who’d died? Randolph had spoken as if she knew, when he must know she didn’t. Verity felt a brush of…humiliation?
She began to play again. The music soothed her as well as the others.
A previous engagement didn’t matter, of course. It had obviously been some time ago, and Rosalie was gone. Nothing to do with her. But there’d been such anguish in Randolph’s face and voice when he spoke of Rosalie. It had sounded as if his feelings were very much alive. Granted, his nightmare had been about his mother. Still.
Verity wasn’t jealous. She would not be jealous. She was…unsettled. A situation that she’d regarded in one way was suddenly different. It was like turning and discovering that the ground dropped away a few feet behind your back. There was a moment of dizzy realignment. She’d begun to feel part of the Gresham family, and now she discovered that they’d been keeping secrets from her. Unless they all thought she knew. Which brought her back around to wondering why Randolph had never mentioned this significant piece of information.
She’d ask him, as soon as things were more settled at Langford House. The duchess was getting better, so it wouldn’t be much longer. As the crisis began to wane, Verity was more and more conscious of the great many things she and Randolph had to talk about.
The next morning, Verity found herself alone in the breakfast room with Sebastian. Since they took turns sitting with the duchess, no one in the family was keeping regular hours. One never knew who would turn up where, except when they all gathered at dinner.
Oddly, despite his bulk and martial bearing, Sebastian was the most approachable of Randolph’s brothers. Or so it seemed to Verity. There always seemed to be a spark of sympathy in his blue eyes. She knew he liked plain speaking, and practiced it himself. So when he smiled a good morning, she made a snap decision and said, “I didn’t realize Randolph had been engaged before.”
Sebastian stopped loading his plate and gazed at her. “What’s that?”
“To Rosalie?”
“Rosalie who?”
Verity passed over this missing piece of information and tried again. “When he was younger.”
Sebastian frowned. “How much younger?”
She didn’t know that either. “So sad that she died.”
“Died? I never heard anything about this. Rosalie, you say?” He shook his head. “Why don’t I know?”
Verity wondered if she’d made a mistake. No, Randolph had said engaged. He’d said they were to be married. She remembered then that he’d said they never had a chance to announce it. Had he conducted a clandestine courtship? Why? If he had, she’d just exposed the fact, she realized.
“Mama would know,” Sebastian said. “Whatever it is. She knows everything.” His face shifted, and Verity easily followed his thoughts. The duchess was the font of knowledge except when she was very ill and delirious.
“I may have misunderstood,” Verity said. She didn’t want to reveal Randolph’s secrets, except to herself.
Her large leonine companion examined her. “Randolph seems very fond of you,” he said.
The kindness in his tone and the lukewarm nature of the phrase shook Verity. She remembered the emotion vibrating in Randolph’s voice last night. She saw again the duke holding the duchess’s hand as if it was his only lifeline. The comparison disturbed her.
* * *
The turning point came the following night. After another day when the duchess tossed and muttered in her bed, her fever broke in the wee hours, and she fell into a deep natural sleep. Verity didn’t hear the news until the doctor confirmed the nurse’s opinion when he visited in the morning. “The crisis is past,” he told the family group hovering in the hallway. “From now on, the disease will ebb. Her Grace must still take care to eat and rest, of course.”
“As if I can do anything but rest,” came a hoarse, thready voice from the room. “I’ve never been so weak in my life.”
They rushed to surround the bed. The duchess looked back at them, recognition and intelligence in her eyes once again. She was gaunt and pale, but she smiled. The duke took her hand, turning his back on the rest of them, his head bent.
Randolph understood; his father’s feelings were overwhelming. He couldn’t let anyone but Mama see. Randolph sent up silent thanks, in the wake of all the prayers he’d made through his mother’s illness. His heart swelled with joy and gratitude, and he saw the same sentiments in the faces of his family. Tears ran down Flora’s face; Robert