Page 65 of His Forgotten Bride
And still she had whispered her condolences, and carried him up to bed, and sent for some willow bark tea to prevent the after effects of too much drink. What had it cost her to pretend it hadn’t hurt her? What had it cost her to work in his house for these past months, interacting with the man whom she believed had betrayed her in the worst of ways?
“She didn’t know,” he rasped through a throat that felt clogged and tight. “She didn’t know—until Matthew told her.” And she’d cried at his bedside. Not forhim. Or at least notjustfor him. For everything that she’d thought to be true, for everything that had been stolen from all of them.
She had to have agonized over that revelation. Suffered beneath the weight of it, the realization that everything she had been through had been for nothing. The capricious whims of an old man, a duke who thought his family line too noble to taint with common blood, had driven the course of her life.
“How could she have known?” Westwood inquired, his voice pacifying, persuasive. “You’re secretive, selective in whom you confide. You’ve not precisely been the sort of man to inspire confidence, lately, wouldn’t you say? And there is that history between you.” He sighed heavily. “We all make mistakes, Leighton, but I don’t envy you the process of rectifying yours.”
Nor did he. It hadn’t been just the one mistake; it had been a compounding series of them. For God’s sake, Claire couldn’t even bear to look at him. She’d snuffed out the candle last evening with a sort of quiet desperation that had torn at his heart even then. He’d made her feel helpless, hopeless—and still she had persevered, reciting in a dull, lifeless voice another day from the past, surrendering yet another memory she had once deemed precious to him.
Did she still believe that, even now? Perhaps she had had enough time, enough experience to have judged those memories unwanted. Perhaps nowevenshewould prefer to forget.
Chapter Thirty-One
“Bradshaw,” Gabriel said as he headed for the stairs to dress for dinner. “Have you seen Mrs. Hotchkiss lately?”
Bradshaw, who had been in conversation with a footman, gave a flick of his hand to the man and turned to Gabriel. “In the kitchen, I believe, sir,” he said.
“Good,” Gabriel replied. “I should like her to dine with Matthew and I this evening. See that she is informed, won’t you?”
With an inelegant sound of derision, Bradshaw said, “She cannot.”
Wheeling about on the third step, Gabriel inquired, “I beg your pardon?”
“My lord, there is simply too much to be done, and the staff is sorely depleted at present. We simply cannot sacrifice two capable hands.” Bradshaw issued the words earnestly enough, but Gabriel had heard that contemptuous sound he’d made and wondered if perhaps his butler had felt called to a higher position—appointing himself his employer’s savior, valiantly defending against an unsuitable woman.
Yesterday, a housemaid had come to Gabriel directly to complain of Claire—a terrible breach of propriety in itself. Today a household that had been flush with servants was now mysteriously understaffed, and Bradshaw had turned up his supercilious nose at the thought of the master sharing dinner with the housekeeper.Somethinghad occurred, some inciting incident to which Gabriel had not been made privy. Such occurrences would typically be beneath the notice of the master of the house, but this one had clearly involved Claire, and that made it his concern.
“Why,” he asked, “is the staff sorely depleted?”
Clearing his throat, Bradshaw said, “As you might imagine, sir, when certain…revelations came to light, they did not precisely paint Mrs. Hotchkiss in a flattering light.”
“Oh?” Gabriel said. “I wonder, then, in which light I have been painted.” He was gratified to see a bit of a flush break over Bradshaw’s face. They both knew thathissins would have been immaterial, insignificant—he was, in point of fact, the one who paid the staff.Hisfaults would be written off, forgiven because he had paid for the luxury of it. Claire only supervised the staff, and they would hold her to a higher standard.
With an audible swallow, as if sensing that he had made a crucial error somewhere but could not sort out what it had been, Bradshaw continued, “Mrs. Hotchkiss dismissed Betsy, of course. Insubordination cannot be tolerated. But she also offered quarterly wages and a letter of reference to anyone else who wished to leave.”
“And how many accepted?”
“Seven, sir. They didn’t want to work in a household that was not…respectable.” He averted his gaze, offering tentatively, “However, it doesn’t appear as if the governess and nanny will choose to resign their posts.”
“Good,” Gabriel said. “Then I won’t have to deny them a character reference for abandoning their responsibilities to my son. Mylegitimateson,” he stressed, feeling his hand curl over the banister with a force that would have snapped a less sturdy wood.
“That’s—” Bradshaw reared back as is Gabriel had struck out at him. “I beg your pardon, sir, yourlegitimateson?”
“I am not in the habit of explaining myself to the staff.” Gabriel rather enjoyed the way the color drained from Bradshaw’s face until the man had gone a sickly pale shade. “But as it happens, Mrs. Hotchkiss—Claire—is my wife. In point of fact she is Lady Leighton, and has been these past seven years.” With some effort he unclenched his fingers from the banister and adjusted his sleeve in deliberate insouciance. “You had better disseminate that fact to the household, Bradshaw, as I would take it extremely poorly for another such situation to arise again. Is that understood?”
“Perfectly, sir.” Bradshaw said, and his voice had dropped once more into the respectful, subservient tenor of a good butler.
With a curt nod, Gabriel left Bradshaw there, standing in solemn silence at the base of the stairs.
∞∞∞
“My lady, his lordship requests that you join him for dinner.”
In the midst of peeling and slicing onions for a soup to go with Monsieur Bissonet’s Chateaubriand, Claire had only half-heard the words. It was not until the kitchen fell into a heavy silence, with just the staccato slap of her knife to break it, that she was moved to trawl back through her memory in search of the words that had caused it.
It was just Sukey and Monsieur Bissonet, thank God, to have overheard Mr. Bradshaw’s declaration, but they still accounted for two more people who had so suddenly become intimately acquainted with her personal life than she would have liked.
A stray lock of hair had come free from her carefully-pinned coif, and she brushed it back with fingers so sharply scented with onion that it brought stinging tears to her eyes. “You may tell his lordship that I am unavailable,” she said, reaching for her knife once again. And the steady chopping resumed, rhythmic and soothing to her frazzled nerves.
