It Had to be the Duke - Christi Caldwell Page 0,6

better than were it to be a visit, but you, my dear?” Althea gave her head a shake. “You require a serious-business visit.”

With a sigh, Lydia set her teacup back on the plate and returned it to the table. “Very well. Get on with it.”

“It’s your skirts,” Althea said brusquely, bringing a frown to Lydia’s lips. “We are here about your skirts.”

At her side, Dorothy dropped her forehead into her hands.

Lydia bristled. “Whatever is wrong with them?”

“Black,” Althea said flatly. “They are black.”

“Yes, well, that is generally the color a lady wears when she is in mourning.”

“Well, in fairness,” Dorothy piped in, stirring the little spoon in her cup, the silver clinking against the delicate porcelain side, “you weren’t really in mourning, Althea.”

All of Althea’s attention was immediately—and blessedly—diverted to poor Dorothy. “Whyever would I have mourned my husband?” Althea shot back. “My husband was a miserable bounder.”

“My husband… Lawrence was not,” Lydia said softly, and as soon as the words left her, she wished to call them back for the insensitivity of them. “Althea, forgive me. I didn’t mean—”

“What?” her friend cut her off. “To speak the truth? I should be offended if you didn’t. You ladies know better than anyone that I shed no tears when he was gone, and my life? I’ve been quite content.”

But had she been happy?

It was a question she and Dorothy should ask of Althea, and yet, Lydia couldn’t. Not when she knew it would hurt her. She certainly should have asked that of her friend years ago, for she and Althea were the same in so many ways.

Not unlike Lydia’s, Althea’s parents had maneuvered her into an advantageous match, one that had seen her wed to an ancient lord, but had also seen her miserable in the twenty years he’d lived, though well-off with his eventual passing. Unlike Althea, Lydia had found happiness. Oh, her marriage had never been filled with the grand, all-consuming love and passion she’d shared with Geoffrey, but her life with Lawrence had been safe and comfortable. And she’d come to appreciate both as being gifts.

“Either way,” Althea said, bringing down the hammer of her cane once more. Thump, thump.

“You need to find joy again.”

It was a statement easier said than actually lived.

Particularly when one found oneself widowed.

Her gaze slid over to the young lovers frolicking in the greenest pastures. Suspended in time. How very fortunate they’d been. It was too much. She pressed her eyes shut. “I had joy,” she managed to rejoin for the two friends who’d stormed her parlor. Or, at least…content. She’d been content.

“Had,” Althea spat. In one of her customary bright orange turbans, she was as eccentric now as the day they’d met during their debuts before the queen. “You did not die, Lydia,” she said with her usual bluntness. “Your husband did.”

Dorothy gasped. “Althea.” Grabbing a pillow, she hurled it at the other woman, seated like Queen of Sheba upon Lydia’s satin sofa.

The other woman caught the satin missile and tossed it aside. “What? It is true.”

“You still don’t say it.”

Althea’s dark eyebrows pulled. “What do you mean I don’t say it? I just did.”

“No, what I’m saying is that you don’t say it”—Dorothy lowered her voice to a still-outrageously loud whisper—“to her.” The youngest of their trio tipped her head pointedly in Lydia’s direction.

And the sight and familiarity of that friendly bickering between her friends, the same as it had been since they’d been girls, nearly brought Lydia to smile.

No. Lydia hadn’t died. Rather, her husband had.

The pain of that would never, ever go away.

“Now,” Althea said, redirecting the conversation. “We’re discussing you and Chombley. If you’re living in misery because he’d want it, well, then he was no worse than my bastard of a late husband.”

She frowned. “Of course Lawrence would not have—” Lydia pressed her lips together and made herself quit speaking.

It was too late. She’d already stepped into that trap. So. Very. Neatly.

Althea smiled. “Precisely. He would not have wished for you to conduct yourself so. As such…” She glanced to Dorothy.

Dorothy smiled and nodded. That bobbing of her head sent the lone peacock feather she insisted on stuffing into her hair arrangement toppling over her brow. Much the same way it had always done since she’d been a girl of sixteen who’d insisted all respectable ladies must wear feathers.

“Oh, would you quit shaking your head in that manner? You look like a deranged peacock.” Althea snapped. She held a hand out and snapped four fingers against her