She was trying on a new dress and had colors rising to her cheeks as her dressmaker smoothed the hem of the dress with her palms, adjusting the length. The petite Asian woman bowed courteously before Kent, but he didn’t bother throwing her a glance either.
“Where is it, Mother?” he asked again.
The smile on her face slowly slipped away. She stared bleakly at him for a second and waved her hand to dismiss her dressmaker. She waited until they were alone in the room before she stepped towards him. “You would raise your voice at your own mother out of anger, Andrew?” she said. “I thought I made a better duke out of my own son.”
“Just tell me where it is, Mother,” Kent muttered under his breath.
“Where it is? I don’t even know what you speak of.”
Louise’s portrait, Kent almost yelled at her. He heaved a sigh to calm his rage instead and stepped towards her. “You have been decorating recently, Mother.”
“Aye, that I have. It gives the servants more work to do instead of gossiping.”
“But the manor was perfect as it was,” he grunted under his breath.
He had expected her not to respond, but she chuckled under her breath and said: “Aye, it was. Your father would say the same words the countless times I have brought new items into the house. There is no disputing the ingenuity that went into the architecture and decoration of the manor since it was built a century ago, yes, but things–all things–become stale if they are not done away with over time.”
She said the last few words while staring intently into his eyes, making him think she was talking about something entirely different. He heaved a sigh afterward, deciding to sit while she continued to stare at him. “Will you tell me where it is?” he asked her. “And don’t you tell me you don’t know what I am talking about, Mother.”
She beamed at him, sitting on the large bed a few feet from the chair he sat on. “It was high time, Andrew,” she whispered. “It was high time it was replaced with something less…less….”
“Less beautiful than the woman I loved?”
“No, less addictive. A boring old house wouldn’t keep you attached forever. You think about her all the time, you refuse to accept that she is gone here–outside of your mind where it matters.”
“Mother….”
“Think about it, Child. You wouldn’t even mention it. You knew I may have something to do with its disappearance, but you couldn’t get yourself to mention her name or her portrait. Isn’t it high time you spoke about her and let go?”
It was becoming too much for him to bear. Kent looked away, hiding the hurt in his eyes as his mind swept to images of Louise beneath him as he made love to her. She was gone–he had told himself this a lot of times in the past two years, but he wasn’t ready to stop loving her.
“Andrew?”
He got up without sparing the dowager duchess a glance. “I want it empty instead,” he muttered, stepping towards the door.
“Pardon?” she said behind him.
“The wall,” he said back, curtly glancing over his shoulder to look at her. “Get Josephine–anyone–to get rid of the new painting, Mother. I want the wall bare for now.”
She nodded quietly while he made his way out of the room. He was at the door when he heard her clear her throat behind him. “There is going to be a dinner party in the manor in a few days, Son,” she stated. “You would have guests to attend to and socialize with.”
He wasn’t sure there was anything his mother, the dowager duchess, could do that would shock him anymore. He sauntered out of the room without replying to her.
He agreed with her previous statement, though. Perhaps it was time he replaced his pain with something else–the possibility of finding true love again.
***
Andrea stood quietly in the dimly lit corner beside the hallway, watching as the duke sauntered down the stairs to the dining hall, oblivious of her presence. She was supposed to head to the kitchen after she left the dowager duchess’ chambers, but she had stayed where she was, waiting for him.
There was no denying what her feelings were for the handsome Duke of Kent. She had secretly doted on him long enough to know that his favorite meal was grilled ham or tuna with slices of vegetable and some butter. She had grown fond of waiting to see him whenever he stepped into the house after long travels, or whenever he woke up to the rich set of meals she had often personally instructed the cooks to make for him.
She did these without ever being appreciated for her efforts–the duke didn’t know she worked passionately to satisfy him, anyway. He only saw her as the child she had always been; the petite, lanky and wretched daughter of the manor’s housekeeper. Andrea sometimes wished that she could change her background, but there was nothing to be done about that. What she could live with was the sorrow of secretly loving a man that would never be hers.
She watched him turn the corner and disappear down the hallway with a broad smile on her face. His hair and beard had grown longer in the past few weeks, and she wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t paid any attention to them. He hardly shaved until the dowager duchess subtly mentioned how unkempt he looked and how the late Duchess of Kent would have hated to see him so unpolished.
The late duchess–Andrea thought about her with a snort on her face. Because of Duchess Louise, the duke had hardly looked at any other woman the entire time that they courted. With each passing year and up to the moment they were married, the duchess had taken over the manor as if she owned it. The dowager duchess had fallen in love with her, too, but Andrea had seen through her deceptive nature. She had hated her. She had wished every day that she was out of the way so she could keep the duke to herself. The late duchess didn’t deserve him, and her untimely death was a fate well-deserved.
Andrea cleared her throat and stepped out of the corner as she noticed that the hallway had become absolutely quiet. She knew the gravity of being in love with the wealthiest and most powerful man in all of Kent and how foolish it was to nurture any possibility of being with him. It was even more deplorable because he hardly noticed her in a group or amidst the throng of servants in the house. However, he was hers now. She had waited patiently for him to accept his wife’s death and with the plans that were underway to make him socialize again, she was finally going to get a chance to tell him how she felt about him.
She slid down the hallway with joy. It isn’t going to take long again, Andrea, she whispered to herself. She was finally going to fulfill her fantasies with the Duke of Kent.
Chapter 5
The Duke’s Guest
Laura had been trying to avoid the duke for the past few days. It wasn’t as if he noticed, but she felt awful for speeding out of a hallway whenever she observed that he was close to it, or even convincing James and Bruce for days that it was better to play and study at the gazebo instead of in any of the rooms in the manor.
The reason she avoided him was simple. She had suggested to the dowager duchess that removing some portraits of the late duchess from the manor might help the duke to get over his late wife. Laura had made this suggestion to help him, but she had witnessed how enraged he was afterward and had felt remorseful. His fuming voice had woken her up from her afternoon nap as he asked Josephine where his wife’s portrait was.
To be candid, Laura hadn’t thought the dowager duchess would instruct that the large portrait in the master bedroom should be removed, but the deed had been done. Apart from the bedroom portrait, smaller ones in passageways and in the dining hall had been swept off the walls and replaced with paintings of houses, meadows, pets, and trees. The plan to shake the duke up a bit and force him to do something else apart from moping over his late wife was serious.
It made her feel awful, however, having to see the new paintings on the walls instead of the previous ones. Just a few hours ago, she had noticed James staring at the empty wall in the duke’s chambers after he had wandered into it as was often his habit.
“It is gone,” he whis
pered. “Mother’s portrait.”
She had stepped towards him, managing to smile at him. “The dowager duchess decorated a room in the manor just to hang all her pictures,” she explained.
“A room?”
“Yes. A secret room. Nothing would touch the beautiful portraits there. You can see them whenever you want too. I could request that….”
“Oh, it is okay, Miss Williams,” James interrupted. He seemed quite convinced by her words, but he stared at the wall again. This time around, he was smiling as he said the words, “It was just her biggest portrait in the entire manor, and I am used to seeing it here. I like to come here sometimes just to see her.”
“Oh, why, my lord? What do you talk to her about?”
“Portraits do not talk, Miss Williams,” he hissed, shaking his head at her. “I just stare, and that’s all.”
She pulled out her tongue at him, and he chuckled before holding her hand. “We should get you out in the field for today’s lessons,” she said, hoping to get him out of the master bedroom before guilt ate into her heart more than it already did.
Although James was only four years old when the duchess passed away, no one had ever considered that he remembered much about her. At that moment, standing beside him in the master bedroom and staring at a blank wall, she had considered how his mother’s absence might have affected him in the past years. Although she had done everything to make sure that he and Bruce never lacked attention or love, she feared that she might have ignored the possibility that he thought about the duchess or missed her sometimes.
As soon as they stepped out of the room, she had quickly gotten him out in the field. One of the servants had brought Bruce to her a few minutes later, and she had gotten them busy with drawing sketches on paper with crayons. She watched them have fun with the task and thought about the forthcoming dinner party at the same time. With the busy activities of replacing some furniture in the manor, an outsider would have surmised that the Duke of Kent was renovating. The dowager duchess had gotten her to write over thirty letters to various royal houses in Kent, inviting them to the party. More so, she had written to the family coffers, asking for disbursement of reserves to purchase new sets of dishes and cutleries and more furniture for the event.
Despite her reservations about the plan, Laura realized that she looked forward to the dinner party. It would be the first she would witness ever since she came into the service of the duke. More so, the dowager duchess might have plans of her own, but it was true that the party might force the duke to socialize. In recent times, she wondered how much more handsome he would look if he smiled more, or if he had someone he genuinely loved as he had loved the late duchess.
“Father!”
Laura unconsciously jolted out of her seat at the same time that Bruce jolted out of his and ran down the field into the duke’s waiting arms. She was surprised and so was James. It took the duke’s first son a few seconds before he trailed down the field to hug his father too.
“Y—your Grace.” Laura stammered, stepping out of the gazebo to greet him. “You wanted the young masters inside the manor?”
“Oh, no, Miss Williams,” he said, smiling at her. “I just thought it was high time I stopped watching them from behind windows. It is the perfect weather to be out in the open too.”
She frowned confusedly at him, but he shook his head before she could mutter a word in response. “Never mind,” he said. James interrupted them a second later, tugging at his shirt and blurting the words “Father, Bruce drew some very nice butterflies!”
“And I shall take a look at them.” Kent grinned back.
He exchanged an awkward smile with her before trailing behind James and Bruce, who led him to their sketches. He sat on her chair, staring at their drawings, while she stood behind him, feeling unnecessarily agitated. At some point, he picked up a crayon, added a few colors to the butterflies’ wings, getting Bruce to cheer heartily.
“Perfect now, isn’t it?” he beamed, ruffling Bruce’s hair. Bruce responded with a chuckle and picked up his drawings. He sped into the field, flipping his drawings at the poor butterflies that flew around him.
“Bruce! They aren’t the same!” James yelled, running into the field and laughing hysterically at Bruce’s naiveté.
Laura couldn’t hide the joy at seeing them so cheerful. She laughed heartily, too, especially at Bruce’s futile effort to get the butterflies to focus on his drawings. Soon, it wasn’t about the drawings anymore but about capturing the insects.
“Miss Williams?”
Laura closed her eyes and held her breath. She had almost forgotten about the duke standing a few feet from her.
“Your Grace?” she replied, turning to stare at him with a blank expression and with her eyes staring at her feet. Kent stepped towards her quietly and waited until there were only a few inches between them before he spoke. “I was hoping we could have a word,” he said.
She blinked rapidly at her feet. “It isn’t about the portrait, is it, Your Grace?” she quickly asked.
He was quiet, and so was she. It took a while before she brought herself to look at his face. He was smiling oddly as if he had finally gotten the clue to a complicated riddle. “It isn’t the portrait, or any portrait, Miss Williams,” he said.
Thank Goodness.
“I am aware that the dowager duchess had you writing letters to invite aristocrats to the dinner party. Accurate, yes?”
“Yes,” she responded quietly.
“And where does that put you? Do you think you would like to attend, being formally invited by the Duke of Kent?”
She froze. She had been staring at his lips as he spoke, but she drew her gaze to his blue eyes. “You—you want me as a—your—guest, Your Grace?”
“I can hardly tell what a guest is these days, but yes, I would love that you attend the party as my guest…not as some—uh, employee?”
She was speechless. She kept staring at him, noticing how the distance between them kept getting closer and closer. He surprised her by reaching for her hand. “If everything about the party is beyond me, Miss Williams, at least I can control who I want to see as a guest in my own manor,” he said. “Would you accept the invitation?”
“I—I—is—is this because of the children?” she breathlessly asked. She figured it was a silly question right after the words left her lips, but she clasped her lips shut and waited for a response.
“The children?” Kent said. “I doubt you would want them near a party with wines and alcohols. No, it isn’t because of them.”
“It is because of how I have found myself to be comfortable around my own employees–around you especially–than I would be around men and women that have only come to my home because it says in a letter that I want them to be.”
The image he painted with his words put a smile on her face. She stared at her feet again, beaming at the sight of her hand in his. “Very well, Your Grace,” she whispered. “It would be an honor.”
He nodded and slightly squeezed her hand before stepping away from her. James and Bruce stepped into the gazebo just in time, and he pulled them towards him, went on his knees and lifted them in his arms. Each of them tightly gripped his arms and cheered loudly.
Laura watched admiringly as he whirled around with them in his arms. Briefly, her eyes swept over the field in front of them to the manor, and she could have sworn that she noticed a brisk movement in one of the windows on the second floor.
“Come, Miss Williams. You should spin with us!”
James’ words drew her attention back to the duke before she could consider that they were being watched. She joined him, allowing James and Bruce to hold her hands.
Perhaps she overvalued the duke’s invitation, but what she experienced was a pleasant feeling of being accepted as a part of his home for the first time.
Chapter 6
The Dinner Party
The rest of the week went by quickly. By the time it was Saturday – the
day for the dinner party – the manor had become much more decorated than the previous weeks had witnessed. Just that morning, a giant sculpture of a bear had replaced the odd-looking carved tree that had been in the middle of the ballroom since Kent had been a child. He hated having to walk around the house and feel as if he was in the middle of a maze, but he had quickly given up the thought that he had any say about the party. He hadn’t even heard about it until enough invitations had been sent to every corner of the county.
At the moment, as greetings rose beneath him in the hall, indicating the arrival of the guests, he stood in front of the large mirror in his room, staring at his recently trimmed hair and beard. He looked different – he knew he did since he hadn’t really cared about his looks in the past two years.
With his looks and the warm smile on his face, everything seemed different, and it had nothing to do with the guests he was expecting.
It had to do with the beautiful Miss Williams.
He had no idea what he was thinking, approaching her like that and inviting her as his guest, but doing it had changed everything he thought he felt for her. Earlier, he was staring through the windows of his library at her and the children, and all he could think about was getting close enough to listen to her voice or watch her speak. He had always felt drawn to her in the past, but each time he thought about it, he ignored it. He convinced himself that the attraction he felt towards her wasn’t passionate. It was because he appreciated how she had cared for Bruce and James as if they were hers. However, each time he felt drawn to her anew, the uncontrollable smile on his face convinced him differently.
He had an inexplicable fondness for the governess and that evening he had dismissed every doubt about his feelings and had crossed the field to tell her just how much he would love her by his side during the dinner party.
He hadn’t said the exact words to suggest what he wanted from her, but he really looked forward to spending the entire evening by her side rather than having unnecessary discussions with viscounts and lords from the county at the dinner table.
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