Page 10 of The Scandalous Love of a Duke
Hours, was the answer.
He sat and pulled on his stockings and shoes, then his shirt.
When John left his room, the hall was morbidly silent.
John gently knocked on the door of his grandfather’s chambers. ‘It is the Marquess of Sayle.’
The door opened and a footman bowed. ‘My lord.’
His grandmother sat in the chair John had occupied earlier, her hand resting over his grandfather’s. She looked across her shoulder at John. ‘John.’ Her voice was heavy with emotion, though he knew their marriage had never been a love match. For her it had been more like endurance.
John stood behind her and laid his hands on her shoulders.
There were three footmen in the room, his grandfather’s valet and the physician.
‘His Grace’s heartbeat is very weak,’ the physician said quietly. ‘He is unconscious.’
John nodded, his gaze falling to the man who had always been a significant figure in his life. Even during the years he had hidden from the duke’s influence abroad, he had still been the duke’s heir. He was never able to escape that.
The old man was barely breathing, weak and wraithlike.
John took a deep breath, stepped about his grandmother, leaned forward and rested a hand on his grandfather’s shoulder, then pressed a kiss on his cold brow.
‘Goodbye. I never thought I would miss you, but I shall,’ John whispered, before rising.
There was no sign that the Duke had heard him, yet John felt better for having said the words. They were true.
The Duke of Pembroke took his last breath as John stood with his grandmother.
John’s grandmother rose and leaned to kiss the Duke’s cheek, tears slipping from her eyes.
John felt only emptiness, oddness, a lacking…
The physician walked past them both and lifted John’s grandfather’s wrist, checking for a pulse. Then he bent and listened for breath before finally rising and drawing the sheet up and over the old man’s face.
John’s grandmother turned sharply and John opened his arms to her.
While he held her the men about the room bowed and his grandfather’s valet said, ‘Your Grace.’
John felt the floorboards shift sideways beneath his feet. He had known this day would come. But it was strange now it was here.I am the Duke of Pembroke. This house, everything in it, and several more like it, acres and acres of land and the tenants living and working upon that land, were all his responsibility now.
4
Standing on the lea beside Westminster Abbey, Katherine watched as the procession neared.
The coffin was displayed in a black hearse pulled by six jet horses, with black-dyed ostrich feathers bobbing on their heads as they trotted with high, precise steps. Their manes and tails were plaited and tied with black ribbon.
Gripping her reticule with both hands and holding it more tightly, Katherine took a deep breath. Her heart was pounding.
As the hearse drew to a halt, she lifted to her toes to see over the crowd. It seemed as if half of London was in attendance to view the pomp and ceremony of the old Duke of Pembroke’s funeral. All she could see of John, as he climbed from his open carriage behind the hearse, was his head and shoulders.
Her heart ached.
She watched him move alongside his uncles to release and lift the coffin.
A rush of pain and longing spilled from her heart into her limbs. It had been so long since she had seen him but her reaction was the same as it had been more than half a dozen years before. The rhythm of her heart rang like an ironmonger’s hammer against her ribs.
Her brother, Phillip, braced her elbow, to stop her being knocked off balance by the crowd. He could have gone into the Abbey, but women were not to attend funerals and he had promised to stay with her.
