Page 6 of The Scandalous Love of a Duke
‘And my grandfather?’ John asked.
‘Will also be pleased. You have arrived in time, but he is near the end,’ Richard’s arm fell away from John’s shoulders as they began climbing the stairs. ‘I think he has been holding on for your return. He will want to speak to you at once. I will tell him you are here. He is much changed, John. He has been ill for many months.’
John nodded sharply, angry at the emptiness in his chest and the anxiety stirring his stomach.For God’s sake, I am a man full grown now. I need not fear him.
‘Why not wait with your grandmother and Penny? They will be overjoyed you are here. I will come and fetch you.’ His uncle must have sensed John’s inner turmoil.
John felt like the child who had left. The child his uncle had always seemed to pity. He nodded though and walked on along the familiar hall as Richard turned the other way.
John’s head was suddenly full of pictures from the past. The most acute being the day his mother and stepfather had come here to collect him during that troubled tenth year of his life. The day he had been returned to her a short time after the scene which haunted him.
When she had previously taken John from his boarding school, it had been in the middle of the night. John’s stepfather had been with her. He had been a stranger to John at the time. They had travelled north for miles, then she had married that stranger.
Not long afterwards John’s grandfather had come to take him back. The moment of his dream.
The day his mother had collected John from this house, his grandfather recognised her as John’s mother for the first time. No one had told him why.
The drawing room door stood ajar, and the sound of women talking drifted through the gap.
‘I have no idea what else to do. He will see no other physician, but he is so obviously in considerable pain and yet he will not take laudanum,’ John’s grandmother was saying, in a worried voice.
Both she and his Aunt Penny had been like mothers to him until he was ten.
He thrust his maudlin childish thoughts aside and pushed the door wider to enter. ‘Grandmamma. Aunt Penny.’
Both women stood, exclaiming at the sight of him crossing the room, their eyes wide in shock.
‘Grandmother.’ He lifted her hand from by her side and kissed the back of her fingers, bowing. When he straightened he saw her eyes glitter in the candlelight. He hugged her gently and pressed a kiss on her temple before letting her go.
‘Oh, John, your grandfather will be glad.Iam glad. It is good to have you home. You look well. Your journey was not too difficult?’
‘My journey was long, and difficult, but that is travelling, and particularly in winter. It is good to see you too, Grandmother. You have not aged a day.’
She smiled, her tears were from happiness. ‘Flatterer.’
‘You have an air of mystery about you now, John, and I think it suits you,’ his aunt said.
John turned to her, smiled and opened his arms.
She hugged him. ‘Ellen must be overjoyed.’ She was also crying when he released her.
‘I have not seen Mama yet. I thought it best to come here first. Is she in town?’
‘Oh, John, yes, she is in town, and she will never forgive me for seeing you first.’
‘I shall have Finch send word,’ his grandmother said. ‘The whole family are in London…’Because of my grandfather’s illness?‘I shall ask him to contact them all.’
‘John.’
John turned to face Richard who stood at the open door.
‘His Grace wishes to see you.’
A moment later John was walking back along the statue-lined hall beside his uncle.
‘How long is he likely to live?’
His uncle glanced sideways. ‘It could be hours or days or weeks, John. There is no certainty. He has defied a hundred predictions already.’
