Page 58 of The Scandalous Love of a Duke
Her father was staring at her, a question in his eyes.
‘I think it kind of her too,’ Jenny said suddenly.
Katherine looked at her. It was probably the nicest thing Jenny had ever said. Catching Katherine entirely off guard, Jenny rushed to hug her when she stepped off the bottom step. ‘I am glad you shall have a pretty dress.’
‘Thank you,’ Katherine said, uncertain what to do, waiting on the condemnation of their mother. If she insisted Katherine send it back, it would have to go back.
Her mother’s eyes glowed with malice, but there was doubt there too. After John had so publicly taken up Katherine’s cause last week perhaps her mother feared offending him.
‘You may keep it,’ she announced. ‘You must write and thank the Countess.’
‘Thank you,’ Katherine said, wishing to hug her mother for the first time in her life.
‘May I see it?’ Jennifer asked, her face glowing with excitement.
‘Kate and I were just going out, Jenny,’ Phillip said. ‘We shall be back for dinner, Mama. We are going to Pembroke Place to accept our invitations.’
‘Can I come?’ Jenny asked.
But at the same moment Katherine’s father said in a savage voice, ‘Katherine has no need to go. Go alone, the girls should stay here.’
‘Kate wishes to come, Papa. John is her friend also. And you may come if you wish, Jenny, but you shall have to squeeze into my curricle.’ He looked back at their father. ‘I cannot see why you question it.’
‘I question it, Phillip, because do you not think it odd for a duke to pursue a friendship with Kate?’
He may as well have slapped her, and she could see Phillip was equally shocked. Her father was usually the one to support her.
‘Go and get ready, Jenny,’ Phillip said. Then he looked at their father. ‘Let us speak in the study.’ He had said it to take the conversation out of her hearing, but Katherine heard it through the door anyway as her mother walked away.
‘Do not judge him by yourself, Papa. John has known Kate for years. He is merely being kind. He saw how things were last week and he changed them, something you have never done.’
‘And why should he have done that?’ she heard her father answer. ‘He is singling her out. He is not just being kind, Phillip.’Her father knew what she had done.She hoped Phillip never did.
* * *
Katherine was nervous when Phillip drew his curricle to a halt before Pembroke Place. She had never been inside and she felt awkward after her father’s tirade.
Half a dozen grooms raced forward to greet them and one of them offered a hand to help her down, then helped Jenny too.
Phillip offered them an arm each to walk in.
There was a row of broad, shallow, pale yellow stone steps ascending to the portico of the Palladian mansion, and four giant columns rose upwards. Her eyes followed them and saw palm leaves carved at the top. While the triangular stone decorating the head of the portico bore roundels of some sort of sculpted flowers.
It was overwhelmingly grand.
Her heart beat harder.
Her father had a point, he really did. What on earth could John want with a woman who had come from nothing when he had all of this?
‘Is the duke at home, Mr Finch?’
‘His Grace is, Master Spencer. Will you wait in the hall a moment?’
The hall was huge and Katherine saw Jenny’s eyes were as wide as hers felt. Jenny had never been here before either.
The hall’s ceiling was two stories high above them, and the space was flooded with light from two long windows which reached the height of the room either side of the door. It was lined in a mottled beige marble, the whole thing, on the floor and rising in columns, with fireplaces at either side of the room. Above the door was another window but the other walls were decorated with paintings of nymphs and gods, and on the ceiling was a massive circular painting of all the gods of Olympus reclining on their clouds.
Phillip removed his gloves and his hat, so Katherine did the same, as did Jenny, passing all their outdoor articles to a footman.
