Chapter 14 #2
Lady Temperance, one of Jessamine’s friends, sidled up to beside him. “Your Grace,” she said, holding up her glass in a toast. “I think we can safely consider today a success.”
“In some ways,” he said.
“In all ways!” She cast him a sideways glance. “You know, Rebecca would have loved it.”
At the sound of Rebecca’s name, his stomach dropped. Rebecca, William’s true mother. If she’d been here—if he hadn’t failed her—none of this would have been necessary.
Lady Temperance was still looking at him, expecting a response. She seemed like a kind girl, and she had most certainly said this in good faith, presumably thinking this would come as some sort of comfort, not as a condemnation.
“Thank you,” he said stiffly.
“We were never great friends, but she was exceedingly close with Jessamine.” Lady Temperance looked over to where Nicholas was now approaching Jessamine.
Instead of Andrew, it was Nicholas who made her laugh, her expression lighting up.
Something hot and fierce erupted in his chest, and he squashed it back down. He could not afford ferocity. For tonight, he must be the civilized, polished Duke. For William’s sake.
“Rebecca always knew that Jessamine would look after William,” Lady Temperance went on, and her words were knives in his chest.
Because he should have been the one Rebecca relied on to take care of William.
He was grateful she had Jessamine, of course, grateful that Jessamine would do so much for William’s sake.
Lady Temperance smiled, oblivious to the dark maelstrom in his chest. “I am so relieved you offered for Jessamine,” she confided.
“Just think what might have happened to her if you hadn’t.
I know she was determined to take William no matter what, but the world would have been so cruel to her if she had. ”
“I would not have allowed it,” he said curtly, knowing he sounded cruel, but unable to summon the softness Lady Temperance clearly thought behooved him as a savior to her friend.
“William would have been coming with me regardless. The marriage was the only solution I could think of that would allow Jessamine to remain at William’s side.
And Jessamine was at first reluctant to receive my suit.
Yet,” he added quickly, “as you can see, we deal very well together.”
Lady Temperance looked at him curiously, then looked back at Jessamine, who glanced over to them, her lips still wide in a smile that Andrew had not curated for her. At their perusal, she raised her brows and shrugged. Her smile didn’t falter.
“She does seem happy,” Lady Temperance said musingly. “Happier than I have seen her, to be sure.”
Andrew plucked two glasses of wine from the table and offered one to Lady Temperance. It was unbecoming of him, he knew, to be so eager for scraps of his wife’s past that she had not already shared with him, but he found himself curious about how others viewed her.
“Have you known her since she returned to London?”
Lady Temperance pressed her finger to her lips as she considered this. “I…”
“I know about the Minerva Club,” he reminded her.
“Yes, indeed.” Her brown eyes sparkled with amusement. “I remember how you came barging in, looking for William.”
Andrew recalled that moment, too, although it evoked very different emotions for him. Panic, despair, anger once again at his father for sending him away instead of letting him help Rebecca.
Knowing it had been too late had hit him so hard, he had not known how he had drawn breath from that moment onward. At first, he had told himself it was for William’s sake, for Rebecca’s, but now he wondered.
“I met her not long after she arrived in London,” Lady Temperance said.
“Lady Marwich was the one to recruit her to Minerva’s, of course.
She always has an eye for who might suit our little group well.
We became friends immediately. She was a little different, then.
Less used to the rigors of London, I suppose.
From what I understand, she grew up in a tiny village in northern Scotland, and for her, London felt too loud and too smelly.
” She giggled. “Ask her about the air in Scotland, and she will tell you.”
“Did she smile then?”
“Of course. One must always smile in Society. But not quite as she does now.”
Nicholas, damn him, made her laugh again, and she accepted the wine he placed in her hand.
“Not quite as she does now,” Andrew murmured, and as though she heard him, she looked up again.
Without thinking about it, he strode across the grass to take his place beside her, one hand on her elbow. A possessive hand, though he didn’t let himself think too much about that.
She glanced down at the contact, then back at his face, as though searching for a reason he had interrupted her.
There is no reason.
Only that he wanted to see her.
Eventually, she softened again and returned to her conversation, engaging laughingly with Nicholas, who was telling her stories of how he had looked after his second cousins, and all the pranks they had gotten up to. Andrew listened in silence.
His childhood with Rebecca had been very different. After his mother died, his father had hardened into the harsh man he had become. George, his elder brother, had always been a decade older, going to university when Andrew was a mere boy, then never quite returning in the same capacity.
Rebecca, only two years older, had become his best friend, his confidant. Her father, Andrew’s uncle, lived in an estate nearby, and they visited often. Even then, it was not the same light-hearted, playful relationship Nicholas was detailing for them.
He and Rebecca had hidden from his father’s wrath by making forts under the library tables, bringing under candles and reading each other extracts from their favorite books.
Rebecca had always liked poetry. She’d been a romantic, through and through. He had dreamed of escape, and always reached for the Atlas, to read about faraway places.
Then, as they’d gotten older, they’d fled into the garden and made their home behind the formal hedges. They had been everything to one another. For a time.
Every time he recalled what had happened, a sharp pang ran through him.
Jessamine looked up into his face with a frown. Are you all right? she mouthed.
He nodded, not wanting to tell her, and especially not here, when the eyes of the ton were on them.
“I should fetch William,” Jessamine decided. “He has napped long enough.”
“Do, do,” Lady Marwich said, making shooing motions with her hands. “Bring him out so we can welcome him to the world. William Kinley, Lord Merton.”
Andrew started at the sound of his subsidiary title being bestowed upon William. And yet—yes, it was right.
At least in this, if no other way, he could make Rebecca proud.