Page 61 of The Seductive Love of a Lady
He waited at the end of the row of cottages. She walked on. She opened the low gate and walked along a narrow brick paved path to the front door.
The oak door was as squat as the thatched cottage.
Mary dropped the knocker against the door four times, the low thuds vibrating through the wood.
There was no answer.
But beyond the door Mary heard whispers.
She waited.
‘Who is there?’ an older woman’s voice called.
Mary leaned close to the door. ‘It is your sister-in-law,’ she said quietly. ‘Your brother sent me because he could not come himself.’
Another hushed, urgent conversation ensued on the other side of the door.
Then bolts clunked back, the door opened an inch and an older woman, Mary presumed to be the housekeeper, peered through the gap. She wore a black dress, dusted with flour, as though she had been interrupted at work in the kitchen and had stripped off an apron a moment ago.
‘May I come in?’ Mary asked.
The door opened a little wider. Beyond the housekeeper, Mary saw Lady Kilbride standing in the shadows of a small room. She had a brown woollen shawl wrapped tightly about her. Her dress beneath it looked plain, homely, and her hair was simply coiled and pinned in a knot. She must have lived extravagantly previously, but now she had been living humbly.
‘May I come in?’ Mary said again. ‘My brother, the Duke of Pembroke, is with me. Andrew sent us both.’
Lady Kilbride’s gaze reached past Mary, appearing afraid.
Mary held out the letter. ‘I have this from Andrew, so you know I am telling you the truth.’
Lady Kilbride took the letter and opened it.
Mary glanced back and beckoned John forward.
As she read, the colour in Lady Kilbride’s skin faded. ‘He has accused Drew of being my lover. I never thought…Oh God.’ Her hand rested against her chest. ‘Come in. Before someone sees you.’ She stepped back, beckoning them in. ‘You are too well dressed to visit a simple woman.’
Mary crossed the threshold onto stone flags. The room was a parlour, a third of the size of the room in The Albany.
Lady Kilbride’s eyes looked past Mary as John entered behind her, removing his hat and bending his head to pass beneath the low lintel. ‘Your Grace,’ she said. ‘You must sit.’ She lifted a hand towards one of two armchairs in the room.
‘Drew must regret helping me,’ she said.
‘Ma’am, sit down before you fall down,’ the housekeeper encouraged. ‘I shall make a pot of tea.’
Mary smiled as she imagined Andrew employing this woman. She sounded like someone who would defend her mistress, even with violence if necessary. ‘Helping you is the one thing he would never regret,’ Mary said as Lady Kilbride sat in the other armchair.
Mary turned a chair from a table in the corner and occupied that.
The letter quivered in Lady Kilbride’s trembling hands.
‘I promised your brother I would protect you in his stead,’ John said. ‘You will be safe at Pembroke Place. No one can come within a mile of the house without being seen. We will be there to keep you company. Of course, the house and grounds will be at your disposal to use as you wish, you may avoid us all if you choose. But it need not be confinement as this must feel, and you need not live in fear.’
‘Why would you help me?’
Mary remembered Andrew’s poisonous family. They were Lady Kilbride’s family too. ‘Because you are my sister now.’
‘You are together?’ Her eyes were very like Andrew’s. Like their mother’s, Mary supposed.
‘Yes.’
