Page 35 of The Captive
“I am the relation deserving of charity, Lady Greendale. I will be up to my ears in estate matters, for Easterbrook made it clear the stewards and tenants were as reluctant as the bankers to do anything on his say-so as my successor. I have no time for the household matters, no time for the child, no time for the social nonsense that ought to go along with my title. I quite honestly need your help, and I am asking you to give it on a more or less permanent basis.”
For him that was a protracted and reassuringly loud speech. The part of Gilly that had wanted only to be useful rejoiced to hear it, but some other part of her—that had been briefly cherished in a shadowed library—was disquieted.
“You’ll remarry,” she said, drawing on that sense of disquiet. He should remarry, and not because he needed an heir. He needed somebody to sit with him in the library when he could not sleep, needed somebody to see that he ate regularly. Needed somebody to find him the perfect valet.
Needed, and deserved, somebody to cherishhim.
“I might remarry eventually, particularly if Easterbrook doesn’t sell out. I don’t look forward to the prospect though, and intend to observe some mourning of my own. I learned of Helene’s passing only when I met up with Easterbrook outside Toulouse.”
This was news. “And Evan?”
“At the same time.”
He was so matter-of-fact…so heartbreakingly matter-of-fact. Gilly was especially glad she’d seen him on his knees, hugging Lucy to him so tightly.
“I will think on this, Your Grace. You are generous, and as a place to bide during first mourning, Severn has a great deal of appeal.” A place to be needed and busy, a place to heal from eight years of being Greendale’s countess.
“First mourning is only six months for some, your ladyship.” He held out the last orange section to her. “Give me a year. Give me and Lucy your full year of mourning.”
In that year, would he give her more kisses? She took the orange and set it on her plate.
“I will think on this,” she said again. “We will see what transpires with Lucy. You might well decide to send her to a convent, where her silence will be viewed as a spiritual achievement.”
“No, I will not.” He appropriated the orange section from her plate and munched it into oblivion. “I am disinclined to send her away for any reason. You have a scar, Countess.”
Whatonearth?
He took her hand in his and rubbed his thumb over the back of her knuckles. For all his hand had been mistreated, his grip was firm. Also warm. Perhaps even cherishing.
“A burn, I think,” he said, studying her hand. “A nasty burn, but old. Well healed.”
His touch was a delicate, sweet caress to Gilly’s nerves, like the summer breeze and the dappled sun. “Spilled tea. It happens.”
He patted her knuckles and let her have her hand back.
“We do heal, hmm?” He did not smile, but Gilly had the sense they’d shared something, a wink, a joke, a secret, about scars and the stories they concealed.
Not a harmless secret, for some.
“You should tell Lucy you will never send her away. Harris no doubt threatens with every imaginable dire fate to try to inspire the girl to speak. I forbade the use of violence in your schoolroom, though.”
Her presumptuousness caught His Grace’s curiosity. “An occasional birching befalls most English schoolchildren, and usually to good effect.”
“According to whom? The tutors who’ve beaten the children to silence? The pious hypocrites who misquote Proverbs?”
She should not have broached this topic, not with him, not when he had so recently noted the scar on her hand. An outburst threatened, worse than any of her previous lapses.
“A stubborn child who is never disciplined cannot learn to govern himself,” Mercia said, as if reciting some platitude he’d heard before his own backside had been caned.
“Helene was stubborn. Did you take a switch to her in hopes of eradicating the failing in your duchess?”
They were arguing. The last thing Gilly wanted was to annoy His Grace, and yet on this topic, she could barely be rational.
“I would never raise my hand to a woman.”
“But you would raise that same hand to a small child, and expect brute force to teach her self-possession and restraint. I can assure you, resorting to violence for the betterment of those helpless to defend themselves is anything but an example of restraint.”
She stared at the empty plate, her hands fisted in her lap lest she hurl the hapless porcelain against the nearest hard surface.
