Chapter 4
Thomas, anticipatory as always, opened the door just as she put her foot on the last step. For a second, his smile of welcome faded as he glanced at the man on the steps behind her. His face smoothed into an effortless expression, and he bowed from the waist.
“Lady Sarah,” he said. “Welcome home.”
Sarah began to remove her gloves one finger at a time, sliding the silk from knuckle to nail slowly, a task requiring so much concentration that she’d needn’t look at Mr. Eston.
“And my mother, Thomas? Is she well?”
She counted ten agonizing beats of her heart before he answered. Ten, in which she wondered if he was going to hang his head low and murmur the words she so dreaded to hear: Your mother, Lady Sarah, is dead.
Twelve more beats, and Eston moved to stand closer.
“She has not awakened, Lady Sarah,” Thomas finally said.
“She has not rallied?”
“No, Lady Sarah.”
“Or eaten anything?” she asked.
He shook his head.
Hope was the one emotion she found difficult to quell entirely. Every morning upon awakening, she wondered if a miracle had transpired. And perhaps it had, simply because her mother had survived the night.
“I regret, Lady Sarah, that there has been no change.”
She nodded. The news was not unexpected. “At least we will not be traveling to Scotland, Thomas,” she said.
The underbutler studied the floor with great precision, as if to measure the flagstone squares. His hands were clasped at his back, and he rocked back and forth on his toes. When he looked back at her, his eyes were watery.
“The duke has reconsidered, then?”
“Yes,” she said.
She looked up at Eston, wishing she could banish him from Chavensworth. There were too many tasks for her to accomplish, too many duties that required her attention. Who had time for a husband?
He only smiled at her.
Eston was too large for the space. His shoulders were a bit too broad to be average, his height too great to be normal as well.
His clothes were quite well tailored, the fabric of his suit a fine twill.
His waistcoat was a bit on the plain side, merely black silk.
A rather somber garment altogether, as if he’d been observing a period of mourning.
Had he? She knew his name, and the fact that he was an inventor of sorts, and that he’d sought her father out as an investor. He’d had a good childhood. Beyond that, she knew absolutely nothing about the man to whom law had linked her.
“What is it you’ve invented?” she asked abruptly. “Was it worth giving up your life?”
“Are you saying that our marriage is going to end in my death?”
Thomas made no effort to suppress his look of surprise.
She shouldn’t have spoken to Eston at all. She bit back her sigh, and said, “Mr. Eston is my husband, Thomas. You’ll please accord him all courtesy.”
“Of course, Lady Sarah,” he said.
“I would appreciate it if you would keep the knowledge to yourself, at least until I have the opportunity to speak to Hester and Margaret.”
“Of course, Lady Sarah,” he said, before turning to her husband. “A wagon arrived this morning, sir. Are those your belongings?”
“If they’re piled high with crates from Italy, they are,” Eston said.
Thomas glanced at her. “We thought the duke might have sent them, Lady Sarah. Shall I have the crates unpacked, sir?”
“I would prefer that you didn’t,” Eston said. “I shall attend to the chore soon enough.”
She’d learned more in the last minute than she had in the entire journey from London.
Perhaps she should use Thomas as an interpreter of sorts.
What would the poor man do if she turned to him, and said, “Would you ask him, Thomas, exactly what he expects from this marriage? Does he realize I have no intention, whatsoever, of being intimate with a man I do not know?”
But, of course, she wouldn’t. She was, if nothing else, a proper and well-reared lady.
She turned and walked down the hall to what had once been the Summer Parlor. In the last year, when climbing stairs had become too difficult for her mother, Sarah had had the room converted to a sitting room and bedchamber. She slid the pocket doors apart slowly.
Hester, her mother’s day nurse, pressed a finger against her lips, then gestured with her other hand for Sarah to enter.
Sarah came into the room quietly, closing the doors softly behind her.
Her heart sank when she looked at her mother.
“Thomas said she’s not awakened in all the time I was gone.” Even her whisper sounded too loud.
“No, my lady, she hasn’t. And Margaret tells me the nights are the same.”
Hester was an older woman of indeterminate years.
Her hair, once vibrantly red, had faded to a rust color.
Wrinkles ravaged her skin, and age had grayed the whites of her eyes.
Despite her age—or perhaps because of it—there was a calm implacability about Hester.
But the true reason Sarah had hired Hester was the look in the older woman’s eyes, a warmth revealing her caring nature.
Hester granted her affection without reservation.
She’d never met a stranger, she was fond of saying, and it was for that quality more than any other that Sarah had made her the duchess’s nurse.
Sarah sat on the straight-backed chair kept beside the bed for just such visits as these.
Her mother had not been well for years. In the last six months, however, the Duchess of Herridge had become so frail she was a mere shadow of herself.
Her complexion was pale, almost waxy, and her lips had a bluish tinge.
The hands resting on the top of the coverlet were so white and thin that Sarah could see the tracery of veins beneath the skin.
Her rings had long since been placed in the duchess’s jewelry casket for safekeeping.
Lowering her head, Sarah kissed the back of her mother’s hand, wishing she could warm her in some way. Wishing, too, that her father was at his wife’s bedside, if not to say a final farewell, then at least to pretend to care.
Her mother’s breathing was labored. At the end of each struggling breath, Sarah found herself inhaling deeply, as if to infuse her mother’s lungs with air.
“What can I do?” she whispered. The question was addressed to God, to her mother, to Fate itself, but Hester answered.
“Go on as you have,” Hester said kindly. “God gives us trials and tribulations to test us, Lady Sarah.”
Just how many trials and tribulations did one life deserve? Her mother loved a man who didn’t care about her affection. She’d lost four children before they’d drawn breath.
The door opened suddenly, surprising her. She glanced over her shoulder to see Eston standing there, accompanied by Thomas.
Would he not give her any privacy, even here?
Hester stood, but Eston waved her back in her chair.
He didn’t speak, merely entered the room softly, to take a stance behind Sarah.
He placed his hand on her shoulder, and she flinched from his touch, even as she realized it was a gesture of support.
Despite her rebuff, however, his hand remained, and she gradually relaxed, feeling the warmth from his palm permeate the fabric of her dress.
“What is wrong with her?” he asked softly.
“The physicians do not know,” she said. “One of them said it was a depression of the spirit. Another thought it might be a tumor of the inner organs. Or a deficiency of the heart.”
“Is there nothing that can be done?”
“If there is, I do not know it,” she said. “I’ve consulted with physicians, and wisewomen, and even a woman who read cards. All I have left is to find a witch.”
A moment passed before he spoke again.
“My parents died when I was a boy. Cholera. I’ve never thought about it before, but I don’t know what’s worse, not being prepared for the loss or watching as death happens in measures in front of you.”
She was startled by his candor. If she’d known him better, she would have answered him with the same honesty and told him that watching her mother die slowly was unbearable. She felt as if her heart were being torn out of her chest every day.
“You sit with her a great deal, I warrant.”
She nodded. “Wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” he said softly. “I would.”
“At least she will not be sent to Scotland.”
“Would your father really have done such a thing?”
“Yes,” she said. “He would really have done such a thing.”
She took a deep breath, stood, and faced him.
“But she will not be moved. Nor disturbed. She will be treated with love and care until the moment she takes her last breath. On this I swear, Eston.” Her look defied him to argue with her.
“I have no intention of moving your mother anywhere, Sarah. Nor in disturbing her one whit. On the contrary, whatever she needs, you have but to ask, and I’ll ensure it’s done.”
She nodded, unable to speak.
Finally, she turned, taking up her post beside the bed again. She would not cry. Not now. Not in front of him. Not in her mother’s room. But it took moments for her to regain a semblance of composure.
“When I think of my childhood, I don’t think of my father,” she said softly, remembering the comment he’d made in the carriage.
“I think of my mother, instead. Whatever I learned from my governess, she augmented. She had a wonderful imagination. She and I took long, fantastic trips to Istanbul, Russia, China, and America, even though we never left Chavensworth. I learned to speak French, so that when we imagined Paris, I could converse along with her. There was no happier child than I was. Nor spoiled, perhaps.”
“I doubt you were spoiled,” he said.
He didn’t look at her but continued to study her mother. Finally, he turned to leave the room, glancing back at her. “My name is Douglas,” he said. “What shall I call you? Lady Sarah? Even though you’ve lost your title on marrying me?”
“I haven’t,” she said. From the look on his face, she’d surprised him. “I’ve merely changed it. I’m Lady Sarah Eston now.”
“A duke’s daughter.”
“Yes. An accident of birth, if you will, Mr. Eston. Am I to deny it?”
“I wouldn’t ask it of you,” he said.
She was grateful for his smile. It tripped her annoyance and kept her from tears.
“Call me whatever you wish.”
He looked as if he would like to say something but changed his mind. She allowed him the privacy of his thoughts. She would not pull and push as he’d done to her. She didn’t want to know what he was thinking.
She looked beyond him to where Thomas still stood. He and Hester were certainly getting an earful. Thank heavens neither was the type to gossip.
“Please prepare the Red Room, for Mr. Eston,” she said to Thomas. There, far enough away from her own chamber that he would not be a bother. If she tried, she could even ignore the fact that her husband was living under the same roof.
Eston merely smiled, but instead of correcting her, turned to Thomas. “Ready the Duke’s Suite for me. I presume Chavensworth has one?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And move my wife’s things into it as well.”
The fact that she was in her mother’s sickroom kept her mute, but nothing could push back her anger or the fear following on its heels.
“I told you I would not come to your chamber.”
“And I told you I would not come to yours,” he said, still smiling. “Fate has decreed that we have a chamber large enough to share. Or are you telling me that what I imagine is not true? Is the Duke’s Suite a cramped closet?”
Hardly, since it occupied nearly half of the second floor. She remained silent, however, not divulging any information.
“Besides, I have always believed in beginning a task with the outlook in mind.”
“The outlook?”
“Being a married couple. Acting as man and wife.”
She hadn’t actually thought beyond getting home.
Perhaps she’d believed that once she was inside Chavensworth, the situation would magically rearrange itself, and he would disappear.
Perhaps she’d thought that her mother would be well and would banish him with her tinkling smile and a look that dared him to complain.
Perhaps she even thought that he would see the error of his ways and feel only shame for having taken advantage of the situation.
Instead, he was saying things like acting as man and wife.
“Are you insane?”
He didn’t look mad. In fact, he looked positively pleased. Dear heavens, what on earth did she do now?
He didn’t respond to her goad, and she wondered what he would do if she simply stood and walked from the room. Would he demand her return? Worse, would he make a scene in front of the servants?
She gave him a small smile, the same kind of smile she would offer to the upstairs maid when she finished a rather deplorable piece of mending of Chavenworth’s linen sheets. The effort was to be commended even though the result was not acceptable.
“Will your valet be joining you?”
“I haven’t a valet,” he said, his smile appearing to be a more genuine effort than hers. “I have no personal servants. I can cope quite well without people helping me tie my shoes.”
Had she just been insulted?
She might have asked him if her new husband hadn’t suddenly left the room, leaving her to stare after him.