Chapter Twenty #3
The duchess and dowager duchess might have swords out, but the current duchess was rather adoring of Winsome.
As a mother is often prone to do, she based most of her opinion of her new daughter-in-law on the effect the lady had on her son’s happiness.
Further, she’d never particularly cared for her nephew, St. John, who she found a rather oily and smarmy creature.
Once the duke and duchess were apprised of St. John’s villainy, the duchess’s regard for Winsome rose even higher.
As she said, while staring determinedly at the dowager, “When one with bad intentions attempts to pull one down, a lady with the requisite good breeding rises up to meet the challenge and refuses to be defeated.”
The duchess’s understanding that the dowager had been against the match made her even more firmly in favor of it.
So, in the end and despite her best efforts, it was perhaps due to the dowager that Lady Winsome was welcomed so enthusiastically into the Duke of Albany’s family as the new Marchioness of Manderbey.
Lady Marchfield came to the service and the breakfast. As usual, she hardly knew how to comport herself.
On the one hand, she must be happy that her niece was so well settled.
But on the other, she felt her pride pricked.
She had been certain that this time was the moment when her brother’s gross mismanagement of his household would lead to disaster.
It was not that she wished disaster on Winsome, it was that she would like to be finally proved right.
Lady Marchfield had been rather hopeful when she’d entered the duke’s house, as she knew Mr. Wicket was still on the premises.
At least one of her butlers had persevered.
She would pay off his debts and it was worth every pound and pence.
She could at least hold her head up high on that account.
It was a bit distressing that Mr. Wicket did not show himself, but she was informed he was currently bedbound with a terrible cold.
She cheered herself by remembering that even if he was abed, he was here.
That diabolical housekeeper had not been able to drive him out.
That she would discover later that all Mr. Wicket had done was live in the wine cellar could not take away the satisfaction she felt on the day of the wedding.
Lord Landry and his bride, Lady Edith, made a good showing.
They appeared delighted with one another.
Lady Edith laid out what Landry was to think and do, and Landry very happily thought it and did it.
She’d pointed out that the chicken fricassee that had come round would probably do no favors to his delicate stomach and he seemed grateful to be informed of it.
They would go on to raise a family in much the same manner—Lady Edith was their kindly despot and the rest of them her loyal servants.
As everybody knows, this arrangement tends to work very well when one person is driven to be in charge and the other has a mortal fear of it.
The only dispute that ever arose between them was when Lady Edith was apprised of just how much Landry was paying his butler after an endless amount of raises for services rendered of the guarding the door variety.
She might have got her way and reduced Marley’s pay to what it had been before he’d become gatekeeper of the door, but in the end that fellow had protected her husband so she let it be.
Marley retired with quite the hefty nest egg.
As was to be expected, all of Winsome’s sisters and their respective husbands were in attendance at the nuptials. As was perhaps not expected by some of the party, so were the various children that had so far been produced.
Grace’s son Miles was a young gentleman of six years old.
He was just at an age where he had a great wish to be manly and did his best with it.
His effort ended being a bit of a mixed-bag—at one moment he was gravely inquiring into the duke’s stables and the next he was collapsing in laughter over a face Isabelle made at him from across the table.
Isabelle herself was now a young lady of four.
She very much had acquired Felicity’s temperament and the duke remembered all too well that it had taken his eldest daughter some years to master her temper.
Isabelle was still in the midst of it and prone to becoming very red in the face when things did not go her way.
The things in question tended to center on desserts and going to bed.
Mr. Stratton remained shaken that she’d once told him she was going to run off and become a pirate, because nobody ever made a pirate go to bed.
He’d foolishly inquired if he would be missed.
In a very dark tone, she’d said, “Pirates miss nobody.”
Patience’s daughter, Lily, had just turned two and proved herself impossible at table.
She wished to be on her chair, then under the table, then wandering off to find Sir Galahad, then weeping over a piece of chicken on her plate and demanding to know who put it there.
She was finally sent down to the servants’ hall with Mrs. Right to cry about chicken down there.
All in all, it was a very jolly Nicolet party.