Page 100 of The Truth About Dukes
“I won’t?” He’d considered doing just that.
“The money isn’t yours to reject. By rights, that money belongs to Ivy, and heaven knows she might need it.”
Mrs. Hodges added a dollop of milk to her tea and took a sip. How a woman could do housework all day and still have such lovely hands was a mystery.
“I am being arrogant,” Whitlock said. “Dukes are supposed to be arrogant. Rothhaven is disappointing me terribly when he denies me the opportunity to scorn him. Still, Ivy has no need of fripperies and furbelows. Such indulgences only lead to vanity.”
Mrs. Hodges set her cup down silently. “Ivy might need that moneyto eat, to buy passage home from whatever colonial backwater you drag her to. She might need that money to avoid a very sorry end. You aremortal, Mr. Shaw. You are no stripling, and your ambitions could well result in Ivy being stranded halfway around the world in a place where women are too few in number.”
Mrs. Hodges rose and braced her hands on the desk. “If she has some money of her own, she will enjoy a measure of safety in this wicked world, safety women without means lack. Toss that sum back at the duke’s feet, and if Ivy is lucky, she might end up keeping house for a shortsighted fool who thinks only of his own ambitions. If she’s unlucky…you will have guaranteed her doom with your righteous, masculine pride, and she herself might soon be a mother without benefit of matrimony.”
Mrs. Hodges sat, lifted her teacup, then set it back on the saucer untasted. “I will not apologize for speaking my mind when Ivy has nobody else to talk sense to you. If you would allow me to stay on until you take ship, I would appreciate it. I won’t ask you for a character.”
“I have upset you.” That realization qualified as a revelation, a glimpse into a vast, dimly perceived array of possibilities, for Elizabeth Hodges was as stalwart a soul as ever donned an apron and cap.
“Ivy’s situation upsets me.” This time the teacup made it to Mrs. Hodges’s lips. “She’s writing to her mother, you know.”
“Writing to…her mother?”
“To Her Grace of Rothhaven. You did not forbid her from doing so, and Her Grace writes back.”
If Whitlock had boarded a ship and put out to sea in stormy weather, he could not feel more unbalanced.
“Ivy is corresponding with theDuchess of Rothhaven, and you are only now informing me?”
Mrs. Hodges finished her tea and put the cup and saucer on the tray. “You are a good man, Whitlock Shaw, but you need a wife to curb your excesses and explain to you the human side of life. Her Grace was here little more than a week past. It’s not as if Ivy has been penning her letters in secret for years. Read this.”
She passed over another folded piece of vellum, also watermarked with a coat of arms.
“We are abruptly awash in ducal correspondence.”
“Read it,” Mrs. Hodges said, “and then I will convey it to Ivy. She apparently asked her mother for coach fare so she can escape you once and for all. This is the duchess’s reply. It’s not the reply I would have penned to my only child, but then, I’m apenniless housekeeper.”
She rose with none of her customary energy and left the room, closing the door quietly behind her. Whitlock let his tea grow cold, and sat with the letter in his hand, mentally vowing that he would find a way to tell Elizabeth Hodges that she was much more than a penniless housekeeper.
That discussion would take some thought and planning. A lot of thought and planning in fact, given that Whitlock was supposed to take ship in little more than a fortnight.
He smoothed out Her Grace of Rothhaven’s letter and began reading.
“I want you to know something,” Rothhaven said, as he and Constance were shown to a private dining room at the Duck and Goose.
“I want the jury to know many things,” Constance replied. “For instance, if they find against you, I will have Quinn and Jane ruin the lot of them unto the nineteenth generation.” She would do no such thing, of course. Reverend Shaw detested high-handed aristocrats for reasons, and a tendency to abuse wealth and power for personal satisfaction was probably at the top of his list.
And in that much, oddly enough, Constance agreed with him.
Rothhaven held her chair for her as the serving maid closed the door. Luncheon was already laid out on the table, but Constance had no appetite.
Her husband leaned close to whisper in her ear. “Ilovedbeing able to tell the world that you are my duchess. Ilovethat you sent for Alexander and Helen. Ilovethat you put that vile excuse for a physician in his place. Iloveyou.”
Constance rose and wrapped her arms around him. “I love you too, so very much, and I am furious on your behalf.”
He stroked her hair, and some of the ire drained out of her. “We shall contrive, Your Grace,” he murmured. “That business with Her Grace of Walden fainting was splendid.”
“I think Jane enjoyed using the fiction of female frailty to control an entire courtroom. She was very convincing, wasn’t she?”
“Waldenwas convincing. Let’s eat, shall we?”
He was so calm, so at ease when Constance was ready to rip up at all of York, and most especially at Lady Phoebe Philpot, who had no doubt authored this entire drama.
