Till Next We Meet

by Karen Ranney

  My son was ill. What would Catherine say to that?

  If they had still been at Colstin Hall, Glynneth might have told her the truth. All Catherine would have probably done was turn over and go back to sleep, retreating to a drug-induced haze. Now? Glynneth didn’t know what Catherine would say to learn that she had a child.

  Moving to Balidonough had been a shock, but a good thing as it turned out. Not only was she closer to Robbie, but she had been promoted to housekeeper. A few years of stringent savings, and Glynneth might have enough money for a house for the two of them, someplace where she could actually live with her son instead of only paying a visit on every day off.

  She had truly loved only two people in the world, and one of them was gone. A ghost companion, he felt even more real every time she took this journey, as if he sat beside her and watched their son. She could almost envision his proud glance, the words he’d never spoken. Aren’t we to be congratulated? Aren’t we special and talented people?

  Only on the way back did the truth sink in again, and she realized the depth of her loneliness. The wheels of the coach seemed to repeat the same refrain. He’ll never come again, he’ll never come again.

  Robbie was the other person who mattered to her, and she would do whatever was necessary to ensure his well-being. He was her child, her son, her bright and shining wonder that she had somehow brought into the world. Her pregnancy had been a disaster at the time, but now Robbie’s presence was a deep and wondrous blessing.

  As she did each time she came away from him, Glynneth vowed that her son would never suffer for the mistakes of his parents.

  She’d been unable to avoid falling in love with a man with gleaming brown eyes and an easy smile. Her parents hadn’t approved. Her father had considered her love a wastrel, a cad, someone he didn’t want to marry his daughter. By the time she’d discovered she was with child, it was too late. Her sweetest, her dearest, her truest love had gone away.

  Glynneth’s mother had died not long after that, and everything about her life changed again. Her father, no doubt maddened with grief, had set her out, and she’d been forced to make her own way in the world. She had done so first as a scullery maid, working impossibly long hours in hideous conditions until she’d given birth. She had taken her mother’s name, Rowan, in order not to further shame her father. Then, with her figure back, she moved on to being an upstairs maid, and from there she learned of a position at Colstin Hall.

  Catherine had everything she hadn’t, and at times it was hard to hide what she truly felt. The other woman would have them be friends, as if Glynneth could ever forget her place in life. Yet because of Catherine’s generosity, she was now more than a simple servant, she was a housekeeper, an important and prestigious position.

  She peeled back the leather shade and looked out. Nothing but rain.

  The coach was always crowded, and this time was no exception. Her companions were an agreeable group. She recognized one woman from a previous trip, and they nodded to each other in perfect accord before Glynneth closed her eyes and leaned her head against the corner. The carriage was too uncomfortable for anyone ever to truly fall asleep, but by her pretense she walled herself off from her companions. They didn’t talk to her, and she had more time to think of the visit just made.

  Her son was growing, looking so much like his father that she wanted to hold him tight and never release him. When she did, he always wiggled away laughing, and she always chased him, his smile banishing her tears.

  The McClarens had looked after him since Robbie was a baby, their job as foster parents changing over the last two years to become something warmer. She still paid them for their care, but now they treated Robbie as if he were their own grandchild.

  She opened her eyes as the coach slowed at the crossroads. In the distance she could see Balidonough. She straightened her shoulders and tidied her coat, thinking as she did that Fate had put her in the employ of a woman who genuinely cared about her, the one woman in the world she could easily hate.

  How strange that Catherine should be wed, and to a duke. Glynneth disliked Moncrief and distrusted him, knowing that he felt the same about her. If anyone could discover her secrets, it would be Moncrief, and for that reason she was determined to avoid the man.

  Chapter 10

  The Great Hall still possessed its original dimensions, barrel-vaulted ceiling, and recessed panels. The ceiling was frescoed with dancing nymphlike cupids painted in the Raphael style. Thick blue draperies hung in swags from gold cornice boards mounted over the windows. A mirror twenty feet high and fifteen feet wide, topped with an enormous crest, stood at the end of the room. Along either side of the Hall sat a sideboard of marble and gold, topped with rare blue frosted glass from Persia. The wooden boards of the floor were polished to a high sheen, half-covered with a magnificent oriental rug in shades of blue and green. The receiving chairs were upholstered in dark blue silk, the mahogany wood of the arms and backs burnished with gold.

  Two fireplaces with wide and deep marble mantels might have warmed the room had more than a puny fire been laid in one of them.

  Only Juliana and her sister were in the Great Hall. Catherine hesitated at the threshold, wishing she could be anywhere but here. But the last week had proven that this was no nightmare. She was at Balidonough, and it was to be her home, like it or not, for the remainder of her life.

  With a great deal of reluctance, she entered the room.

  “Good evening,” Catherine said, nodding to both of them.

  Hortensia managed a feeble smile while Juliana pointedly ignored her.

  Rarely did the two women meet, but whenever their paths did accidentally cross, Juliana left no doubt of her impression of Catherine. Her aquiline nose would point into the air, and she would sniff as if she smelled something unpleasant.

  However, in Catherine’s experience, people were never completely bad or even completely annoying, even someone like Juliana. She no doubt had a great many virtues, one of which was the fact that she was unfailingly kind to her sister. The two of them were often seen together walking arm in arm in the dormant gardens.

  Hortensia was less distant of the two. However, Hortensia had a great many maladies, none of which she was shy about sharing. This past week, she’d been in bed with an inflammation in the sinuses, made worse, she said, by the eternal dampness and dust that the maids, at Moncrief’s and Wallace’s behest, were stirring up. She also got hives from all manner of food, and was certain that her lungs were weak from a childhood illness.

  All these complaints were transmitted to Catherine on the one occasion when she’d visited Hortensia in her chamber.

  Catherine walked to the fireplace and stretched her hands out before the meager fire. Juliana might have been accustomed to the cold, but Catherine was not. At Colstin Hall, all the fireplaces had been used, and the atmosphere in the manor house was one of warmth and comfort. In this sprawling castle, few things were designed for its inhabitants’ convenience, from the distance one had to travel from the ducal chambers to any of the public rooms, to the sheer number of people it took to keep the castle orderly.

  Nor was there any privacy at Balidonough. Someone was always watching her, anticipating her wants or needs. Servants were as thick as flies, each of them wanting to assist her in some way. She was, like it or not, no longer the mistress of a small manor house. By her marriage, she’d become a much more rarefied creature, a duchess, a member of the nobility. Yet she’d never been trained for such a role and wasn’t comfortable with it.

  When she walked into the kitchen area of Balidonough, Cook and her helpers immediately stopped talking. Cook would sketch a curtsy, as would the scullery maids. None of the parlor maids would look directly at her when she addressed them. True, she managed to accomplish some tasks, but not as quickly as she would have liked, what with all that bowing and curtsying. Nor was there a spirit of camaraderie, since most of the people employed at Balidonough treated her as if she were queen
.

  The only people with whom she could communicate were Glynneth and Wallace. In the end, it was better to assign tasks and simply leave them to be done. The moment she left a room Catherine could almost hear an audible sigh of relief, the result being that she was left with too much time on her hands and entirely too much time to think.

  The last few days had been illuminating to another degree. She had found that as time passed, her thought processes grew easier. She didn’t have to struggle to concentrate, or even to remember things, a fact that made her wonder if Moncrief had been right after all. Had she become addicted to laudanum?

  Moncrief was the one person who treated her as if she was simply Catherine. Each night they returned to their chamber, Moncrief leaving no doubt of his opinion of her nightgowns. But he left her alone, never touching her, except for those rare mornings when she awoke and they were nose to nose, both their heads resting on one pillow.

  He slept in the nude. At night she accidentally occasionally moved closer to him in her sleep. When she awoke, she would move away slowly, withdrawing her knee from alongside his thigh, moving her hand from his chest or arm. He would always awaken, and simply smile at her, as if he felt her sudden fear and wanted to reassure her in some way.

  Consequently, she’d taken to awakening much earlier than ever before and busying herself with exploring the great castle.

  “You will not know any of the people here tonight,” Juliana said abruptly.

  Catherine turned her attention to her sister-in-law.

  “There will be some dignitaries, some minor nobility. Most of them will be above you in birth, despite the fact that you wear the title of duchess. Breeding must be inherited and not simply conveyed by marriage.”

  She looked at Catherine’s new dress as if she found the garment loathsome. She, herself, was dressed in a deep blue gown with an overskirt of silver gauze. Evidently, Juliana’s thrift did not extend to her own wardrobe. Hortensia was as richly attired in a pale green, heavily embroidered dress that looked to be new.

  “What Moncrief was thinking of when he married you, I have no idea. I would not have approved.”

  “Is it important that you do so?” Catherine asked, annoyed enough to speak up. “It is my impression that you had nothing to do with Moncrief for over fourteen years. Why would you express an interest in his life now except for the fact that he is the new duke?”

  Juliana looked incensed, twin spots of color appearing on her otherwise chalky face.

  Catherine was saved from Juliana’s rejoinder by Moncrief’s appearance.

  He raised one eyebrow questioningly at her, but she only shook her head.

  “Are you well?” he asked, after he’d greeted the other women.

  “Of course. We only left each other thirty minutes ago.”

  “A great deal can happen in that amount of time. Whole battles can be won or lost.”

  She smiled. “I am not at war with anyone.”

  “Are you certain of that?” He glanced at his sister-in-law, who had gone to stand by the window. “Juliana does not look like she’s disposed to be your friend at the moment.”

  “Since I am not disposed to be hers either, Moncrief, it’s a situation that should be left alone.”

  “If you’re certain.”

  She nodded.

  Wallace pulled open the wide double doors just then, standing aside and announcing the first of their guests in a voice that sounded too high and almost panicked. Catherine couldn’t help but feel empathy for the young majordomo, especially when Juliana turned and skewered him with a frosty look. But Juliana’s stares were no match for Moncrief’s, and Wallace had evidently learned from experience with the new duke. His face simply became immobile.

  Moncrief reached out and cupped her elbow in his palm. Even through the material of her dress she could feel the warmth of his hand, almost as if he claimed her with his touch.

  As she was introduced to an endless stream of people, Catherine tried to ignore Juliana’s narrow-eyed look. At one point the other woman crossed behind her back, and whispered, “Do not shame us,” in a voice so low that only Catherine could hear.

  She had attended a dame’s school, and relied on her old teacher’s adage: If in doubt, do nothing. She watched Hortensia surreptitiously if she was concerned how to greet a particular guest, and managed to make it through the introductions without a misstep.

  Moncrief was a model of courteous, almost courtly, behavior. More than a few of the women guests were studying Moncrief with a lean and hungry look, like a cat just before it pounced on a fat bird.

  When dinner was announced, he surrendered her to an older gentleman who’d been a friend of his father’s, while he escorted Juliana into the dining room.

  The King’s Dining Hall was a large cavernous room with two fireplaces, one on each end. Heraldic banners hung from the ceiling, and broadswords and shields were aligned high on the walls. The floor, a rough stone, was uneven in places, and a gap between one wall and the ceiling made Catherine think that this part of the castle was the oldest.

  Moncrief had, in defiance of propriety, insisted upon Catherine sitting to his right. In that position, she was relatively sheltered from the guests and protected from Juliana’s barbs.

  “It’s a gloomy room,” he said in an aside, as their guests were being seated.

  “It needn’t be. Balidonough is filled with treasures. If you lit the sconces on the walls, and placed a few tapestries in here, perhaps even laid some woven mats on the floor, the room could be beautiful.”

  She looked up at the walls, decorated with instruments of war. “You might even wish to transport some of your ancestors from our bedchamber. They could look down on the table instead of us.”

  “Then do it. Make Balidonough as much a home as you did Colstin Hall.”

  “I doubt Juliana would approve. She’s made no secret of her feelings about Glynneth’s new post, not to mention the new uniforms I’ve ordered for the maids.”

  “You’re the Duchess of Lymond. Not Juliana.”

  She didn’t respond, uncertain exactly what to say.

  “Money isn’t an issue, despite Juliana’s thrift. Despite any appearance to the contrary, the distillery is prosperous, and the dukedom is thriving.”

  “Then why…” She silenced herself before the question could be fully voiced.

  “Has Juliana allowed Balidonough to fall into such disrepair? I’m not entirely certain.”

  “Still, to allow those Flemish tapestries to become moth-eaten is a sin.”

  His smile was almost too warm, as if he approved of her vehemence.

  Moncrief gave the signal to Wallace, and the meal began. A parade of footmen entered through the rear door of the dining room, circled the table laden with items for the first course, a fish soup that was Cook’s specialty. The huge tureen was crafted of white porcelain in the shape of a leaping fish, its tail near its head.

  Once again, Moncrief nodded, and Wallace made a similar gesture. A dozen footmen, evidently newly trained in the task, began to serve their guests.

  She glanced at Moncrief out of the corner of her eye, watching him as he commanded dinner with the same organization she imagined he had put to a military operation. She was certain it was a duty the Duchess of Lymond should have performed, but she was inexperienced in entertaining so many people. However, she made a point of studying him so that next time she would know how it was done.

  Moncrief’s dining companion was the wife of a Sinclair, a prosperous family who lived not far from Colstin Hall. She’d heard of the couple and their seven children but she’d never sat at table with them. The man at her right was an earl, a very pleasant companion who was more fascinated with his dinner than any conversation she might offer.

  In fact, she couldn’t help but wonder if Moncrief had deliberately placed him here since the man was portly and aged with a penchant for slurping his soup. By the time the beef was served he’d imbibed more than his share
of wine and was dozing between courses.

  She’d never before dined in such a setting, and she couldn’t help but be a little bemused by it. The sheer size of the room was dwarfed by the fact that forty guests sat at the long mahogany table and each of them had a footman in new livery standing six feet behind him or her ready to serve at a moment’s notice.

  The room was getting warmer from the sheer press of people and all of the candles that had been lit against the evening. One of the youngest footman’s duties was simply to remove a candle when it had burned out halfway and replace it with another.

  Juliana had not, Catherine suspected, protested the expense of this dinner.

  A tittering of laughter down at the end of the table made her concentrate upon her beef. In actuality, she wasn’t hungry anymore, but she pushed the fork around her plate. She was growing increasingly uncomfortable, since several times she’d thought she heard her name, followed by a burst of laughter. More than a few of the guests had looked in her direction, then away.

  Moncrief, however, was not making any attempts to hide his irritation. Twice, he’d allowed his fork to clank down on his plate, a rudeness that was accompanied by a frown toward Juliana.

  Catherine reached over and placed her hand on his sleeve when he would have risen.

  “Please,” she said softly. His defense of her was admirable, but she truly didn’t need it. “Do not say anything,” she whispered to him.

  He turned and looked her.

  In her laudanum-induced world, she wouldn’t have felt any fear at all staring directly at him. Now, however, it took a great deal of courage to do so. He was visibly angry. But as she watched, his look softened, as if he reminded himself that he was not, after all, angry at her.

  “Juliana has been consistent in her dislike of me. I expect no less.”

  “While I do. You are my wife.”

  “As in you are my horse? Or you are my hound?” He could be the most annoying man.