Chapter Two
‘You really mustn’t go wandering off like that,’ Henry Paisley, freshly minted Duke of Glanyrafon, and long-suffering only doctor of Brexley, said sternly.
The woman looked up with wide eyes. ‘Why?’
‘Now, you know why,’ he said, trying to keep his voice severe, even as he pushed his dark brown curls from his eyes.
That was the trouble. Unless he really piled on the guilt, they never did anything he said—and they always promised they would, and then always crept off somewhere!
‘You know I’m giving you these rules because I want to keep you safe,’ Henry said, finding himself tempted to wag a finger and resisting the urge. ‘Everything I do is to keep you safe—all of you—and these restrictions are because I can’t trust you.’
She opened her mouth in mock horror. ‘You don’t trust me?’
Henry sighed heavily as he straightened to his full, rather towering, height. ‘No, Mavis. I do not. Now go back to the library and take your medicine.’
Mrs Mavis Curll, who was at least seven and eighty but refused to tell Henry her precise age, waggled an eyebrow. ‘I’ll only go if you accompany me. I always feel better with a handsome gentleman on my arm.’
It was impossible to stay angry at any of the residents of the Lodge for Gentlemen and Ladies of a Certain Age. Henry had tried to remain stern, fiercely so, for several months—ever since he had opened the place.
But there was something just so endearing about the ladies and gentlemen in his care. Their knowledge, their experience, their wisdom—it all combined to make them the most marvellous escape artists, and they did so with such smiles of innocence…
‘I put up with this in the spring and summer,’ Henry said warningly, taking Mavis’s arm and walking her into the building and down the corridor toward the library. ‘But in the winter—’
‘I know, I know, I could have a fall,’ Mavis said, waving a hand cheerfully as she grinned at a few residents coming the other way. ‘But you’ll always catch me, won’t you?’
Henry could not help but smile. Yes, if he could, he would.
If he had enough hands, arms, legs, brains, he would follow each of his residents around with cotton wool, desperately trying to keep them safe.
But he was just one man, and they’d had to let another nurse go only last week.
The ledgers just didn’t account for such things.
And he wasn’t going to charge his residents more—not when they had so little.
His stomach twisted in a painful knot but he tried to ignore it as they entered the library. ‘I will do my best to catch you, Mavis, but it would be a lot easier for me if you just stayed—Avril Vickery, what do you think you’re doing?’
Slipping Mavis’s hand from his arm, Henry rushed toward the elderly woman who was struggling with her skirts and had apparently been attempting to climb out of a window.
‘I just wanted a breath of fresh air,’ Avril said innocently, guilt all over her face. ‘Is that a crime, now?’
‘Well—’
‘I’ll have less of your cheek, young Henry,’ Avril said with a mischievous wink. ‘You may be a duke now, but that doesn’t impress me!’
There was so much to think of, so much to do, so much to organise.
So much to worry about.
Trying to push the sinking sensation away from his mind, he affixed a smile. ‘I quite understand.’
The place needed at least three more nurses, and someone to organise things for them all to do, he thought wretchedly.
And here he was, the owner of the place, wrangling with the elderly, trying to prevent them from escaping and slipping on the ice.
When he should be at his desk, working out how to afford coal for the fires until March…
‘Henry!’
He started and grinned weakly at Avril, who was glaring. ‘I do beg your pardon, Avril, I was thinking—’
‘But still, you have been far more preoccupied than normal,’ she pouted. ‘Even for you, Your Grace.’
Your Grace. They must be worried about him.
Not that Henry ever demanded the honorific. It seemed the sort of thing a fool would do, after a gentleman unexpectedly came into a title after slogging at medicine for a decade.
His mother had never even mentioned it. The granddaughter of a duke!
Never given a hint of it—not that the knowledge could have prepared him for the letter which had arrived less than a year ago.
Two uncles and his cousin dead in a shipwreck.
No more male heirs…except himself and his brother. And as the elder…
The recently inherited Duke of Glanyrafon tried to smile as best he could, keeping deep within him the doubts that had been plaguing him the last few months.
Inheriting a duchy had for a short time—mere days—been simply wonderful. The freedom it would give him—the power, not just to change his own life, but to better the entirety of Brexley, of those beyond. He could patronise artists and musicians, travel the world…
All the joy of such an inheritance had been swept away when the bills had started pouring in. Now the damned title was a millstone around his neck, one he ignored as best he could.
Henry’s heart twisted. Whenever he wondered whether he was doing the right thing by staying in Brexley, the small town nestled in the hills where he had been born and raised, he just had to spend more than five minutes in the company of his residents.
They were always able to see the world straight.
‘Medicine, Mavis,’ he said sternly. ‘Then let me listen to that heart.’
The older woman pouted, but swallowed a gulp of the tonic and sat quietly as Henry placed his ear over her heart. He closed his eyes, losing himself in the mechanical nature of his training.
Thur-thump. Thur-thump. Thur-thump.
His own pulse quietened. ‘Much better. Keep taking your tonic regularly—’
‘But this does not explain the preoccupation our young gentleman has,’ Avril was saying crossly, as though her inspection of him had been interrupted. ‘And I think I know what it is!’
There was such a triumphant air in her voice and knowing look in her eye that Henry froze.
Surely…surely she could not know?
He had done his best, the last few months, to keep the impending pressures away from the residents. The last thing they should have to worry about, he had told himself firmly, was whether or not they could afford dessert on Sundays.
They’d already had to cut it from dinners during the week, and no one had complained. Henry had been wracked with guilt when he’d made the decision the summer last year, but no one had mentioned a thing.
But could Avril have worked it out?
No money! It was ridiculous—a dukedom had fallen into his lap, but the estate had been mortgaged to the hilt and had debts pouring from everywhere. There was no money. Just a ridiculous title.
‘You think you know what it is?’ Mavis said, leaning forward in her chair.
Gossip, Henry thought ruefully. We’ll never be in short supply of that.
‘Our young Henry,’ said Avril victoriously, ‘has a lady friend!’
There was a moment of ringing silence, and then several things happened at the same time.
Mavis gave an exclamation of glee and clapped her hands together.
Avril beamed up at the Duke, absolutely certain in her statement.
And Henry laughed aloud.
A lady friend? He couldn’t recall the last time he had even thought about…well. Not since Georgiana. But that had been—what, two years ago now? Three years this spring. His stomach curled tightly, as it always did whenever he thought of the woman who he had thought would be his wife.
But he had far more important things to worry about. Like how they were going to replace the pipes when they eventually cracked, as was certain to, in the next six months. Then what would they do for water?
‘A lady friend?’ Henry said aloud with a forced chuckle. ‘The ideas you come up with, Avril!’
Avril’s face immediately fell. ‘You mean to say there isn’t one?’
He shook his head. ‘Not in the slightest.’
Mavis scowled. ‘And there you were, getting me all excited, Henry, telling us about your wedding.’
‘It wasn’t me who said anything of the sort!’ he protested, finally giving in to temptation and pointing a finger at Avril. ‘She was the one who—’
‘And why isn’t there a lady friend, eh?’ Avril cut across him, evidently uninterested in his blustering. ‘A handsome chap like you—’
‘Well-educated.’ Mavis nodded in agreement.
‘From an excellent family—’
‘A duke now, by all accounts—’
‘So?’ Avril demanded. ‘Why are you not finding a nice lady friend?’
Henry swallowed. It was the conversation his mother attempted to have with him every week, and he was not about to have it again. ‘Because,’ he said aloud with a genial grin, ‘how could I possibly fit another woman into my roster—it’s already packed with you two, and half the residents here!’
Their chuckles were good-natured and Henry felt his shoulders relax.
Because it was true in a way. Being the doctor and owner of a place like the Lodge was not just a full-time occupation—it was a lifestyle.
Henry could still remember the moment he had stepped into the mouldering main house, with its collapsed ceilings and damp-stained walls, only for the housekeeper to apologetically say that the Lodge was the only place on the estate even close to still standing.
Henry had hardly been able to breathe; he had already given instruction to open up the Lodge for the elderly and infirm in Brexley, his first step—of many, he had hoped—to serve the community that he loved so much. Now he was a resident with them.
Inheriting a duchy was all very well, but when it came with a crumbling manor and an even more crumbling Lodge house, Henry had planned to continue his medical practice in the town to provide for it.
That was, until Prinny—the Prince Regent!—had sent a rather pointed note, delicately explaining that dukes did not take wages.