Chapter 2
She and Pippa were to share a room, as they always did, and Penny looked around it for a long moment. It would only be for three more nights. After that, she would share Kendal's room, or more likely have her own splendid suite for him to visit.
"It will be very peculiar for you to be married and gone," Pippa said, picking up on Penny's mood as they so often did for each other.
"Perhaps you can come live with Kendal and I," Penny said, watching her twin out of the corner of her eye. Only someone who knew Pippa as well as Penny did would have seen her tiny flinch. "You seem to get along quite well."
Pippa crossed to the window. "Of course we get along. We are to be... to be brother and sister, are we not? You should want us to get along."
"Of course."
Sally, their maid, bustled out from the dressing room where she had been unpacking their trunks. "There you are, Miss Penny. Let me get you out of that gown and into your dressing gown so you can rest."
"Very well." Resigned, Penny followed Sally into the dressing room and allowed the maid to strip her down to her chemise and bundle her in her new dressing gown. It had been purchased for her trousseau and the silk-lined velvet was both warm and comfortable.
Suitable for a duchess.
Penny limped her way over to the bed and lay down with a gusty sigh. Pippa finally turned away from the window. Had she been gazing out it all this time?
"Is it your joints?"
"Always." Penny rearranged herself to a more comfortable position and sighed. "I ought to have known the cold weather would be a problem."
“You should have Kendal take you to Italy now that the war is over,” Pippa said. “You’ve said you want to travel, and I have heard it is always warm there.”
“Italy would be lovely.” She wanted to see the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum so she could imagine what it had been like on that terrible day Mount Vesuvius had exploded, or travel to Florence to see the art and sculpture.
But Italy with only Kendal's company did not sound appealing. What would they talk about other than commonplaces? He would likely want to stay within the English colony there while she would want to explore the countryside and see the sights.
If there was someone else she thought might be a better traveling companion, Penny ignored the thought.
She shifted herself again, moved the covers aside, and began to gently stretch her cramped muscles. She had learned from experience that not moving at all only made the pain worse later.
"Perhaps Mama would allow you to accompany us if we went to Italy,” Penny said. She glanced at her sister while pretending to be absorbed in her exercises.
A shutter closed on Pippa's face. "Oh, I would not want to intrude on you and your new husband. I shall be quite content at home."
Penny nodded, entirely unconvinced, but unable to stay awake much longer. When the fatigue struck, it was almost worse than the pain. She slid under the half-turned covers and lay her head down.
"Sally, wake me in time to dress for supper, please."
"Of course, Miss Penny," was the last thing Penny heard before she slid into an exhausted sleep.
When she finally awakened, it was full dark outside and Sally was lighting more candles around the room. To Penny's surprise, Pippa was still in the window seat, gazing out into the darkness.
"Are you all right?" Penny asked.
Her sister's head whipped around to stare at her. For a frightening moment, her twin looked like a stranger, her eyes clouded with whatever thoughts had taken her so far away from this room.
Then Pippa laughed and said, "Of course. Why wouldn't I be?"
Penny frowned, realizing that Pippa was in an old, familiar wool dressing gown faded to a dull gray and frayed on the edges while Penny wore splendid silk and velvet.
"Why on earth did you bring that old thing, Pippa?"
Her sister shrugged, that unfathomable look crossing her face again. "It's comfortable."
"But..." Penny knew she and Mama had ordered new clothes for Pippa as well when they had chosen Penny’s trousseau. Why was she not wearing any of them?
Sally stuck her head out of the dressing room. "Miss Penny, the bath is ready for you."
"Thank you, Sally." Penny swung her legs from the bed and stood up. She already felt better after her rest, and the hot water of the bath should soothe her swollen joints.
She was very afraid she knew why her twin was so quiet, but she could not think how to solve it.
If Pippa had developed a hopeless infatuation with Kendal, there was nothing to be done about it now.
The wedding was bearing down on them like a runaway carriage and Penny could not see how to get herself—or her twin—out of its path.
Feeling at loose ends once Penny and her family went upstairs to rest, Hugo wandered to the billiards room, where several of his cousins and uncles had already set up a game. They welcomed him with handshakes and backslaps, and one of them pressed a cue into his hand.
“I hope you’ve been practicing, my boy,” his uncle Pengarth boomed. “I’ve a feeling I could win today.”
“Where would I practice aboard ship?” Hugo said, concealing his sly grin as he bent over the table. In one smooth motion, he broke the formation of the billiard balls, sending two of them skittering into pockets on either side of the table. The men around the table groaned.
“It’s a matter of geometry, gentlemen.” Hugo paused to chalk his cue. “And a sailor always knows the calculations to bring himself safely home.”
As the game proceeded, Hugo relaxed in the uncomplicated company of his family as they teased each other good-naturedly. Brandy and port were produced by a footman, and the game became more riotous as the hour passed.
“We must have a wager!” Cousin Rawleigh slapped the surface of the billiards table, his voice already slurred with brandy well before the evening meal.
Hugo flinched and turned to glare at his boisterous cousin, who shrank back, shame-faced.
“Oh. Beg pardon, cousin. I forgot.”
With a nod, Hugo returned to his shot, but his concentration had cracked.
His father had nearly lost their patrimony to gambling debts, and only his agreement with mill owner Josiah Montgomery had saved the family from ruination.
The Duke’s heir would marry Montgomery’s eldest granddaughter before her twenty-fifth birthday in exchange for payment of the Duke’s gaming debts and a carefully controlled allowance.
Even the death of both principals to the agreement could not break it. Montgomery had been far more shrewd than Hugo’s father when it came to matters of business.
Oliver did not allow gambling under the roof of Gaitskill Castle, and Hugo agreed with him. The penalty Oliver had been forced to pay for their father’s fecklessness was too high.
His concentration was further strained as the conversation turned to the wedding, which was to be held on Christmas Eve, three days from now.
“She looks far better than she did even this past spring,” Uncle Pengarth said before shaking his head. “Shame about her heart.”
The tip of Hugo’s cue scraped against the felt of the table, and he straightened abruptly to stare at his uncle. “What?”
His uncle turned to look at him, nodding gravely. “Her heart. It was a rheumatic fever, you know.”
Hugo had little knowledge of medicine, but even he knew what that meant. A rheumatic fever often damaged the patient’s heart, leading to their early and untimely death.
The cue clattered from his hand onto the table before Hugo snatched it back up to complete his shot.
He hit the cue ball too hard and the targeted ball went spinning uselessly across the table.
Rawleigh crowed at finally getting a chance to play, and Hugo stepped back until he was nearly touching the wall.
Uncle Pengarth arched a puzzled eyebrow at him before turning to speak to a cousin on his other side.
Any resignation about the wedding Hugo had clung to shattered into pieces, showing how fragile it had always been. Penny had survived her illness, but her survival was only fleeting. She could potentially die at any moment, betrayed by an invisibly diseased heart.
He made his excuses, scarcely knowing what he said, and walked out of the room to stand irresolutely in the hallway.
It now made sense why her family was still pushing the marriage so strongly even after her illness.
As the Duchess of Kendal, Penny would have the finest medical care in the kingdom available to her.
Specialists. Spa towns. Her father’s mere riches could not purchase the kind of access the Kendal name would grant her.
She would be coddled and pampered her whole life.
However much there was left of it.
Any childish dreams he had had of winning her away from his brother were dead. He could never offer her the life of safety and luxury she would have with Oliver.
She must marry Oliver. It was for her own good.
Hugo set his jaw as he turned his steps towards Oliver’s library.
He would leave in the morning. Now that he knew how close to death Penny had been—how close she still was—he could not stand in the village church and watch her wed Oliver.
But before he left, he must be certain his brother was prepared to care for Penny the way her health would require.
Hugo tapped on the door of his brother’s library and opened it, not bothering to wait for Oliver to respond. A nearly-drained glass of brandy sat on the small table at his brother’s elbow, and Hugo nodded at it.
“Drinking already?”
Oliver scowled. “I needed to think.”
“About what?” Perhaps Oliver was having qualms about the marriage given Penny’s health.
His brother was silent for a long moment before he shrugged and said, “About the wedding, of course. The vicar sent a note confirming the time, and the ladies of the church are already decorating.”
Oliver’s careless tone grated on Hugo’s nerves, and he crossed to the table that held the decanters. “I think perhaps I shall join you.”