Chapter Seventeen
Grandmother, Father, and Mother made it through supper without yelling, throwing anything, or poisoning each other’s food. And Aunt Penelope managed to look only slightly likely to murder them in return. That, in Duke’s estimation, was both miraculous and reason for a rare bit of familial optimism. The night might not be a complete disaster. The uninvited individuals would leave for Lancashire in the morning, and all would be well again.
Duke trailed behind the Pack, his uncle, and his father as they made their way toward the drawing room, where the ladies had already assembled. He was still a few doors from their destination when he heard what sounded like his name being whispered.
He stopped and listened more closely. Then he heard it again. He looked around for the source and found Eve standing in a doorway, motioning him over. Odd.
Curiosity compelled him there every bit as much as the excitement of being in her company again. She tugged him a bit away from the doorway when he stepped inside. The room was lit, and the door was open, so there was no true impropriety in the arrangement.
His inward smile diminished when he saw an unmistakable look of distress on her face. “What’s happened?”
“I’m worried about Nia. She didn’t feel equal to joining everyone at supper. When I looked in on her while the other ladies went to the drawing room, Nia hadn’t eaten a single bite of anything from the tray that was sent to her. And she’s asleep again.”
Duke took Eve’s hand. It was a gesture meant to comfort her, but he’d also missed holding her hand. He was grateful for a chance to do so again. “If Nia’s feeling poorly, sleep is likely the best thing for her.”
“Except it’s so unheard of for her to be as tired as she has been the past few days, especially today.” Eve paced away a little, which pulled her hand from his. “In the past, whenever we’ve been reunited with the other Huntresses after an absence, she is bounding with energy, staying up far too late, gabbing and learning the latest from all the others. Instead, she took to her bed within an hour of our arrival.”
This was a significant change, then.
“I think she ought to be seen by a doctor, but I know she won’t admit it, and I know why.” Eve wrung her hands just above her heart, her entire posture one of nervous worry. She met his eyes but only for a moment. In that moment, he saw unmistakable embarrassment. “I need to ask you a favor.” She stopped directly in front of him and looked up at him once more, a hint of franticness now in her expression. “But you have to promise not to tell Artemis. She’ll turn this into a crusade, and that would be disastrous.”
“Tell me what you need, Aoife. I will do whatever I can.”
She took a tense breath, her hands still clutching each other. “Even if your prediction proves true about Colm and his parents not allowing us to leave a token of acknowledgment for the servants, we—we still don’t have enough to pay a doctor. If I tell any of the Huntresses that, they’ll begin asking questions about the true state of our finances, and I’ll be faced with the impossible choice of either lying to them or revealing the truth to Nia and breaking my promise to our parents.”
“Your parents ought not to have required you to keep this from her. I suspect you do not care to withhold confidences from your sister.”
“From anyone ,” Eve said, shaking her head. “I’ve told you of my tendency to speak without thinking overly much. I find myself doing an awful lot of thinking lately.” Her hands stopped twisting around each other but remained clutched in front of her heart. She held his gaze with a pleading one. “Would you—” She took a bit of a shaky breath. “Would you pay the doctor?” She immediately and frantically added, “I will reimburse you, I promise. I don’t know how, but I will manage it eventually.”
He took her hands in his, lowering them. “You don’t need—”
“You’re going to say that I don’t need to worry about repaying the debt, that you’ve money enough and are happy to pay the bill.” She shook her head. “But I am tired of always taking and never being in a position to give to others. If I make good on this debt, then I will, for once, not be a leech, bleeding dry everyone around me.”
“ Always taking? You do remember the inn, don’t you? Without your cooking while we were there, all of us would have been in dire straits. You certainly weren’t bleeding anyone dry then.”
Her hands shifted into a more comfortable position in his. She hadn’t pulled away. His heart pounded out a pleased rhythm.
“Perhaps instead of remaining at Tulleyloch while my family attends the Season, I should find myself a position as a cook at someone’s house.” She smiled at him, but there was too much worry in the expression for him to believe the jest was anything but forced. She was trying to keep her spirits up in the face of anticipated humiliation.
“I was not going to say that you didn’t need to worry about reimbursing me for the cost of the doctor but, rather, that you needn’t worry about the cost at all. When a guest at a home grows ill, it falls to the host to fund the services of a man of medicine. No one would expect you or Nia to take on that obligation.”
She looked hesitantly hopeful. “Truly?”
In all honesty, there was a small fraction of a chance that he was remembering that incorrectly, but he didn’t think he was. He would sort out a means of discovering the established protocol without betraying Eve’s confidences. Should paying the doctor, in actuality, be the responsibility of the person who was ill, Duke would quietly see to it.
“Do you feel the doctor ought to be sent for tonight?” he asked.
“I’m not so worried that I don’t think it could wait until morning.” She squeezed his hands and even smiled a little, though not quite enough for her dimple to reappear. “Thank you for this. I just knew you’d help me, but I felt guilty asking, seeing as your family burdens you so much with demands on your time and energy.”
“There is a great difference between you asking me if I will help you and my family’s unwavering requirement that I help them.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Are you saying I should be more demanding?”
She had the most uncanny ability to bring him right to the brink of laughter. Not many people did.
“Are you not allowed to laugh, Dubhán Seymour?” she asked, much to his surprise. It was almost as if she had read his thoughts. “You assume a look now and then that I can describe only as ‘inclined to laugh but not permitted to.’”
She was sorting him rather easily, wasn’t she? He liked that she seemed so interested in doing so. “I don’t laugh out loud very often. It has never been in my nature to do so.”
“But you aren’t unhappy, are you?” She seemed to genuinely want him to be happy.
“I am not any more unhappy than anyone else.”
With a soft smile, she asked, “Are you happy right now?”
He was with her again, seeing her smile, holding her hands. “Right now, I am decidedly happy.”
Then Eve did something he never thought he’d see from the lively Irishwoman: She blushed. And that blush set his heart racing and his mind back to their final evening in the inn.
He brushed his free hand along her cheek, mesmerized, as always, by her expressive silvery eyes. She slid closer but with the air of one who didn’t realize she’d moved. They were drawn to each other; there was no denying that.
And her lips were as tempting as ever.
But before he could so much as lean closer to her, voices echoed in the corridor. Eve stepped back, her hands dropping free of his.
“This could be difficult to explain,” she whispered.
While theirs wasn’t a truly inappropriate arrangement, provided his inclination to kiss her was not inadvertently revealed, explaining the reason for their private conversation would be difficult without revealing the secrets she’d been sworn to keep.
He motioned her over to the wall the door was on. They stood side by side, their backs pressed against the wall. They wouldn’t be spotted unless someone stepped inside and peeked around the door.
“But musical magic, of all things?” Grandmother’s disparaging tones could not be mistaken. “Surely we could spend our evening in a more sophisticated manner.”
“This gathering is for the young people,” Aunt Penelope replied as calm and even as ever, though Duke knew well the telltale sounds of tension in her voice. “It’s for them to choose the evening’s entertainment.”
“You would relegate your duties as hostess to a child?” Grandmother was likely wrinkling her nose the way she so often did.
“Mrs. Jonquil is not a child. She is perfectly capable—”
“How very like you, Penelope.” That was Father, which meant the discussion in the corridor might soon be a full row.
Duke glanced at Eve, hoping she wasn’t as horrified as he feared she would be. She was concentrating, but for once, he couldn’t read her expression in the least.
“And just what is it you mean by that?” Aunt Penelope asked.
“Finding ways to benefit from the efforts of others,” Father said. “The horses you snatched away from Ballycar, your greediness regarding Fairfield, now this.”
“The horses I brought here were mine,” Aunt Penelope said tightly. “Fairfield was always mine. And this house party is not about you, Liam. Neither is it about you, Mother. Nor myself or Niles.”
“Then, what, pray tell, is it about?” Grandmother asked haughtily.
“For the first time since Colm returned from war, he has a group of friends he is at ease with, who accept him as himself. And he has brought them here, something he hasn’t done since joining the army. And when he is with them, I see less of the hardened soldier and more of my Colm. If these young people want to play musical magic or move all or any other game you two consider beneath you, they will have free rein to do so.”
“Colm is a war hero,” Grandmother said. “He doesn’t need childish—”
“You haven’t the first idea what Colm needs,” Aunt Penelope declared firmly and fiercely. “Or Duke.”
“His name is Dubhán,” Grandmother snapped.
“I call him what he asks me to call him,” Aunt Penelope repeated to her. “I have found that listening when he speaks is a very enlightening experience. You should try it sometime.”
“How dare you, Penelope.” Father was clearly upset.
Eve’s neutral expression slipped into a wince. More often than not, Duke’s family managed to make everyone uncomfortable.
“Someone should stand up for your son,” Aunt Penelope said. “These are his friends, too, and they have remained his friends despite this family’s absolute inability to keep the peace among ourselves. What will happen when you have cost him every connection he has, Liam? Do you think he will thank you for the lonely future that would stretch out in front of him? War isn’t the only thing that hardens a person.”
“If his friends are so flighty as to abandon him because his family isn’t perfect, then he could likely do better.” Mother added that observation. Good heavens, they were all going to come to blows.
“I do not for a moment think they will be driven away,” Aunt Penelope said. “Duke is a protector; he always has been. At some point, he will decide that he cannot bear to watch our animosity hurt his friends. What remains to be seen is if he will save his friends by cutting them off or by cutting us off. And lest you all think otherwise, I include this entire family in my use of the word us .”
Duke was all but holding his breath. There was a painful truth in what his aunt was saying. He’d never invited the Pack to spend a school holiday at Writtlestone, not wanting to subject them to the inevitable misery. His current decided-on approach was going to be distancing himself from his parents.
“If the young peoples’ choice of entertainment is not to your liking,” Aunt Penelope said, “you needn’t join in. You can retire to your bedchambers and ponder on the question of when you mean to leave.”
The click of shoes on the floor echoed an angry rhythm, growing quieter. Duke would guess it was his aunt who had stormed off.
“She laid the blame for all this at our feet,” Mother said.
“She never does acknowledge how implacable she is.” Grandmother clearly didn’t realize stubbornness was a trait one often inherited from one’s parents. “If not for me, I daresay, Penelope would have long since destroyed this family.”
If not for Grandmother ? They had demanded his entire life that Duke save the family, and either they didn’t even realize what he’d done for them, or they simply chose not to give him credit for it.
“I’m of half a mind to remain at Fairfield,” Father said, “if only to show her that she can’t dictate what I do.” He sounded just peevish enough to make good on the threat.
“Half a mind?” Grandmother repeated. “I’m of one mind on the topic. Penelope has seen herself as the head of this family for far too long, but I do not answer to her.”
“ We do not answer to her,” Mother said.
“You two may include yourself in this if you wish,” Grandmother said a little dismissively. “Penelope clearly thinks she has won this battle already. She will soon enough realize this battle is only just beginning.”
Three sets of angry footfalls sounded after that.
“Do you think they will really make trouble?” Eve asked.
Duke wished he could honestly say no. “The Seymours have had some legendary battles over the years. They are never pleasant.”
“But they have, thus far, kept their quarreling mostly behind closed doors, or at least away from everyone else,” Eve said. “There was some snipping and grumbling during supper but not overly much. Perhaps that will continue to be their approach.” Though she phrased it as a statement, there was an obvious question in it.
“I hope it is,” was the most reassurance he could offer, and even it rang hollow.
“They are going to wreak havoc on the house party, aren’t they?” Discouragement had entered her voice and expression.
“My family generally manages to ruin most everything.” They had, after all, only just ruined a tender moment he’d been enjoying.
“No wonder you’re hoping to achieve a bit of distance from the feud,” she said. “Of course, even here you clearly can’t entirely escape it.”
“I cannot fully do so without having a home of my own,” he said. “And I haven’t sufficient income for that.”
A hint of misgiving touched her expression; he realized quickly the likely reason why.
“I am not stretched thin, nor will I be burdened should I be called upon to pay a doctor after all,” he assured her. “Paying for a residence is a much larger expenditure.”
“You would tell me, wouldn’t you, if I were asking too much?”
“Of course I would.”
But she didn’t seem convinced. “Your family asks too much of you, and you don’t tell them.”
“They will likely begin suspecting as much when I ‘join the enemy,’ as my parents and grandmother are likely to describe the situation, and potentially bring to Fairfield a larger battle than the one my grandmother is now planning.”
“And they truly intend to stay at the house party, no matter that they weren’t invited?” An anticipated misery clouded her usually bright and joyful eyes. “How do your aunt and uncle usually act during these battles?”
She had more than enough worries weighing on her. It was inexcusable for his family to add more.
“Uncle Niles usually steers clear of the fray.” Duke had always envied him that. “Aunt Penelope manages a tense calm, for the most part. Family gatherings aren’t precisely pleasant for either of them.”
“Your grandmother sounded as if she means to intentionally escalate hostilities among and with her children.”
A twist of dread clutched at his stomach. “She will almost certainly do precisely that.”
“This is likely my last time among the Huntresses and the Pack, and it’s going to be miserable.” The disappointment in her eyes skewered him, though he didn’t think it was truly aimed at him. She stepped toward the door. “I think I’ll follow Nia’s lead and get a bit of rest.”
“Tell me if you decide she ought to have a doctor before morning,” Duke said.
“I will. Thank you.” Eve left with so little of the joie de vivre she usually had.
This was what time with his family did to people. Eve had managed to endure nearly a week with his grandmother, but one evening with the rest of the quarreling Seymours had visibly and heartbreakingly dampened her spirits.
“Duke is a protector,” Aunt Penelope had said. “At some point, he will decide that he cannot bear to watch our animosity hurt his friends.”
That animosity had already caused Eve pain and had done so here, where he was supposed to have been free from the bickering for a time. He had no expectation of Fairfield being an unbroken idyll should his aunt and uncle allow him to live with them. But he’d not even had a single minute of freedom from the feud since his arrival.
He was never going to truly escape it.
Aunt Penelope was absolutely correct. Duke would do what he must to protect his friends from his family.