When a Duchess Says I Do - Grace Burrowes Page 0,59
door, then he recovered and approached Duncan with an outstretched hand.
Duncan poured himself another cup of tea.
Trostle bowed and withdrew, while Duncan took his tea and stood before the late duke. “I should have sacked him.”
His Grace remained memorialized with his loyal hounds, a gun propped over his shoulder.
“I should have sacked him without a character, but he has a family.” Duncan took a sip of tea and nearly scalded his tongue. “I have family, too, and they would have sacked him.”
“Talking to yourself,” Stephen said from the doorway, “surely a sign of inchoate dementia. It’s colder than the ninth circle of hell in here. Maybe you’re in the early stages of hypothermia as well.”
Stephen knew all about illnesses of both the body and the mind. What did he know about a troubled heart? “I sent Trostle to Bristol.”
His lordship closed the distance to the tea tray. “Probably qualifies as a version of purgatory this time of year. Did he admit to stealing you blind?”
“More or less, and he attempted to sully the reputations of any loyal to this house. The tea is very hot.”
“I like it hot. I’m the bearer of news.”
Stephen was no longer a boy. Every time Duncan came to this realization, it made him a little sadder. The sun slanting through the windows illuminated the face of a young man rather than a youth. The manner in which Stephen grasped a delicate porcelain teacup—confident, graceful, unselfconscious—was a man’s grasp, not a boy’s.
“You aren’t gloating, so the news can’t be that awful.”
“Quinn and Jane are paying you a call, and they’re bringing the children.”
Dear…God. “Meddling. Meddling when I can least afford their interference.”
Stephen considered his teacup, the steam wafting up in a shaft of sunshine. “I’ll do what I can, Duncan, but what will you tell them about our Matilda?”
* * *
“I learned after yesterday’s interview with Trostle that I’m to host a visit from more family,” Duncan said, settling a pair of spectacles on his nose. “This was inevitable, though no arrival date has been disclosed. The children will slow down the raiding party, but not stop its progress.” He occupied the desk near the window, where the light was best for reading.
The current work in progress was his essay on the Vatican, which had fascinated Matilda, given his training in theology. She still had a pair of Duncan’s eyeglasses—they helped a great deal when deciphering his handwriting—so he must be wearing a spare pair.
“You make a visit from family sound like Old Testament retribution.” For Matilda, the news was sad, but hardly a surprise. She had promised Duncan only that her tenure at Brightwell would be temporary.
“Quinn and Jane are bringing the children, so I mustn’t complain too loudly. Three females, the oldest of them about five years of age. One delights in seeing the great Quinn Wentworth on his hands and knees, trying to whinny like a pony but sounding like a bear in distress.”
Matilda rose from her chair by the hearth and took the glasses from Duncan’s nose. “You envy him that privilege.”
Duncan appeared to thrive in solitude. His life was lived mostly through his intellect, and yet, he’d known Jinks was hungry. He’d pulled Lord Stephen back from the brink of adolescent despair any number of times. Among his correspondence had been a note to the Lady Elizabeth Wentworth on Birdsong Lane in London. If she was a ducal cousin, she was a child of tender years, and Duncan was doubtless her most devoted correspondent.
He was here, attempting a task he disliked, simply because another cousin—younger, with few trustworthy allies—had asked it of him.
Duncan Wentworth would make a ferociously loving father.
“This essay waxes too philosophical,” he said, laying the pages on the blotter. “You must be ruthless with my prose, Matilda. Excise the churchly maunderings, leave the architectural descriptions.”
“Never. You are the first writer I’ve come across who can connect the two—the theology and the builder’s reality—and more than any other treatise, this one convinces me your work deserves publication.”
He was pleased with her defense of his prose. She knew this by his scowl, by the impatient drumming of his fingers on the blotter. Already, she was learning to decode his mannerisms, learning to see what others would express with a smile.
She would be forced to leave him. His family was preparing to storm the premises—ducal family, no less. Matilda knew, with the same sinking sensation she’d felt when she’d realized what Papa had so carelessly left in his satchel, she would