Page 7 of The Best-Kept Secrets
“Does Grandmother know that I am fetching her?” Duke asked.
“No.” That didn’t seem to strike Father as odd or inappropriate.
“Does she know she is no longer traveling to Writtlestone?”
Father didn’t answer. Duke looked to Mother.
“I spent countless days and endless effort attempting to prepare Writtlestone for her arrival. And the time was running so horribly short.” Mother pressed a hand to her heart. “This change of plans has eased a tremendous burden on me, Dubhán. Do you begrudge me that?”
He took a breath and managed to keep hold on his patience. Frustration only ever made things worse. “If Grandmother doesn’t know of her new destination, one I suspect she will not approve of, how am I to convince her to make the journey?”
Father held a hand up. “You need only tell her that you are making the journey back to England with her. It is not untrue, and it will be less likely to inspire objections from her.”
“I suspect she will notice when we don’t depart Holyhead in the direction of Lancashire.”
“The path is the same for quite some time.” Father would have struggled to sound less concerned about the situation he was placing Duke in. “I suspect she won’t realize until well after you have turned toward Surrey that the plans have changed.”
“And that will be the point when I reveal that I have kidnapped my own grandmother at the behest of my father and am taking her to the home of her daughter, with whom she has a strained relationship?”
“Do not be flippant,” Father said through tight teeth.
“You wouldn’t say it like that, would you, Dubhán?” Mother’s voice quivered. “Your grandmother would be livid. And you know how horridly she treats me when she is upset. I would be berated within an inch of my endurance. You would not do that to me, surely. Surely.”
“I do not care to lie to my grandmother,” Duke said. “But how do I manage this without lying and without Mother suffering a berating?”
“If you tell your grandmother about the change in her journey from the moment you see her in Dublin, she is unlikely to agree to go,” Father warned. “And if she does not travel with you, then you cannot travel with the O’Doyle sisters to Surrey.”
It wasn’t, then, so much a kidnapping as it was a blackmailing. A lifetime of being manipulated and blamed and required to bear the burden of his unhappy family’s temporary bouts of happiness had, somehow, not rendered this latest situation less surprising.
“I would have told your grandmother about this change of arrangements myself,” Father said, “but I did not know of your journey to Ireland until you arrived last evening. And rather than struggle to scrape together the funds for your journey as well as my mother’s, which I will remind you, she planned specifically with the intent of seeingyou, I found it prudent to combine the two and lessen the strain on my finances.”
They weren’t poor, by any means, but they hadn’t money enough for heedless spending. He could concede that point.
But there was another point he was unwilling to accept. “I will not bring my aunt Penelope an unannounced guest when she and Uncle Niles have already agreed to host fourteen others, a gathering of which I am a part and from which I will be benefiting. I will not further complicate the situation. But neither can I bring Grandmother here when I have given my word to bring the O’Doyle sisters to Surrey. That is unfair to them and would reflect horribly on my integrity.”
That clearly gave his parents pause. They had their faults—plenty of them, in fact—but they had always encouraged him to be a person of honesty and to behave as a gentleman ought.
Duke pulled his pocket watch from his fob pocket and checked the time. “I am departing in ten minutes. Talk it through, and let me know the third option you have formulated before I must begin my journey.”
He took up his traveling bag and snatched his leather gloves and tall beaver hat from the dressing table. He stepped from his bedchamber and walked down the corridor. He could hear his parents following behind, talking quietly. If he were remaining at Writtlestone for more than those ten minutes, he likely wouldn’t have been so short with them.
But he didn’t have time for the usual looping discussions. They would sort out an answer; they usually did when he insisted on it, though they were nearly always frustrated with him afterward.
Regardless, Duke didn’t have the mental space to sort outtheirdifficulty this time. He was plagued by a puzzle of his own, one he needed to keep entirely secret until he had answers. He’d intended to ponder it on the way to Ireland and further mull it over on the journey from Dublin to Surrey. Eve and Nia would likely gab with each other through most of their days on the road. And Mrs. Smedley would have spent those days with her nose in a book; his one-time governess was a prodigious reader.
But Grandmother would be with them instead, which meant Duke’s time would be taken up with listening to a litany of complaints, attempting to prevent another Seymour family altercation, and doing his utmost to shield the O’Doyles from it all.
There would be very little time or energy remaining for him to sort out his own difficulties, ponder his own concerns, and, as a result, begin to lay the foundation of a future he could feel excited about.
A footman met him in the entryway with Duke’s greatcoat and thick-knit scarf. He helped Duke pull the coat on before handing him the scarf, followed by his gloves and hat.
“Thank you, John.” Duke wrapped his scarf around his neck. He pulled on his gloves. Taking time to breathe in silence had always helped him maintain his equilibrium and extend his endurance. He set his tall beaver hat on his head, then turned to face his parents, who had only just reached the bottom of the stairs. “Do you have a solution?”
Father nodded. “We will meet you in Epsom at the Wren and Badger. Your grandmother can return to Writtlestone with us, and you and the O’Doyle sisters can continue the hour or so to Fairfield, if that is what you choose to do in the end.”
Duke dipped his head. “I will meet you at the Wren and Badger on the thirteenth.”
It would, of course, have been far more convenient for Father to meet them at Holyhead or, better still, the village where the road to Surrey diverged from the road to Lancashire, bringing with him Mrs. Smedley to swap out for Grandmother. With a bit more time, Father might have stumbled upon that adjustment. Whether or not he would have chosen it was another matter entirely.
