Chapter 10 #3
“You refuse to relinquish trade.” The dowager’s voice had dropped to barely above a whisper, which was far more dangerous than her volume.
“Your grandfather, the eighth Duke of Oxley, disinherited his own son for contaminating the family name with commerce. And now you sit at this table and announce that you intend to continue that contamination. That you will marry this woman.” She gestured at Josephine without looking at her, as though she were indicating a stain on the tablecloth.
“And carry on as a tradesman while bearing the highest title in the county.”
“I do.”
“Your father was a disgrace. Your mother is a Scottish nobody with mill grease beneath her fingernails. And you …” She gripped her napkin with one hand and her walking stick with the other, her frail body trembling with an anger that seemed too large for its vessel.
“You are an insult to every Duke of Oxley who came before you.”
Alistair’s expression did not change. “Every Duke of Oxley who came before me drove this estate into the ground. I intend to do rather better.”
The dowager stared at him for a long, brittle moment. Then she set her napkin on the table with practiced care as though laying down arms, pushed back her chair, and walked from the room.
The walking stick led the march, its sharp report against the uncarpeted stone of the corridor marking her retreat like the ticking of a malevolent clock.
Clack. Clack. Clack. The sound receded through the hall, growing fainter but never quite disappearing, and Josephine sat with her hands pressed flat against the table and her heart beating in her throat.
She would never be free of that sound. It lived in the corridors of this house like a ghost, announcing the old woman’s approach, marking her departure, and echoing in the silence she left behind.
It was the sound that had preceded the worst evening of Josephine’s life, the rhythm that had been tapping through the hall, and it visited her dreams with the faithfulness of a curse.
Do not think of it. Not here. Not now.
She clenched her hands and discovered that her palms were damp.
The girls sat in the stunned quiet that always followed the dowager’s storms, each processing the aftermath according to her nature.
Seraphina’s color was high, her eyes blazing with suppressed fury.
Arabella had resumed her serene perfection with a speed that spoke of long practice.
Juliet was watching Alistair with an expression of careful assessment, as though she were adding figures in the ledger she thought no one knew about, the one she had long since filched from the steward’s office.
And Genevieve looked as though she might cry or cheer and had not yet determined which.
“Well,” Alistair said, with a mildness that broke the tension like a stone through ice. “Shall we continue with dinner?”
A sound escaped Seraphina that might have been a laugh. She pressed her knuckles to her lips, and the brightness in her eyes shifted from anger to something warmer. “Yes. I believe we shall.”
The rest of the meal passed in a mood that bore no resemblance to the oppressive silences that usually governed the Oxley table.
Genevieve peppered Alistair with questions about the wedding.
Would there be flowers? Could she wear her blue ribbon?
And he answered with a patience that made Josephine’s chest ache.
Juliet asked a single astute question about the legal implications of a common license, and he regarded her with surprise and something like respect before explaining the process.
Arabella inquired after the vicar’s wife, whom she remembered as a kind woman from one of the services that had been held at the hall, and Seraphina ate her dinner with an appetite that suggested the dowager’s absence improved more than the conversation.
Josephine listened and allowed the contentment of the evening to settle around her like a garment she was not yet sure she was permitted to wear.
When dinner concluded, Alistair bid each of his cousins good evening with a warmth that would have been unremarkable in any other household but was extraordinary in this one.
The girls filed out, their slippers whispering on the stone, and then it was only the two of them in the cavernous dining room with the portraits watching and the candles guttering in their silver holders.
He moved to her chair and leaned down, close enough that she could catch the scent of wood smoke that clung to his coat.
“I would dearly love a visit from you this evening,” he murmured, his breath stirring the fine hairs at her ear. “In the ducal chambers. If you are willing.”
Her pulse leapt. She glanced at him in surprise, then dropped her gaze to the table, certain that if she looked at him, she would betray every thought in her head.
He straightened, offered her his hand to rise, and escorted her to the foot of the stairs before releasing her with a brief, warm press of his fingers against hers.
She climbed the stairs alone, her hand trailing along the banister, and thought of the walking stick’s fading percussion and the cliff that haunted her dreams and the man who would be waiting for her in a room she had never entered, and she could not decide whether the trembling in her body was fear or anticipation or some reckless, exhilarating blend of both.