Chapter Twenty-One
She was home again.
She knew it was for the best. It was simply too easy to want to belong with Dougal and his odd jumble of a family. To want it all, so desperately. But she was accustomed to making meals out of morsels. This would be no different, in the end. Her gatekeeper’s cottage was the same as when she’d left. It was she who was different. She’d felt like she belonged at Thorncroft Abbey but now she was back on the Henshaw estate.
And she would not mope about it.
Well, not much.
She tried not to resent everything that was not Thorncroft, that was not faded paintings, not the sea, or Lady Beatrice’s temper. Treasure hunting. The fish bench.
Dougal.
She did love her little cottage, even if it only boasted a bed, a dresser, a table and a single chair with frayed rushes. But the walls were a kaleidoscope of colors, red birds, blue flowers, green leaves, rabbits painted under the eaves and tucked into corners, dragons on the ceiling. It was like living inside a storybook. And it was so much better than the room she’d had inside the house proper, where sometimes her uncle’s male guests wandered the hallways, looking for sport or mischief, or simply an unlocked door.
Anyway, she didn’t have the time to fuss and feel sorry for herself.
She was needed at the main house.
Inside, Henshaw Hall was like a dollhouse stuffed with every pretty thing that had caught a child’s eye. There were too many golden candlesticks, too many statues, too much furniture, too much decoration, all competing to demonstrate the importance of their owner.
Uncle Dermot.
His last house party was winding down, if the sounds of voices and cutlery coming from the dining room were any indication. Not to mention the smell of cheroot smoke and perfume and spilled wine. She bit back a sigh and made her way down the glittering, opulent hall. The study was no better, lined with oak shelves filled with ornate, gilded books that had never been opened. Gold ducks crowded between them. She’d always hated them but now they made her think of that dinner at Thorncroft. There was also yellow silk, carved mahogany, crystal decanters. It tired the eye.
“So, you’ve returned from your gallivanting,” her uncle scowled at her. His graying hair was heavily pomaded, forced into elaborate curls he imagined made him look both dignified and somehow younger. The emerald in his cravat pin gleamed. It had belonged to her father once. She refused to look at it. “I’m not sure it’s seemly.”
“One does not refuse a duke,” she reminded him.
“See that you don’t get airs.”
She swallowed back a retort. There was no use in arguing with him.
“Sleeping all hours of the day,” he continued, needling her. “It’s nearly eleven o’clock. No one wants a lazy wife.”
As if he had any intention of letting her marry and leave his house to the mercy of housekeepers and maids who expected wages for their work. She kept her tone even, mild, never letting him see how he annoyed her. “You wanted to see me?”
He narrowed his eyes. She waited patiently. Patience, she had discovered, was an overlooked weapon. “You’ve work to do,” he finally snapped. “I’ve had guests. Some will be staying on and all of the grates need to be scrubbed, the linens seen to, more silver polished. I won’t have you lollygagging about and taking advantage of my kindness.”
“Yes, Uncle.” He always set her to clean the grates when she returned from the Pendleton estate. It rankled that he had never been invited and never would be.
“And where the devil is that constable? I need those deuced rents.”
Which meant he had already gambled them away, likely in this very house in the last few days. He’d been barred entry to some of the more popular gaming hells in London for not paying his debts and had resorted to hosting lavish house parties with anyone who would play at cards.
“One more thing, niece.”
She paused in the doorway, tensing. “Yes?”
“You’ll join us tonight, in the parlor.”
She hated his parties. Hated standing by the wall and waiting for orders for more wine, evading pinches to her backside, tolerating the sneers and whispers. Fetching things that didn’t need to be fetched merely to demonstrate her uncle’s power over her.
“Of course, Uncle.”
You’ll be marriedby then.
What had she meant by that? Would it bother her to know he would be married? Was it enough to make her change her mind that she wasn’t for him?