lips naturally curved upward before she hastily turned away. After that encounter, she kept her attention on the vicar until the service was over.
It seemed to Katie that the entire congregation was lingering when she and Dulverton exited the church.
Her husband stopped in front of the vicar and two women and turned to Katie.
“This is the Reverend Adam Nicholson, Mrs. Nicholson, and his sister, Miss Dorcas Nicholson. Reverend, this is my wife.”
“It is a pleasure to meet you,” Katie said, smiling at the trio as they bowed and curtsied.
“The pleasure is ours, Your Grace,” the vicar said. “And may I offer you both my sincere congratulations.”
“Thank you,” Dulverton said stiffly.
“It is always such a delight to see faces in the private boxes,” the vicar went on.
“And this summer they will all have occupants,” his wife chimed in. “It will be the first time in two years that Lady Grimsby will be with us.”
Katie stiffened at a name she had not heard in five years. Jasper’s grandmother lived here? How did she not know that?
“Is aught amiss Your Grace?” the vicar asked, a notch of concern between his eyes.
“No, no, just a goose walking across my grave. The, er, Countess of Grimsby lives here?” she asked faintly.
“She only spends a portion of each summer here,” the vicar said. “And these past two years not even that. She has been on the Continent with Lord Jasper, her grandson, and his wife—who was very ill and unfortunately died. We’ve recently heard her ladyship will arrive at the end of the month.”
Jasper’s wife was dead?
“Do you know the countess?” Miss Nicholson asked politely.
“Er, no, we have never met,” Katie said.
The vicar turned to the duke and started talking about something else.
Katie blocked out the man’s voice, her thoughts on Jasper’s grandmother. Or Jasper, rather. Would he be accompanying his grandmother?
Good God. That would be a disaster! She was finding it difficult to get enough air. What were the chances she would move right next door to Jasper’s grandmother?
When Katie had first gone to London, she’d been terrified every day for a month that she would encounter Jasper. Thankfully, he had taken his new wife off on a Grand Tour and she’d neither seen him nor even heard any gossip about him in almost five blissful years.
If the countess rarely came to her estate for more than a brief visit it was unlikely that she would bring her grandson with her. Wasn’t it?
Out of the corner of her eye Katie saw the woman who’d been in the private box. Rather than stop and speak to the vicar or Dulverton, she slipped past without a word. Mrs. Nicholson followed the woman’s progress with narrowed eyes, her lips tightly pursed and her cheeks a fiery pink.
What on earth was that about?
Katie didn’t have a chance to think about Jasper or the mysterious woman as the next twenty minutes were consumed with nonstop introductions to at least forty people who had waited to meet her and greet the duke.
Not until she was back in the carriage with Dulverton did she recall the woman. “Who was the woman in the private box across the aisle?”
Dulverton’s jaw flexed and he said, after a pause, “That was Mrs. St. Clare, one of my tenants.”
Katie wanted to ask why a mere tenant had a private box, which were usually reserved for neighborhood gentry, but his expression was even more forbidding than usual, so she held her tongue and tried to think of anything other than the possibility of Jasper showing up on her doorstep this summer.
Less than ten minutes later Dulverton was handing her out of the coach. “Will an hour be enough time to change into your riding clothing?”
“A quarter of an hour will be plenty of time.”
His eyebrows rose, but after a brief hesitation he nodded and said, “Very well,” before turning away to say something to one of the grooms.
Becky was not in Katie’s room when she reached it, so she rang the bell. She’d just removed her spencer when her maid arrived, no longer garbed in her church finery.
“You must have hurried back,” Katie said as Becky helped her out of her gown. “I’ll want the dark green habit as I’m going riding,” she added.
Becky nodded. “We didn’t have to face the neighborhood gauntlet that you did after the service.” She disappeared into the dressing room with Katie’s gown.
Katie sat and removed her earrings.
Becky returned and laid the habit out on the bed. “It is a pretty little church, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Mr. Court said that His Grace’s grandfather purchased the windows.”
“Oh, you rode with him to church?”
“Yes, along with Mr. and Mrs. Cranston.”
Katie smiled at her friend’s red face and defensive tone; clearly Mr. Court was a sensitive subject.
A glance in the mirror showed Katie that her own face was more than a little flushed with excitement. She was delighted to be going riding—it had been more than a week.
You’re more delighted about who you are going riding with.
That was true, too.
It seemed that Becky wasn’t the only woman in the house who’d lost her sense over a reserved, haughty, unfathomable man.