A Lady's Dream Come True - Grace Burrowes Page 0,24

to congregate. Of course, he’d have acquaintances in such venues, but to me, at that age… I was agog. I was the luckiest bride ever to swan up the church aisle.”

How wistful she sounded. “That delusion could not last.”

“Dirk had forgotten to mention that he had a daughter by a previous relationship. He’d forgotten to mention that the girl’s mother, whom he’d adored passionately for a very long time, had been gone less than a year when he proposed to me. He’d forgotten to mention a great deal. I had to learn to have disagreements with my husband over more than just how to skip rocks. That was hard.”

Oak’s parents had had regular, loud disagreements, and their arguments had never worried him. Papa could shift from thundering to teasing between the first and second halves of a sentence, as could Mama. For their worst rows, they would repair to their private apartment, from which they would emerge an hour or so later apparently once again in charity with each other.

That a married couple had to learn how to argue hadn’t occurred to him. “I take it your parents weren’t prone to disagreements?”

“Step-mama brooked no rebellion. Not in me, not in my father or my brothers. She ended up nearly bankrupting the family, and nobody checked her self-indulgence. My brothers will be decades undoing the havoc she wrought. My settlements were very modest, with Dirk providing nearly all the funds. That’s something else I learned only after I’d come to dwell at Merlin Hall.”

Oak took her hand, lest she decide that counting the linen had become urgently necessary. “Were you resentful of Catherine?”

“Resentful? Goodness, no. I was furious with my husband. The girl had lost her mother, and he’d handled his own grief by taking extended sketching tours. Then he chose a bride just out of the schoolroom and jaunted away on a succession of honey months with that bride. I was seven when my mother died. If my father had abandoned me like that, I might well not have survived.”

Vera’s hand was cold, so Oak enveloped her fingers between his palms. “You and Dirk resolved your differences?”

“That took time. Dirk’s friends were not at all the sort of people I was used to. He could get along with anybody, from duchesses to drovers. I was fit only for rural assemblies and informal dinners. I had much to learn. Then I conceived Alexander, and we found a sort of truce. Alexander was a happy, healthy baby. Dirk adored him and adored me for being the mother of his son. Dirk gave me two children to love, and for that I will always be grateful.”

And that seemed to be all she had to say regarding the past. If nothing else, the conversation had underscored that Verity Channing might be comfortably situated, but she had no fat settlements to fall back on and no wealthy family to assist with the raising of her offspring.

“You have occupied yourself since Dirk’s death with being a mother,” Oak concluded. “You haven’t allowed yourself any frolics.”

She rose from the trunk and shook out her skirts. “I haven’t wanted any frolics. Dirk’s friends were a tiresomely frisky lot. Prone to dramatics in their personal affairs and not the kindest of people. They brought a great deal of drama to this house, and why men must… They can indulge themselves without imposing on a woman, you know.”

She slanted a look at Oak over her shoulder, partly belligerent, partly curious.

He offered her a bland smile. “I have certainly engaged in self-indulgence.” At sixteen, he’d done little else.

“So one needn’t disport for the sake of a few moments of pleasure,” Vera said, pushing back a Holland cover to reveal a stack of canvases leaning against the wall. “The widowers and bachelors in the immediate surrounds have nothing more than that to offer. They aren’t about to take on two step-children, and while Merlin Hall is solvent, it belongs to Alexander after I die. I don’t need a man to manage my property, and I am thus not interested in remarrying for practical reasons.”

Oak remained on the trunk, enjoying the look of Vera in a brown dress with an outdated high waist. She’d probably had that dress since before her marriage, and the older style left more of her figure to the imagination.

“You don’t want to remarry, and you don’t want to frolic with somebody you’ll have to curtsey to in the churchyard for the rest of your days, and yet, you