When a Duchess Says I Do - Grace Burrowes Page 0,38
whose welfare concerns me to the utmost. I wish you good day.”
He withdrew his gloves from his pocket and was pulling them on when the painting over the mantel caught his eye.
“I’ve often wondered why you keep that landscape in such a prominent location when you have far more impressive art elsewhere in the house. Is that a Gainsborough?”
Wakefield moved away from the hearth, for the first time betraying a hint of impatience. “As a matter of fact, it’s a Dupont, Thomas Gainsborough’s nephew. He was a fair hand with a landscape, though not the equal of his uncle. Poor man didn’t live long.”
“The property is attractive.” The painting depicted a manor house amid mature trees in their summer glory. A boy flew a kite on the lawn, a spaniel yapping at his heels. The house could have been any one of a hundred country homes, neither immense nor ostentatious, but lovely all the same.
“Who owns that house?” The only English landscape on display anywhere in the Wakefield dwelling deserved further study.
“A duke now deceased owned it. I’m fairly certain the property is in Middlesex or somewhere west of there. I bought the painting from the previous titleholder because he didn’t care for the child in the foreground. The old man loved his hounds, though. He died some years ago and I have no idea who owns the place now.”
For a moment, the unflappable Thomas Wakefield had been off center. His savoir faire had returned in the next instant, but mention of this painting—this painting that Matilda would have seen day in and day out—had disturbed Wakefield’s equilibrium.
“I have little use for spaniels or house pets of any kind,” Parker said, moving toward the door. He wasn’t that keen on children, truth be told. “Do keep me informed.”
He bowed and withdrew, and as he accepted his hat and greatcoat from the butler, he turned his thoughts to the long trip north to the Midlands. The journey would be made longer still by a detour to the wilds of Middlesex and Berkshire, but then, hunting a missing fiancée was much more pressing business than running some starving little fox to ground.
* * *
Matilda was engrossed in Mr. Wentworth’s journey down the Italian coast from Nice to Rome. His companion in all of his travels was the same Lord Stephen now a guest at Brightwell. The youthful version of his lordship had been difficult, given to melancholia and rages, then to trying his hand at serial inebriations, all the while spending hours of every day in his Bath chair.
“You’re reading of our famous travels,” Lord Stephen said.
He leaned on a stout cane and the doorjamb. Matilda had noticed that he did this as a matter of habit: paused on the edge of every clearing, taking stock, probably charting the course with the fewest steps to whatever destination he’d chosen. She had learned the same caution for different reasons.
“I am translating those accounts written in French or Italian,” she said, “and editing for clarity as I go. You had some adventures.”
Lord Stephen had climbed the rigging of the Italian vessel in the middle of heavy seas, and all Mr. Wentworth had remarked on was “the lad’s prodigious strength and courage.”
Who could look upon such rash behavior with a calm eye and see only strength and courage?
“I was experimenting,” Lord Stephen said, leaving the door open and settling in beside Matilda. “Looking for ways to escape the pain.”
“Pain?”
He whacked his boot with his cane. “Pain. Unrelenting, miserable, maddening pain. I’ve yet to figure out how to turn that suffering into attention from the ladies. Doesn’t seem sporting when all the hale and hearty fellows can’t compete with me on the same footing.”
Matilda smiled, though she wasn’t fooled. Lord Stephen’s pain was real, and so too was his unwillingness to trade on anybody’s sympathy.
“Where are we now?” Lord Stephen asked, peering at the journal in Matilda’s hands. “Oh, sailing south to Rome. I nearly fell into the sea like Icarus; had a bit too much grog before going aloft.”
“More experimenting?” He’d left the door open, as was polite, but the result was an eddy of cold air around Matilda’s ankles.
He took the journal from her, closed it, and set it on the low table. “I want to have the damned leg cut off, you see, but I’m not brave enough to simply order it done. Somewhere on this earth must be a means of sending a man’s mind elsewhere so that necessary adjustments can be