Page 62 of The Scandalous Love of a Duke
‘Are you coming, John?’ his mother called.
John turned.
‘You are brooding over something,’ she said, walking towards him.
He shook his head. He did not wish her encroaching into his thoughts. This dinner had been an awful idea. He was tired of his brothers and sisters in the house already, and his father and mother, and his grandmother, all seemed to watch him constantly and question him all the time, without using words. Consequently, he spent little time with them.
When he walked towards her without answering, she said, ‘We are all proud of you. You know that, don’t you, John?’ Her hand wrapped about his upper arm. ‘But you are not alone in this. If you need us, people will support you, Edward, your uncles, your grandmother, your aunts and I. You need not isolate yourself.’
‘I am hardly doing that, you are here, Mama.’ His pitch was irritable as they walked on towards the carriages.
His stepfather was watching, waiting for them.
‘That is just it though, John. We are here, but you are not. You spend more time in the library and in your chambers than with us.’ She took a breath. ‘Mary and Robbie would like to know you better. You built up Robbie’s expectations when you took him to Tattersall’s and you have barely spoken to him since, and Mary has missed you for so many years…’
And?
‘If there is anything I have done,’ she said suddenly.
He looked down and met her gaze but continued walking.
‘Your solitude concerns me, John. It concerns Edward too. I know you deliberately stayed abroad. If I, or we, have done something to upset you, you would tell us?’
Why were you not there before I was ten?The question shot through his mind but he would not ask it. He would not appear such a fragile fool.
‘You need not fret over me, Mama.’
She gave him a tremulous smile. ‘A part of me knows that, and yet another part senses there is something wrong.’
‘I will take Robbie driving this afternoon, if it pleases you.’
‘John, this is not about simply spending more time with your brother, although he will be overjoyed. It is about you. I wish you to be happy, and I do not think you are.’
Happiness? His life had always been about duty. He had escaped it for a few years in Egypt, but he’d always known even then he was only buying time. ‘I have everything I need, Mama.’Except the feelings Grandfather beat out of me.Surely he should feel some compassion towards her, not this annoyance.
‘But you are not happy,’ she said as they neared the carriages. ‘Your life is not all about responsibility, John, happiness outweighs it,’ she whispered finally before they could no longer talk.
14
Katherine tried to hurry, weaving between the people in the busy high street in Maidstone.
The weather had turned as miserable as her mood, a very light drizzle of rain had been falling for hours, making everything damp, and the sky dreary.
She was tired, exhausted by the thoughts circling in her head. She wished she did not have to go to John’s dinner but she was no coward. She would face him and hold her head high no matter that she felt as small as the church mouse he kept calling her. But she wanted to look her best. She did not want John to know how much he had upset her. Let him think her as unaffected as him.
She had hoped to spend the afternoon bathing and finding a prettier way to style her hair but her mother was being her usual obnoxious self and ensuring Katherine had no time to do so. It was already past two and here she was in Maidstone with a groom running the fourth errand of the day and this time it was to find a paler ribbon for Jenny’s hair to show off the colour of her eyes better.
Phillip was due home soon at least.
Her gaze reached ahead to the milliner’s shop. She was almost there.
What a dreadful idiot she had been. He must think her no different than any woman of the gutter to have asked her to do those things –and I agreed.That had only shown her how little she thought of herself.
Oh this dinner made no sense. If he did not care, and did not want to see her, there was no reason for him to hold a party and say he had done it for her. If he wished nothing more to do with her, he need have nothing more to do with her.
‘Miss Spencer?’ a gentleman uttered as she virtually collided with him.
‘Mr Wareham.’
