We?
“I suppose it will wilt,” she said. “But—”
“But the bonnet still looks very splendid,” he said. And before she could remove it herself, he reached out to undo the ribbons beneath her chin and lift the hat carefully from her head before striding over to the table beside her bed and setting it down.
“Ah,” she said, “it has not wilted yet.”
She glanced into a mirror, saw that her hairstyle was too squashed to be revived with a mere bit of finger work, and removed the pins from the knot at the back of her neck. She went through to her dressing room as she did so, embarrassed at his seeing her hair cascade untidily about her shoulders. But even as she seated herself on the bench before her dressing table, he followed her in and leaned pasther to pick up her brush. And he proceeded to remove all the snarls and knots from her hair without once causing her to wince.
“May I hire you as my personal maid?” she asked as she twisted her hair into a knot again.
“How much do you pay?” he asked her. “I do not come cheap.”
Ah. Humor. There had been some of it in the carriage too. How lovely. She smiled at his image in the mirror and got to her feet.
He offered his arm and led her downstairs to the drawing room, where the vicar and his wife were sitting with Harry. And over the following two hours they drank sherry, moved into the dining room, which rivaled the church for its floral splendor, and partook of a lavish feast, followed by toasts from both Harry and the vicar, and speeches from Harry and Gil. They ended the breakfast with wedding cake, which had somehow been elaborately iced and decorated despite such short notice, and champagne, which had been produced from somewhere in the bowels of the cellar.
Later, after the Reverend and Mrs. Jenkins had taken their leave, they took Beauty for a walk—or rathershetookthem, running ahead or in a wide circle about them before stopping in front of them, front legs flat on the ground, wide rump elevated, tail wagging, as though inviting them to a race, and then dashing off again.
After they had returned to the house Abigail wrote letters to Camille and Winifred and her grandmother Kingsley in Bath, and Gil surprised her by writing to Robbie with stories about what Beauty had been up to since the boy went home. He even, Abigail saw with delight, drew a few pen sketches of the dog, one of her looking exactly as she had looked when she stopped in front of them earlier,complete with wavy lines on either side of her tail to suggest movement.
Harry, after an hour’s rest in his room, took his horse and rode to the home of one of his boyhood friends. He sent back a note a mere hour later to inform them that he had been invited to stay the night. He would be home first thing in the morning, however, he had added, since he knew they intended to make an early start for London.
“Your brother has tact,” Gil said.
Abigail felt herself blushing.
Tonight...
Fifteen
The drawing room seemed unnaturally large with just the two of them in it, sitting on either side of the fireplace when they might surely have sat side by side on one of the sofas. His fault, Gil freely admitted. There was no fire burning, as it had been a warm day and had not cooled off significantly during the evening. Beauty was stretched out before the hearth anyway, snoring softly.
Abby was not embroidering or knitting or busy with any of her other customary needlework activities. Instead, she clasped her hands loosely in her lap. Yet she did not look relaxed. His fault again, surely. She had made a few attempts to begin conversation, all of which he had thwarted by answering briefly. He had never quite mastered the art of conversation at which polite society was so adept. It was his turn to choose a topic, one he must keep going this time. But she spoke again before he could think of something.
“I am rather wealthy,” she said abruptly. “I thought you ought to know.”
“Wealthy?” He raised his eyebrows. He had assumed she had nothing after being dispossessed several years ago.
“When it was discovered that Anna was our father’s only legitimate child,” she explained, “and that according to his will everything except the title and entailed property went to her, she was not at all happy about it. She wanted to share everything with the three of us in equal parts. To our shame, we spurned her offer. We were not even willing to recognize her as our sister. I do not know quite why. Perhaps it was because she was sohappyto discover that after all she had family, most notably us, half siblings. We, on the other hand, hated her. Or perhaps we felt we were being condescended to by a nobody of an orphan from an orphanage. I hope it was not that. It would be horribly—and inappropriately—snobbish. But it may well have been.”
“It would have been perfectly understandable,” he said, though he felt a certain indignation on behalf of the woman who had always thought herself a penniless orphan. But that penniless orphan was now the Duchess of Netherby. Cinderella, he had called her, a comparison she had rejected. “It all happened very suddenly, did it not, and came as an utter shock to your whole family?”
“If itwasthe reason,” she said, “it has not been the reason for a long time. We are better than that, I believe. We have tried to love her, and we have largely succeeded. Indeed, it would be hardnotto love Anna. She has been unrelentingly kind and affectionate toward us. When she learned a few weeks ago that I was planning to remain here instead of returning to London, she took me aside and begged me to accept my share, which she had set aside for me from the start and willed to me. Apparently Camille accepted her share several years ago, before she married Joel, though I did not know that until Anna told me. Iaccepted. My father was an extremely wealthy man. My quarter of everything he left to Anna is a fortune in its own right. I thought you ought to know.”
“So that I can live on your money?” he said.
Her cheeks flushed and her hands clenched in her lap. “You told me you had your own,” she said. “But I do not know how much. I do not imagine it can be a great deal. I just wanted you to know that... there is no reason in the world, Gil, why we cannot live on my fortune.”
“Except for my male pride,” he said.
“You do not need—” she began, but he held up a hand.
“When I fought in India, as a private soldier, as a corporal, and then as a sergeant,” he told her, “there were sometimes rich prizes to be won in the form of gold and precious jewels. It was neither strictly lawful nor particularly ethical, I suppose, but it happened. Not to everyone. Not even to very many. One had to be in the right place at the right time. But it happened to me and I managed to keep possession of what I had won until I came home as a newly commissioned officer. I bought my house with some of the proceeds. I invested the rest with an agent in London who was recommended to me. He has proved to be an honest and knowledgeable man. As well as managing my fortune, he manages the staffing and financing of my home and the farm that came with it.”
“Fortune?” she said, frowning.
“To me it is a fortune,” he said. “I can live comfortably if not lavishly on the income from it for the rest of my life. You have not married a fabulously wealthy man, Abby, but you have not married a poor man either. And Ididgive an accounting of my worth to Harry when he interrogated me before I went to London. He was satisfied. I do not need or even want your fortune. You may spend it on yourself and our children.”
