The Duke's Marriage Mission

by Hale Deborah

  “You cannot be half as sorry as I am.” She heaped her plate. “For the boy’s sake, more than my own. I cannot imagine how the poor child bears it, being confined to that bed day after day. How can his father do that to him?”

  “I beg your pardon, Miss.” The butler glared down at her. “But you would be wrong to presume His Grace’s actions arise from anything less than the tenderest devotion to his son. He scarcely leaves the young master’s side except to snatch a few hours’ sleep and to attend to the most pressing business of the estate. He spends hour upon hour reading to the boy and amusing him by every means he can contrive.”

  The bite of buttery biscuit in Leah’s mouth suddenly lost its flavor, as she chided herself for her harsh rush to judgment. She of all people should understand the willingness to surrender all one’s time and energy in the service of a loved one. But she had done everything in her power to preserve her grandmother’s independence, Leah’s conscience protested. She would never have locked Gran away from the world, no matter how much safer that might have been.

  “Do you not think the child would benefit from exposure to more varied society and the opportunity to learn?” she asked, as much to soothe her self-reproach as anything. “His legs may not be capable to taking him places other children can go, but surely his mind should be allowed to range freely and undertake challenges.”

  “There are some in His Grace’s household who would agree with you.” The butler’s solemn expression made it impossible to guess whether he might be among that number. “Certainly Lady Althea has expressed that opinion often.”

  “Why does her brother refuse to heed her?” Leah thought she might know the answer even before the butler replied.

  The duke’s sister had a very forceful personality and she was clearly accustomed to getting her way by whatever means necessary. Leah resented the way she had been misled and manipulated by her ladyship. Whatever the duke’s faults, as least he was forthright in his opposition.

  “Her ladyship was not here the night her nephew was born.” The compulsion to defend his master seemed to get the better of Mr. Gibson’s discretion. “The midwife thought the child was stillborn. But His Grace insisted every possible effort be made to revive his son. He was warned that even if they succeeded, the child might be weak, perhaps a lifelong invalid. His Grace paid them no heed. He has nursed his son through several bouts of illness over the years. He has devoted his life to the child. I believe that gives him the right to decide what is best for his son.”

  “I have no doubt His Grace is acting out of concern.” Leah could not stifle a flicker of admiration for the duke. “But I am still convinced he is wrong in this instance.”

  The butler looked as if he would have liked to debate the matter further, but realized he had already revealed too much about his master’s private business. “If you do not require anything further, I shall leave you to enjoy your tea, Miss Shaw. Then I will show you to your room.”

  After Mr. Gibson had gone, Leah started on her tea. She found her appetite rather blunted by what the butler had told her about Lord Northam and his son. Given their history, perhaps it was not surprising the duke had reacted excessively to her actions in the nursery. If she had not been so impulsive, might His Grace have been more receptive to the possibility of hiring a governess for his son?

  By the time the butler returned, Leah’s hunger was appeased but not her conscience. She refrained from making any more critical remarks about the duke as Mr. Gibson led her past many enormous, handsomely decorated rooms. They ascended a different staircase than the one Leah had taken to reach the nursery.

  “This will be your room for the night, Miss Shaw.” The butler announced as he opened a door and ushered her in. “I trust you will find it to your satisfaction. Dinner will be served at eight.”

  For a moment Leah was too awestruck to reply. She was accustomed to staying in plain, cramped little rooms near the nursery. This airy, elegant chamber, decorated in shades of cream and coral, looked more suited to a princess than a humble governess.

  “Will His Grace be dining with me?” She would welcome the opportunity to apologize for not being more careful with his son.

  The butler shook his head in a decisive manner that sank her hopes. “His Grace eats in the nursery with Lord Renforth.”

  “Of course.” Leah experienced a sharper stab of disappointment at the news than it merited. “In that case, you need not trouble your staff on my account. I am quite content to take a tray in my room.”

  “It will be no trouble,” Mr. Gibson insisted. “The staff would enjoy an opportunity to prepare and serve a proper meal.”

  “Very well, then. If you are certain.” Leah glanced toward the window. “Since I will not be staying on at Renforth Abbey, might I look around the house before dinner? I have never visited a place so fine.”

  “If you wish.” The butler sounded uncertain whether to treat her as an honored guest or a glorified servant who had just been dismissed.

  “I promise I will stay out of the duke’s way,” Leah assured him.

  “That should not be difficult,” the butler replied, “provided you keep out of the new range, which houses the nursery and His Grace’s bedchamber.”

  “Does he truly spend all his time there?” The very thought made Leah feel as if the walls of this spacious room were beginning to close in on her.

  The butler nodded. “Except for meetings with the estate overseer and his man of business. And on rare occasions when Lady Althea pays a visit.”

  “Poor man.” The words rose instinctively to Leah’s lips, though she reminded herself it was the duke’s choice to live that way.

  After Mr. Gibson departed, she set off to explore the house. As she strolled from one grand room to another, all so rich in history, Leah found herself with many questions she wished she could ask someone. Which artist had painted the imposing portrait of a gentleman on horseback that hung above the mantel in the blue drawing room? What was the story behind the magnificent tapestries in the great hall? Had the house originally been a monastery as its name suggested?

  Finally, eager for a breath of fresh air, she took a stroll in the gardens. The mingled scents of many different flowers perfumed the summer dusk. Looking back at the house, she glimpsed the duke staring down at her from one of the upper windows.

  “Can you not see?” she whispered, wishing the he could hear her. “You are as much a prisoner of this gilded cell as your poor child?”

  When was the last time he had indulged in the simple pleasure of a walk in his own garden?

  As Hayden watched Miss Shaw stroll among the shrubberies and flower beds, he tried to recall the smell of the air on such an evening and the high-pitched chorus the frogs sang from their lily pads on the ornamental lakes. Those gardens belonged to him and yet they might as well have been as distant as the moon for all the opportunity he had to enjoy them.

  That was his choice, the strong voice of parental responsibility reminded him. He had a duty to the child he had helped bring into this world, a child who had not asked to be born frail and motherless. A son who needed him in a way few children needed their fathers.

  On the day of Kit’s birth, he had made his son a promise, and he was more committed than ever to keeping it. The loss of a little freedom was a small price to pay. At least he had his liberty to lose. It was a luxury his son would never know. One he could not afford if he was to survive.

  “What are you looking at, Papa?” asked Kit in a tone that sounded both plaintive and petulant.

  “Nothing in particular.” It troubled Hayden to give his son a less than honest answer. But he feared any mention of Miss Shaw would only upset the child, and she had done enough of that already. “Shall I read you another story? Or shall we play with your little people?”

  Kit shook his head. “I want to look out the window again. Miss Leah let me. She pretended she was my horse. She carried me over so I could see the garden.”

 
“She almost fell while carrying you.” Hayden’s annoyance with the woman sharpened his tone. “You might have been badly injured if I had not caught you. There is nothing much to see out this window, especially now that it is growing dark.”

  He jerked the curtains closed.

  Was he wrong to have denied his son a glimpse of the grounds and gardens? Hayden tried to stifle a pang of conscience. The doctor had insisted it was better if the child did not see what lay beyond the safe confines of his nursery. It might only promote dangerous discontent, making Kit yearn for liberties that could pose a danger to his fragile health. How could he reject the counsel of a man to whom he owed Kit’s life?

  Hayden had never questioned the wisdom of his decision, until Leah Shaw came barging in, flinging about words like solitary, monotonous and stifling. He told himself the woman meant well, she simply did not understand the seriousness of his son’s condition.

  “Will you take me to the window tomorrow morning, when it is light again?” Kit pleaded. “You are bigger and stronger than Miss Leah. You will not let me fall.”

  “We will see about that tomorrow,” replied Hayden as he strode back to his son’s bed.

  “No you won’t.” Kit pouted. “You never do when you say that. When is Miss Leah coming back? I like her. She is going to be my governess and teach me lots of new things.”

  Why had she blurted all that out to his son? Hayden silently fumed until his sense of fairness intervened. Why should Miss Shaw have kept quiet about something she believed to be true? Still, he wished she had shown a little more discretion. Now he would be obliged to inform his son it had all been a misunderstanding.

  He tried to break the truth to Kit gently. “That has not been decided for certain. I fear you are not yet strong enough to study with a governess. It can be difficult and tiring. Wouldn’t you rather listen to stories and play games with me?”

  The child thought for a moment. “Couldn’t I do both? I could study with Miss Leah until I grow tired then you could read to me while I rest.”

  Kit’s pale little face seemed to glow with satisfaction that he had come up with such a clever plan on his own. Hayden’s sense of fairness urged him to admit it sounded like a good compromise. But life was not fair and Fate was not fair. Hayden barely managed to stop short of thinking God was not fair.

  He did not blame the Almighty for what had happened to Celia and his son. That had been his fault for not protecting his wife from her own impulsive nature. If he had kept her from travelling when she was so close to her confinement, she might not have gone into early labor. She might have survived Kit’s birth and his son would likely have been born healthy.

  After all that, Hayden did not feel he deserved Divine mercy. Yet his desperate prayers had been answered and the life of his infant son spared. Now he lifted a silent prayer for reassurance that he was doing the right thing and inspiration for the proper words to explain his decision.

  Kit seemed to attribute his father’s hesitation to a different cause. “Do you think I am not clever enough to learn from Miss Leah? Just because my legs don’t work properly, do you think my mind is feeble as well?”

  “Kit, how can you say that?” Hayden groped for his son’s hand. “I think no such thing! It is obvious you are very bright for your age.”

  He strove to infuse his words with the force of certainty. If he did not fully succeed, it was only because there had been a time when no one could assure him what his son’s mental capacity might be. Though he would have loved Kit no less, he had been overjoyed for the child’s sake when he began to speak at an early age and otherwise demonstrate that his wits were not impaired.

  “You don’t mean that!” Kit pulled his hand away from his father’s and shrank from him in a way that tore at Hayden’s heart. “You think I’m like Elsie who works in the scullery. I hear the servants talk about her. They say she walks with a limp and she’s slow-witted. They laugh about the mistakes she makes.”

  Outrage roared through Hayden, setting his face on fire... or so it felt. “No one should laugh at the girl or treat her unkindly. Nor will they under my roof if they wish to remain here, I will see to that! If she cannot walk or reason as well as they, all the more reason they should treat her with kindness.”

  He knew how cruel people could be to anyone with a weakness. He never wanted his son hurt by that kind of mockery. He would speak to Gibson at once and make certain his instructions were clear. “But Elsie’s troubles have nothing to do with my reluctance to have Miss Shaw as your governess.”

  “What is it, then?” Kit sounded as if he doubted his father would tell him the truth. “Don’t you like her?”

  “Not especially.” The words rose to Hayden’s lips by a kind of defensive instinct he did not fully understand. Yet they tingled upon his tongue with a sour tang of untruth. The fact was he found Leah Shaw far too engaging, when she was not challenging his judgment. “What I mean is, I am not certain she is the right sort of person to have in charge of you. She lacks the proper sense of caution for one thing.”

  He could not afford any partiality toward a person who opposed his manner of raising his son. He knew Miss Shaw meant well, as did his sister. They simply could not understand how desperately important Kit was to him. Not having children of their own, they had never experienced how a tiny hand could hold a parent’s heart or how much stronger that bond grew the more a child depended upon its parent.

  In spite of all that, Hayden could not entirely disregard the things Leah Shaw had said. Was Kit’s safe, quiet life a kind of imprisonment?

  “I don’t care!” The child’s defiant tone troubled Hayden. “I like Miss Leah and I want her to stay. She makes me smile and forget I don’t feel well.”

  The lady had made him forget his troubles too, Hayden was forced to admit. Even when they argued it had made him feel more truly alive than he had in quite some time.

  But how could he allow her into his home and into his son’s life? Until now he had been able to control Kit’s small world to make it a place of comfort, safety and acceptance. Leah Shaw would be a disruptive influence. Already she had introduced an element of dangerous discontent into Kit’s relationship with him that might smolder into outright rebellion if he did not quench it at once.

  “Miss Shaw came to Renforth by mistake.” He set about patiently trying to explain to Kit how his Aunt Althea had hired the lady without consulting him.

  When he reminded his son of the harm she could have caused by carrying him to the window, Kit refused to listen. “Even if I fell and got hurt it would have been worth it to see the grass and the flowers and move about out of bed!”

  The last words came out in a sob, which set him coughing. It chilled Hayden to the depths of his heart to see his son’s thin shoulders heave beneath his nightshirt. Leah Shaw had caused this, he fumed as he strove to quiet the child.

  He rejected the cruel irony that she also might be the only remedy.

  “Hush, now, hush.” He stroked Kit’s dark hair. “Perhaps I can speak to Miss Shaw to see if she would be willing to stay for a little while.”

  The son’s coughing began to ease. “Do you... promise?”

  He’d only meant to divert the child as he had so often before, but what could he say that would not provoke a worse coughing fit? “I promise, though I would not be surprised if she refuses. I am not certain she thinks any better of me than I do of her.”

  Kit immediately began to breathe easier. His face lit up with the brightest smile Hayden had seen from him in a very long time.

  “She will stay. I know she will,” the boy announced with happy certainty his father did not share.

  She had always preferred temporary positions to longer ones, Leah reflected the next morning as she drove away from Renforth Abbey. But staying less than twenty-four hours was by far her shortest.

  It could also have been her most lucrative position yet, if she had accepted the duke’s offer. Since it had been clear that nothing
she said would change his mind about hiring her, why could she not have saved her breath and taken what he had been prepared to give her?

  “I do not regret rejecting his insulting offer!” she muttered out loud, the better to convince herself.

  She hoped her refusal had convinced the duke she was not speaking from motives of self-interest. She truly believed Kit needed someone to teach him, to amuse him and to advocate for him with his overprotective father. The boy needed someone who would treat him as a child rather than an object of pity.

  Peering out the carriage window, Leah took her final glimpse of Renforth Abbey and sent a dark scowl in the direction of the new range. Was His Grace standing at one of the windows at this very moment, watching with an air of gloating triumph as his carriage whisked her out of his son’s life?

  Where would she go once she reached the village? Leah wondered as the trees closed in on either side of the lane, blocking any further view of the great house. She knew any of her friends would be happy to extend her their hospitality until she found a new position. But she hated to impose on them. Hannah and Lord Hawkehurst would still be on their honeymoon, while Rebecca and Grace were both expecting babies. Besides, Leah feared they would try to persuade her to change her mind about helping Evangeline set up their school.

  It would be better if she went to London and found temporary lodgings. From there she could write to her previous employers, inquiring if they knew of a family looking for a governess. All that would take time, though—time with no money coming in, only bleeding out of her savings, pushing her travel plans further and further into the future. For a moment Leah’s natural optimism deserted her. She leaned back in the handsomely upholstered seat in the duke’s fine carriage and heaved a sigh.

  No sooner had it left her lips than she heard the muted thunder of galloping hooves and caught a fleeting glimpse of a horseman overtaking the carriage. Immediately, the vehicle began to slow and finally came to a halt. Leah was about to peer out the carriage door to ask what was going on when it flew open and the Duke of Northam climbed in.