Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
“Your Ladyship!” called out the young lady’s maid, running down the garden path, before Louisa could take the children any further from the house. “Your aunt bids me tell you that there is a coach approaching and she believes it to be the Duke and Duchess of Wexford.”
“Damien and Seraphine?” exclaimed Louisa, not really expecting this news and both pleased and sorry to receive it. “Already?!”
Melissa nodded.
“Mr. Harper has a spy glass and told Lady Esher that he could see the Wexford crest on the carriage.”
“Tell my aunt we’ll join her very shortly, Melissa. Come Fanny, come Ezra, our expedition to the woods can wait until later.”
It had been barely four days since they had written to the honeymooning pair. If they were here now, that meant that they must have set off immediately after receiving the letters from Rosemere. Louisa wondered how the news of her betrothal would have been received.
The Duke of Northwick said that he had written only in the most factual terms, and Lady Esher’s letter had said little more. Louisa had intended to write to Seraphine too but found herself unable to put pen to paper and explain recent events in a rational way.
“Is Mama coming?” asked Fanny delightedly as Louisa took the children’s hands and steered them around on the path, “and Papa too?”
“Mama! Mama!” Ezra began to shout, jumping up and down in his excitement. “Where is Mama?”
“Come, we’ll go and see for ourselves,” replied Louisa, glancing up at Rosemere and spotting the tall, dark-haired figure watching them from the window of the library.
The duke was still in there, where they had left him half an hour earlier. He had come in to the library while Louisa and the children were building a fort with blankets and throws from the downstairs cupboards, just as Louisa used to do when she was small.
Using chairs, tables and heavy books to weigh down the corner of blankets, they had constructed a whole maze of cushion and book-filled caves within which Louisa told them stories and led them in adventures.
For a few hours in the library with only Fanny and Ezra, she had almost been able to forget her problems and live within the children’s games.
While Benedict seemed far more amused than disapproving as he looked over their “fort,” Louisa felt embarrassed to be discovered like that and immediately announced that she was taking the children out for some fresh air, snatching up Ezra in her arms before he could begin his usual demands for the duke to come too.
Benedict… Louisa often thought of him like that now, rather than as the Duke of Northwick. When they talked, he also insisted upon her addressing him by his Christian name, something that felt natural on the one hand but disturbingly intimate on the other.
“Are you going to marry Uncle Benedict?” Fanny suddenly asked her as they approached the house, waving her little hand at the library window without self-consciousness.
“Am I…Oh, well…I…”
Louisa stumbled over her reply, shocked to hear the question put so bluntly, when all the adults in question had taken care not to speak of the matter before the children. Perhaps the nursery maids had not been quite so discreet, forgetting how sharp Fanny’s ears could be.
“Can I be a bridesmaid?” continued the little girl blithely. “My dolls can be bridesmaids too so you will have lots of us.”
“We must speak to your mother about all that,” Louisa managed to answer, glad to reach the conservatory door and get back into the house.
Gertie was waiting in the hallway for them with brush and comb in hand, ready to tidy up the children before their parents’ arrival.
Fanny stood obediently beside Lady Esher for the nursery maid’s ministrations but over-excited little Ezra shrieked and broke away from Louisa’s hand, racing across the hallway.
“Don’t want the brush!” he protested as Gertie pursued him.
“Don’t you want to look tidy for your Mama and Papa?” Louisa tried to reason with him but he shrieked again at Gertie’s approach and evaded her again.
“What’s all this then?” asked the Duke of Northwick, suddenly stepping out of the library, his voice kindly but authoritative.
“Don’t want the brush, Uncle Benedict!” gabbled Ezra rushing over to him as if for protection from all the ladies bent on tidying him up. “Don’t want to!”
“Shall I do it, Ezra?” Louisa tried to coax the boy but he only shook his little head vigorously.
“Well, my hair needs brushing,” Benedict announced, holding out his hand to take the brush from Gertie and then crouching down by Ezra. “Would you do it for me, Ezra? You can pretend I’m one of Aunt Beatrice’s ponies.”
The duke put the soft-bristled little brush into Ezra’s hand and offered his head. With a giggle, the child pulled the brush through the man’s thick dark hair several times, creating far more disorder than order in doing so.
“He is so good with that child,” murmured Aunt Beatrice at Louisa’s side. “I would never have believed it, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. He will make a very good father some day, I think.”
Louisa nodded, blushing slightly at the final sentence since she now would likely be the mother of the duke’s children. She could not deny that he was very good with Ezra, and Fanny too, although the little girl liked spending time with Lady Esher and Louisa just as much.
“Am I done?” Benedict asked, grinning at the boy and receiving a nod. “Well then, it is your turn.”
As the duke took the brush, Ezra now offered his head willingly.
“I’m a pony too,” he asserted as his hair was quickly brushed into order.
“Good horse,” laughed Benedict, patting the boy’s head as he stood and looked over at Louisa and her aunt, brush in hand.
Looking at his wild-haired handsome face, Louisa felt butterflies in her stomach and a strange urge to go to him and smooth down those disordered locks with her hands. Where did such feelings come from?
Running the brush through his hair quickly, the duke restored it to order and returned the implement to the maid.
“Will we do?” he asked Louisa, glancing down at Ezra beside him and then back again.
“You both look very well indeed,” she pronounced sincerely.
Offering his arms to the two ladies, the Duke of Northwick led their party out of the front door to await the coach now fast approaching the house down the main driveway.
“Fanny! Ezra! My little darlings, how well you look!”
Seraphine jumped down from the carriage without waiting for any assistance and crouched down, opening her arms for the two children to throw themselves upon her with great enthusiasm, chattering nine to the dozen and all at once.
“You must see our fort, Mama…”
“Uncle Benedict is a pony…”
“I have new ribbons for all my dolls…”
“I had chocolate and berries and lemonade…”
“We ate at the big table…”
“I rode a big horse…”
Laughing as he jumped out of the coach after his wife, Damien pulled an aggrieved face.
“What about me?” he complained to his family “Am I entirely forgotten?”
Reaching up, Serapahine pulled him down by his lapels, apparently not caring at all for dignity or watching eyes in this reunion. Kissing his wife’s cheek, he then embraced both children, before scooping them both up in his arms and standing up with an exaggerated groan.
“My word, how heavy you have both grown! Your Aunt Beatrice must have been feeding you very well indeed. Do you have nightly nosebags like my best hunters after a long hack?”
“No, we all eat from plates, Papa,” laughed Fanny, throwing her arms about her father’s neck and kissing him. “Even Ezra.”
Standing up again, Seraphine joined the group embrace for a moment, before apparently finally remembering the adults, and smiling at them.
Louisa ached to see the happiness and mutual love on the faces of the little family before her, especially the look of devotion shared between Damien and Seraphine. This was the kind of life that Louisa had wanted for herself, and now could never have.
“I’ve been thinking of you every day, Louisa,” Seraphine said as she hugged her cousin, “and you too, Aunt Beatrice. I hope my little monsters have not been too much of a trial.”
“Not a trial at all, my dear,” Lady Esher assured her, taking her own turn to embrace Seraphine. “They have both been an absolute joy.”
“Is that so, Uncle Benedict?” asked Seraphine mischievously of the Duke of Northwick, her young son’s words not lost on her, even in the excitement of first reunion.
Lady Esher chuckled at this question.
“His Grace has had a most determined little shadow these past weeks,” she observed.
“Ezra is a fine young boy,” returned the duke with a smile. “I have enjoyed his company, although I don’t think I could have deterred him even had I wished it.”
The Duchess of Wexford touched the duke’s arm in grateful acknowledgement, as though none of this surprised her at all.
“You do have quite the talent for inspiring devotion, don’t you, Benedict?” she teased him, with the briefest look of knowing in her eyes. “Now, let’s not stand about out here. I believe there are twelve dolls with twelve new ribbons that I must see…”
Several hours later, after a tour of the library fort, an inspection of dolls, a visit to the ponies and a hearty luncheon, Seraphine laid a hand on Louisa’s arm.
Fanny and Ezra had just been taken away back to the nursery to rest, and hopefully allow the adults to do the same, Aunt Beatrice announcing that she certainly intended to lie down for an hour while she could.
“Come and help me tidy myself up, Louisa, while Gertie has charge of the children,” Seraphine whispered. “We have so much to talk about and may not have another such opportunity again soon.”
Arm-in-arm they ascended the stairs and entered the suite set aside for the Duke and Duchess of Wexford, Seraphine throwing herself down onto the large bed with a loud sigh and Louisa then following her as though they were children playing.