Page 12 of Her Duke Next Door
* * *
At dinner, Mary was once again distracted, still lost in the thoughts of the Duke from her dream.
“Mama?”
Eloise’s voice broke through her haze of aroused thoughts. She gripped her fork tightly and looked at her daughter, mustering a smile. Eloise’s brows were pinched with worry.
“Mama, are you all right?”
What is wrong with you? Mary asked herself.You have never been like this before. With Patrick, everything was duty and stoic, almost clinical. No passion, no tenderness. And to think of the Duke in such presumptuous ways!Yet she could not help herself. It was as if a flushed heat had embedded itself in her this past week, never quite leaving.
“I am quite fine, darling,” she answered. “What is it you were saying?”
“Only that my governess and I shall be taking Benson out on a walk soon! The weather is getting warmer.”
Benson was Eloise’s pony, and while Mary had bought the pet for her to get her used to horse-riding, as she had been taught from a young age, she had a mother’s concern about her daughter doing something dangerous.
“Would you come to my first lesson with me, Mama?” Eloise asked.
“I would love to,” she answered.
They finished the rest of their dinner with Eloise chattering away. Mary could only think about how it would have felt to place her hand on Dominique’s bicep to feel the thickness of muscle there.
* * *
“Mama, you have become quite distracted again!” Eloise all but chided her the following day. “It has been this way for days now! Are you well?”
“I am quite fine,” Mary said, the instinctive answer she had come to give quickly to soothe her daughter’s worries. She could hardly confide in her seven-year-old about what was going on in her mind! This was when she realized she lacked friendship and the bond she had shared with her sister.
Her previous residence had been a stone’s throw from the Angleton estate but now it was no small feat for either her to visit her sister or the other way around. Now visits had to be planned in advance.
You have isolated yourself for four years, Mary reminded herself. That was her mother’s wording, she knew. Matthew, her nephew, was turning four in a month. Her mother had written to Mary, irritation ringing in every word.
I do not suppose you will be joining us, Mary. You have isolated yourself out in the countryside. I know what happened with Patrick was ghastly, my sweet, but it has been four years! Come to your senses and return to London.Your father and I grow older and do not wish to miss out on our granddaughter’s life.We miss you so!
Mary, would, in fact, be joining them.
Eloise turned from the canvas she was painting the landscape on. She had declared that she would draw Katie and the Duke sitting beneath the old oak tree outside.
“Wouldyoulike to sit next to the Duke, Mama?” Eloise asked.
Mary glanced up sharply, wondering if she had not considered an invitation to an event. “When and where?”
Eloise giggled as she pointed to her painting. “Here. I am painting the four of us.”
It felt awfully intimate to do that but Mary supposed that, to her daughter, it made sense. So Mary nodded, and let herself imagine sitting next to the Duke while he whispered more scandalous taunts in her ear. She felt herself blush like a young debutante who had not yet met a suitor.
“You are rather red, Mama,” Eloise commented, spinning the paintbrush in her hands. “Are you ill?” Once again, she appeared concerned for Mary’s wellbeing.
“Yes, I am a bit… dizzy,” she answered, waving her off.
“Are you sad?” Eloise rushed over, grasping Mary’s hand. “Are you about to cry, Mama? If it is because of the painting, I can stop?—”
“No, no,” Mary assured her. “I am not about to cry, darling.”
She sipped her tea as Eloise returned to her canvas and began painting splodges of shapes for the Duke. She sighed wistfully. “I think it would be lovely if I could have a Papa again.”
Mary choked, the tea sliding right down her throat unpleasantly. She waved Eloise’s alarmed glance and coughed a few times to clear her throat.
