Page 11 of Marry in Scarlet
“Thelibrary, Redmond?” she said plaintively. “You receive your mother in the library?”
He gestured to the papers spread out on the desk before him. “I’m working.”
His mother pouted, then tottered across the room, sank gracefully into the most comfortable chair and gave an exhausted sigh. Hard on her heels came her most recent companion, a colorless woman clad in a depressing shade between gray and purple, clutching a large, lumpy reticule.
He nodded to her. She was some kind of distant cousin.Harriet? Henrietta? He couldn’t remember her name. His mother changed her companions so often it was hard to keep up. They all started off devoted, but after a few months, they became “impossible” and Hart was instructed to pension them off.
The companion produced a number of little bottles and vials and arranged them on a small table next to his mother’s chair. Smelling salts, hartshorn, feathers for burning, and various potions guaranteed to revive the feeblest invalid: Mother’s battery of armaments.
Not that his mother was an invalid. The Duchess of Everingham was said by some to enjoy ill health. Hart would have said that far from enjoying it, his mother positively relished it. As far as he was concerned, she was as strong as a horse.
The medicines were there purely as a silent warning that any opposition to his mother’s wishes would have dire, possibly fatal consequences. He’d learned that lesson young.
The companion pulled a shawl from the seemingly bottomless reticule and arranged it around his mother’s knees. Her grace had a horror of drafts.
“Oh, stopfussing, Hester.” His mother kicked impatiently at the shawl. “Go. Leave us. I wish to talk to my son.”
Handing a dainty crystal vial—probably smelling salts—to his mother, Hester turned to Hart and said in an undervoice, “Try not to upset her, your grace. She’s feeling very poorly today.”
When was she not? Particularly when she wanted something. But he didn’t say it aloud. He glanced at the doorway where his butler still hovered. “Tea and cakes, Fleming.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly,” his mother said. “Just a little barley water. With honey and a slice of lemon. And perhaps a rusk. I need to keep up my strength, such as it is.”
Fleming bowed and left, taking the companion with him. Silence fell. Hart turned back to his correspondence. His mother sighed. He kept writing.
“I miss this house so much.”
Hart ignored her. All his life his mother had complainedabout the inconvenience and old-fashioned furniture of Everingham House, saying it was too big, too grim and too cold. His late father had spent a fortune trying to please her, but nothing ever did.
Papa had never learned that lesson. Hart had.
Several years ago he’d finally given in to her complaints and bought her a pretty house just around the corner that was smaller, lighter, warmer and more modern. She’d had it entirely redecorated, and happily moved in, all the while confiding sadly to her friends that her son had callously thrust his mother from her family home.
He himself had been living in bachelor apartments at the time and had shut Everingham House up. But last year, when he’d decided to take a bride, he’d reopened it, had it redecorated and some parts of it modernized—the kitchens and the plumbing in particular—and moved back in.
Naturally his mother had conceived a desperate yearning to live there again.
She sighed again, and when he showed no sign of putting aside his correspondence, she said in a plaintive voice, “It utterly exhausts me to venture out into the world, you know.”
“Then why bother?”
“Because I am in despair, Redmond, utter despair!”
He kept writing.
“Despair about you and your situation, Redmond!” Seeming to realize the waspish tenor of her speech, she added, “Dearest.”
He didn’t look up. “Don’t worry your head about me, Mother. There’s no need.”
“But thereisneed, my son. That frightful aborted ceremony, the gossip, the scandal, the disgrace! The horridsluron our family name! I am nigh on prostrated with mortification.” She shuddered, unstoppered the tiny vial and took a restorative sniff.
Hart said nothing. There was no point. They’d had this conversation numerous times. Yes, there was gossip, butgossip never lasted. And if she didn’t go to so many parties—forcing herself, naturally—she wouldn’t have to hear it.
“Do not fret yourself, my son, I shalltryto weather the storm,” his mother said, rallying bravely. “It’syouI worry about, my dearest. I thought that you were all settled at last, and thatfinallyI could go in peace.” She sank back feebly in her chair and closed her eyes.
“Go where, Mother? Off to Bath again, are you?” He blotted the ink of his letter, folded it and reached for his seal. “Or perhaps a sea-bathing treatment this time? I’ve heard that a bracing dip in the cold salt sea does people a power of good.”
She shuddered and clutched her vial feebly to her bosom. “Such a thing would kill me.”
