“I suspect that’s a problem you’ll not have to worry about anymore, Mother,” Lady Katherine said.
Adrian frowned. What did she mean by that? Why would the Duchess no longer have to worry about disagreements with her husband? Had it something to do with Lady Katherine’s marriage? That was the only thing that was about to change.
Whatever Lady Katherine had meant, it seemed Adrian was not going to find out. The Duchess gave her a sharp shake of the head, frowning, and Lady Katherine looked down at her hands as if she had been rebuked.
Adrian was left with the feeling that something had been communicated, something he had failed to understand. Had it been important?
There was nothing he could do about it if it had. His mind refused to latch on to anything. All he could think about was Lenora.
The way she had smiled at him when she’d finally, finally allowed herself to open up to him.
The way she had refused to speak ill of her employers, even as they treated her with callous cruelty.
The way she had said so many thoughtful and insightful things, making him realize that members of the serving class could be—probably often were—so much smarter than he had ever realized.
The way she had taken an interest in everything he had had to say, even when they had both known that she shouldn’t be doing so.
Could she really have been in love with Jimmy all this time? Could he have failed to see such a fundamental truth about her?
What would he have done if she were still here?
Would he have told her the truth about how he felt?
No, he thought. I couldn’t. Not if she loved someone else. It wouldn’t be fair to trouble her with my feelings if I knew she was happy with him.
So he wouldn’t have had a chance to tell her anyway.
But at least she would have been alive.
Chapter 16
The rest of the day passed in a blur. Adrian distanced himself from Lady Katherine and her mother as soon as breakfast was over, claiming the need to write a letter to his own mother.
“Of course,” the Duchess said, breaking into a wide smile. “You’ll want to tell her all about the plans we’ve made for your marriage, no doubt. Take all the time you need, Lord Galdhor.”
“But won’t she want to meet me?” Lady Katherine said. “Perhaps we should send a carriage and have her brought here, Mother. She could be here when Father returns, and we could have our first supper as a family together.”
“Now, Katherine, there’s no rush,” her mother assured her. “Lord Galdhor will want to take his time in making his arrangements. We don’t want to take things too quickly. After all, a young lady only marries once!”
Adrian nodded, knowing he could ill afford to alienate either of the ladies. Not now that he planned to go through with this marriage. “I will be down for supper,” he assured Lady Katherine, who wore a slight pout. Now that she had been assured that the marriage would take place, it seemed, she had abandoned her fearful stance for her usual sulk.
Wonderful.
Once he had reached his own room, he sat quietly trying to think. The fact that Lenora was gone for good seemed to haunt him. He tried to think of other things—how painful it would be to be married to Lady Katherine, for example—but his ache for Lenora kept creeping in.
I’ll never see her again, he thought miserably. I’ll never hear her laughter. I’ll never be able to let her know that she was the only thing keeping me sane, day in and day out, in this cold manor, surrounded by these social-climbing women.
As the sun began to sink, Adrian dressed absently for supper. He imagined Lady Katherine was probably choosing a gown with the utmost care, but Adrian didn’t give a damn what he wore anymore. He had no one to impress. He knew already that Lady Katherine wanted him for her husband. What difference did anything make?
He was first to the supper table as usual, and, as usual, he waited for the others to arrive before taking a seat. He made his way to one of the tall windows and gazed out at the grounds, thinking back to the very first evening he had spent here at Brackhill Manor.
The night of the Ball.
The night I first saw her.
If he had known then how everything would go, how he would fall for Lenora and how she would be snatched away from him, would he ever have come back here? Would he have exposed himself to such pain?
Of course, I would.
I would always come for her. No matter what. Everything else that has happened—every way this is going to change my life forever—has been worth it, only for the sake of knowing Lenora.
“Lord Galdhor.”
He spun around.
“Lord Jonathan McLean, Duke of Brackhill.”
“Your Grace.” Adrian bowed. “You’ve returned to the manor.”
“Indeed. It does feel as though I’ve been away for half a lifetime,” the Duke smiled. “And I hear you are to wed my Katherine!”
“Yes, Your Grace. With your leave, of course.”
“Of course, of course. I’m sure you’ve realized by now that I find it exceedingly difficult to say no to my wife and daughter.” He smiled indulgently, and Adrian thought that here, perhaps, was a member of the household he might actually be able to like. The Duke seemed like a kind enough man, even if, in Adrian’s opinion, Lady Katherine could have benefitted from a little less indulgence.
“I’ve very much appreciated your hospitality in allowing me to stay at your manor while getting to know Lady Katherine,” Adrian said. “It really is a magnificent place.”
“Do you know, I find it a bit drafty, myself,” the Duke chuckled. “But it has its charms, certainly.”
Adrian nodded. He had had the same experience, although he had never thought it appropriate to say so. “And may I express my condolences as well.”
The Duke cocked his head. “Condolences? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“On the loss of the chambermaid,” Adrian explained, feeling foolish. He had felt Lenora’s loss so acutely all day that he had forgotten that it wouldn’t be such a big event to the other members of the household. It probably didn’t even register on the list of things the Duke was concerned about.
But the Duke paled. “What do you mean?” he asked. “What loss? What chambermaid?”
Adrian felt suddenly out of his depth. “Did you not know?” he asked. “Perhaps I’ve overstepped, Your Grace, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be the one to give you the information, if nobody else has.”
“Which chambermaid?” the Duke insisted.
Stunned by the man’s intensity, Adrian stepped back. “Well—Lenora,” he said. “I’m sorry. I thought you would have been told. She was kicked by a horse and—and killed. I’m so sorry.”
He was afraid that the Duke would be angry at him. Instead, the man stood there gaping for several seconds. Then he let out a low moan, pulled out a chair, and collapsed into it, his face buried in his hands.
“Your Grace?” Adrian frowned.
At that moment, Lady Katherine and the Duchess entered the room, dressed in their supper finest.
“Father!” Lady Katherine ran to the Duke and knelt beside him. “What is it, Father? What’s wrong? Are you ill?”
The Duke wrapped an arm around his daughter, but didn’t speak.
The Duchess looked over at Adrian. “What happened?” she asked, an accusing note in her voice.
“I—I don’t really know, to be honest with you,” Adrian said. “He was fine when he came in. Joking with me, even. And then I expressed my condolences about Lenora—the maid—and—”
“Oh,” the Duchess said. She rested a hand on her husband’s shoulder. “Perhaps he ought to go to bed early. We can have our family supper tomorrow. Maybe we should all go to bed, in fact. Katherine, darling, go to the cook and let the kitchen know we’d like to take our meals in our chambers tonight—”
“Wait, hold on a minute,” Adrian protested. “I don’t understand what is going on. This is His Grace�
��s first night home. I haven’t been able to speak with him at all. If Lady Katherine and I are to marry, why are we putting this conversation off? Wouldn’t we do best to have it as soon as possible?”
Lady Katherine looked as though she thought Adrian was making sense. “You know, Mother, maybe we should try,” she said softly. “If we wait—”
“You know as well as I, Katherine, that your father is in no condition for such a conversation tonight,” the Duchess said sharply. “Do as I say now. Go to the kitchen.”
Lady Katherine seemed to want to argue further, but she bit back her words and disappeared through the dining room door.
“I’m very sorry, Lord Galdhor,” the Duchess said. “My poor Lord Husband is very tenderhearted. I’m sure you understand. Katherine has the very same trait, inherited from him.”
Adrian could see that the Duke was a tenderhearted man—it was the quality in him that had led to his daughter being so spoiled. But he had seen no sign of the same virtue in Lady Katherine. If anything, she had a tendency to be mean spirited. He did not contradict the Duchess, however.
“Did I do something wrong?” he asked. “I truly never meant to upset His Grace. And perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned Lenora at all. I know it wasn’t my place to inform him of that loss. I assumed he already knew.”
“Well, no, he didn’t,” the Duchess said. “I had planned to discuss it with him after dinner. We will have a new hire to make, eventually, but I didn’t want that conversation getting in the way of the more important one—our Katherine getting married.” She gave the Duke’s shoulders a squeeze.
The Duke didn’t raise his head from his hands. For the first time, it occurred to Adrian to wonder whether the man was crying. Crying for a servant? He had thought this whole family far too cold hearted to mourn the loss of someone of Lenora’s station. Clearly, however, he had been wrong.
Of course, he himself had spent the whole day crying for a servant. It was, in a way, a relief to see that her loss had affected somebody else as strongly as it had him. Right now, the Duke looked positively inconsolable.
But he still didn’t understand.
Empathy was a good thing, of course. And the knowledge that someone else cared that Lenora was gone—someone other than Jimmy, who Adrian was sure was grieving too—that was also good. But why was this hitting the Duke as hard as it was?
Wasn’t that odd?
Adrian knew it was odd. He had spent the day concealing how affected he had been by Lenora’s death, because there was no way to explain it without admitting that he was in love with her. He very much doubted that the Duke’s grief was similarly motivated, though. So what was behind it?
Because in this instance, at least, the Duchess was right. The Duke should have been happy. His daughter was going to be married. He might have felt sorry about the member of his staff who had died—he was a good man—but to let that sadness exceed his happiness at his daughter’s marriage?
It was unusual.
Why was he reacting this way?
The Duchess bent to her husband. “Let’s retire,” she said quietly. “I understand your feelings. But we don’t need to let Lord Galdhor see this. The poor young man has been making plans to marry our Katherine. He’s excited. He was looking forward to speaking with you.”
The Duke nodded. “Of course,” he said, but his voice broke when he spoke. “Of course, Lord Galdhor. I’m so sorry about this, truly.”
“Not at all,” Adrian said automatically. He didn’t mean it. He wanted answers. The Duke seemed to care an unusual amount about what had happened with Lenora and, taken in pairing with the fact that Lady Katherine had always despised her, Adrian had more questions than ever.
His thoughts were interrupted by Lady Katherine’s return. “The supper will be sent upstairs in an hour,” she announced. “Unless—Lord Galdhor, perhaps you and I ought to take ours on the lawn? Out under the stars? It’s a beautiful night, after all, and I know how you love a picnic.” She looped her arm through his and smiled up at him. “We could bring Henderson.”
“No, I don’t want a picnic,” Adrian said, disengaging himself. “I’m sorry. Forgive me, Your Grace, but I want to understand what’s going on here.”
The Duke looked up, and Adrian saw that his eyes were red. He had indeed been crying.
What could account for it? What could explain the fact that the Duke, head of this household, had so much of his emotion invested in a single chambermaid? Adrian thought of himself as a kind and caring man. He was good to his servants. But he couldn’t have honestly said he even knew the last names of all the chambermaids serving in his household.
And why would I? We never interact. It’s nothing against them, and I certainly don’t wish them ill, but we don’t know one another as people. They have their lives, and I have mine. They don’t miss me while I’m at Brackhill, for example, and I don’t miss them.
But the Duke seemed as if he was going to miss Lenora. As if the loss of her would make some great and fundamental difference to him personally.
“I’m sorry, Lord Galdhor,” he said. “I know this is not what you were expecting from my return. I’m sure you were eager to get along with your wedding plans. I’ve had a very long day of travel, you see, and then to hear about the poor girl’s plight—well, I find it sad. I’m sure you can understand that. She’s been a member of my household for many years.”
“I can understand that,” Adrian said. “And the last thing I wish to be is unsympathetic, Your Grace. I was saddened too, when I heard what had happened. I knew the maid in question. We had spoken on several occasions. She was…uncommonly bright, for someone of her station.”
“She was a bright girl, wasn’t she?” the Duke said. “I had her educated, you know. Right alongside Katherine. I wouldn’t have wanted her mind to go to waste.”
“That was generous of you,” Adrian said.
“This is highly inappropriate,” the Duchess said. “Lord Galdhor, I apologize, but I must insist you stop questioning His Grace. He has just returned home from business. He is tired. And you are overstepping your bounds. You are a guest in our house, after all.”
What could he say? She was right. He was a guest here. He had no right to his curiosity. He had no right to answers.
And yet, he wanted them.
He would not give up on this, because everything had been so strange from the moment he had arrived here. Because he had been fighting through the strangeness, trying to find anything resembling a comfortable future.
Because he was signing the rest of his life away to these people and taking Lady Katherine home with him to be his wife, granting what was so obviously her most fervent wish. Condemning himself to a lifetime of mediocrity in the service of these people’s happiness.
And because he had loved Lenora, and he would never be able to say those words aloud to anybody.
For all those reasons, he knew, he would continue in his pursuit of the truth here. He would find out what the cause of the Duke’s grief was. And for that matter, he would find out why Lady Katherine hated Lenora so much. What had the chambermaid done to this family to cause such passionate responses from everyone involved?
He felt as if he owed it to her to find out.
“I’m sorry, Your Grace,” he said, addressing the Duke, ignoring the Duchess and Lady Katherine entirely. They would put up a fight, he knew, and he had not the energy. The Duke was his best bet when it came to getting real answers here. “I know that I’ve overstepped the bounds of congeniality here, and I do apologize for that.”
“Think nothing of it, Lord Galdhor,” the Duke said. “Goodness knows we’re putting you through enough. You expected a completely different evening, and it’s only natural that you should have questions.”
“Yes, very well, it’s natural to have questions,” the Duchess snapped. “That doesn’t mean we’ve invited him to ask whatever he wants.”
The Duke glanced up at her. “In this instance, woman,”
he said, somewhat coldly, “I believe it is you who are overstepping.”
She looked at her feet, cowed. “I forgot myself,” she said quietly. “And yet…and yet, is it for the best to encourage this conversation? When you are so tired, and so overwrought? Would it not be better to allow everyone to get some rest and gather their wits? Surely we will all be able to speak more productively when we’ve rested.”
“I feel perfectly fine, thank you,” the Duke said.
A Game of Chess With the Marquess Page 21
