“How did you know about the stairs, Maggie?”
“Why, Mr. Sampson told me. And Mr. Badger. And Mr. Spears. We discussed it, naturally. That’s why you were never alone until that old crone finally took her leave. My pity flies toward all the innocent folk in London.”
“It does rather boggle the imagination,” the Duchess said.
“Amen, Duchess,” Badger said at her elbow. “Now, you’re looking just a bit pale. Come into the Green Cube Room and I’ll bring you some nice tea.”
The peace lasted until the afternoon. At one o’clock, just when they were all settled down for luncheon, Sampson appeared in the morning room and said in a voice of a king bestowing a prize to his champion, “Your mother has arrived, my lord.”
“Good God,” Marcus said, dropped the fork that held a bite of rare roast beef, or as Badger called it—rosbief anglais à la sauce des fines herbes—and rose. “She’s early, but why am I surprised? She was early in labor with me and has never let me forget about the hideous pain I forced upon her. I keep telling her that I have no recollection of it, nor do I believe I planned to torture her. Also, since I arrived early, did I not save her some pain?”
The Duchess rose to stand beside him.
He took her hand. “Everyone continue eating. The Duchess and I will sacrifice ourselves on the hearth of filial duty.”
The earl’s mother, Patricia Elliott Wyndham, a lady of fifty summers with only about forty of them apparent on her face, was very elegant, small, with a lovely head of thick black hair. Not a strand of gray in the entire lot, and eyes as blue as her son’s.
She eyed the Duchess up and down. “Marcus would come home as a boy and speak of you. He said you were quite the most unusual child he’d ever met, not at all like the Twins who were little nodcocks, he’d say. He said you were graceful and reserved and arrogant. He said if anyone looked at you, your nose went directly into the air and didn’t come down. I didn’t think he liked you very much. Why then did he marry you? And without writing to tell me of it until it was already done? And why in Paris, of all places?”
The Duchess smiled down at her new mama-in-law. “He fell in love with me, ma’am. He begged me to marry him, swore that he couldn’t continue with life without me, that even his port and his food counted for nothing if he couldn’t have me. He slavered. What could I do? I’m not a cruel woman. I didn’t want him to starve, to thirst to death, to throw himself beneath passing carriage wheels, for he is a man of swiftly burning passion and when he becomes, er, passionate, he is capable of doing anything. I just happened to be visiting in Paris and he was there. There wasn’t time for him to do his filial duty and consult with you. Isn’t that true, Marcus?”
“Absolutely,” the earl said. “Ah, which part of it, Duchess?”
“Also, ma’am, to be perfectly honest, I quite adore him myself. It was quite to my liking to marry him. I would have preferred if you had been there, but there wasn’t time. I am so very sorry.”
He stared at her, wondering, always wondering, for she had changed, his Duchess, and he couldn’t be certain what she meant anymore. She adored him? She’d wanted to marry him? It wasn’t just her damned honor, her sense of justice? Ah, there was thinking here aplenty for him to do.
“He always was a boy of intelligence and charm,” Mrs. Wyndham said. “Yes, the girls in the neighborhood were always simpering at him, flirting endlessly with him. It made him quite conceited, I fear. He gave them all hope, my charming boy, teased them and gave each of them his special smile. I have always wondered, Marcus, did you take Melissa Billingstage into the Billingstage stable and up into the hay loft?”
“I have no recollection of such an event, Mama, or of this Melissa girl. She wasn’t that quite delicious little flirt whose father was squire of Bassing Manor, was she? The girl with the huge pansy eyes and, er, quite substantial endowments?”
“You know very well—ah, there, Duchess, he’s done it again, trapped me into my own accusations as quickly as a heron can snag pilchards from the sea.”
“He is quite adept, isn’t he, ma’am? And he’s s
till quite conceited, but I must confess that it is part of his charm and thus part of him. His smile is probably the most special I’ve ever seen. It’s to his credit that he practiced it to perfection when he was a boy since it gives me remarkable pleasure.”
“She’s just the girl I would have chosen for you, Marcus,” his fond parent announced, taking the Duchess’s hand. “I see you’re wearing a strange wedding band. You must have mine for it has been in the Wyndham family for at least three generations. I will have it sent to you.”
“Thank you, ma’am. Do you agree, Marcus?”
“Certainly. I forgot about it.”
“She’s your wife, Marcus. It must be on her finger.”
“Er, just so, Mama. Welcome to Chase Park. How long do you intend to stay? Long or short?”
His mother gave him a frown that, if he’d had the Duchess’s objective eye, he would have known he wore the same expression when he frowned. “Sampson said that the Colonials just left. Of course, I knew of it already. Dear Mrs. Emory, my very good friend, wrote me when Mr. Trevor Wyndham said they would be leaving today. But I didn’t trust that woman’s tactics. I’ve stayed in Darlington for the past two days and stationed a man here to tell me when their carriage finally rolled out of the drive and took a left turn. I always detested that Wilhelmina woman.”
“But you’ve never met her, Mama.”
“It doesn’t matter. A mother knows everything. Isn’t she a rude, utterly obnoxious old crone?”
“Yes,” the Duchess said, “as a matter of fact she is. One never knows what will pop out of her mouth, and whatever does pop out, it’s invariably an insult.”
“I knew it. Well, my darlings, now I’m here, and everything will be so much brighter and happier. Where is Gweneth? Where are the Twins? What is this about the Wyndham legacy? And you, Josephina, you’ve been nearly murdered twice, according to Mrs. Emory. Do tell me all about it, my dear, I do so adore mysteries.”
“Her name is Duchess, Mama. Josephina is the name of a goat or a mallard.”