Page 28 of Her Duke Next Door
But her daughter had her back to the doorway. On either side of her, she danced two dolls, one with blonde hair, the other with dark curls.
“No,” Eloise said. “I do not want to be around that man. I do not like him. I want to play with my dolls instead.” When Eloise turned to Mary, her eyes were shining with tears.
Mary’s heart broke.She will understand when the time comes one day to tell her.
“Come here, my dear girl,” she said quietly, slipping into Eloise’s room to sit next to her. Eloise leaned against Mary, crying softly into her shoulder. Mary stroked her daughter’s hair and murmured to her.
“It will all be all right so soon,” Mary whispered. “You will see.”
“I miss Katie,” Eloise mumbled. “I miss the oak tree, too. And the games we played in the gardens!”
“I know,” Mary said. “I know, Eloise. And I am sorry.”
She held her crying daughter close and hoped everything would be all right, even as her own heart broke in her chest.
ChapterNine
“How long has it been now?” Dominque asked the housekeeper as a maid scooped up a tray of Katie’s ignored food.
He stood outside Katie’s room, his hands on his hips, pacing.
“This is the second breakfast she has missed, Your Grace,” Geraldine told him solemnly. Her brow was pinched in worry. Dominique occasionally skipped breakfast but when he did eat it, it was often a piece of toast had in his study so he did not always notice the comings-and-goings of his daughter.
“Well, then talk to her! Get her to come out to eat, for goodness’ sake!” he demanded. “I have already tried yesterday at dinner.”
“We have, Your Grace,” the housekeeper said gently. “But she does not answer. She has been seen taking some bread and cheese but even that was yesterday evening. Please try with her again.Please.”
Dominique sighed and stepped forward. “Katie, you must come out of your room this instant!”
Only silence awaited him, telling him, quite surely, that is daughter would not do as he said.
He knocked on her bedroom door. “Katie, I am your father and I am telling you to come outside to talk to me.” Again, only that resolute silence answered. “Katie.”
“Perhaps a more gentle tone might work, Your Grace?” Geraldine suggested. Dominique fought back a snarl at being told how to speak to his own child.
“Katie, come out here and talk to me at once.”
There was a thump against the door as if she had thrown something against it. Dominique sighed.
“I shall fetch some tea,” Geraldine said.
As soon as the housekeeper walked away, Dominique placed a hand against the door. “Katie? Darling, please come outside. I am sorry I have been strict with you recently but it is only out of concern. Come and talk to Papa.”
But his daughter remained stubborn in her lack of response.
So he did what he used to do when she first lost her mother. He sat on the floor, his back pressed to the door, and hoped she might do the same on the other side.
“I will not ask you to talk to me if you do not wish it,” he said, “But can you give me a small knock on the door to tell me if you are there, Katie?”
He thought she would go silent again but after a few moments, a quiet knock sounded, and he smiled.
“When I was younger, my mother would always take me apple picking in the summer,” he told her. “There was a secret garden that she would sneak me into where a large apple tree grew. On it hung the largest apples I had ever seen, all of them shiny. My mother always brought a basket and I would climb the trees when her back was turned. I fell, of course. But I never stopped climbing them during the following trip.”
There was a shuffle on the other side, as though Katie had gotten comfortable. He heard a soft sniffle but continued.
“We would pick apples for a long time in the warm months. My father disagreed and said I needed to spend my summers with him, learning the ways of a man, but my mother told him it was our tradition, even just for a while. So, we kept going, and I kept filling the basket with apples.”
He paused. “Do you know what we did with them, Katie?”
