“Yes, I saw you,” he said. “Grandpapa wanted me to dash down there to push your chair. But Lady Philippa did not look close to collapse, and no doubt I would have inhibited your conversation if I had joined you. I shall go and fetch more food. Tea to accompany it? Or lemonade?”
“Tea, please,” Philippa said.
“Lemonade, please, Luc,” Jenny said.
And of course, Philippa thought, he would join them at the table. There was, after all, still one spare chair. She had seen him a few times in the past few weeks with other women—dancing with them at balls, strolling arm in arm with them at various parties, driving them in the park. Miss Thorpe, Lord and Lady Abingdon’s daughter, seemed a particular favorite, her mother always hovering close by, a look of complacency upon her face. Surely his grandfather was pressing upon him a match with one of those ladies sinceshehad put herself firmly out of the running.
“And so you are enjoying your first Season, Lady Philippa,” the duchess said, smiling upon her with what seemed like genuine warmth.
“I am,” Philippa said as Lord Roath returned with food and drink for her and Jenny. “I have made the acquaintance of many interesting people and have even made a few lifelong friends, I believe.”
“Of whom I am one, I hope,” Jenny said, laughing. “Indeed, I insist upon it.”
“Of whom you are one,” Philippa said. She wished it were not so. It would be very much easier to remain at a distance from three of the people at this table if she did not have a friendship with Jenny and if her mother were not so close to Lady Catherine Emmett. They were sitting together now out on the lawn with Lord and Lady Mayberry and Uncle George.
“You have a brother out in northern Europe somewhere with Wellington’s forces,” the duke said abruptly. “A cavalry major?”
Her laughter died. “I do,” she said. “Nicholas. And war, or at least one more battle, seems inevitable. He almost died in the Peninsula. Devlin believes he would certainly have done so if Ben, our older brother, had not gone to him and bullied the medical people and coaxed him into living. I daresay he was wounded other times too without telling us. Devlin did not tell us about his own wound,which almost took his head off and left him with a permanent facial scar. I beg your pardon. I ought not to talk of such matters.”
“I am the one who introduced the topic,” the duke said. “You seem to be a close family. It must have been a great blow to you when your father died young. It was sudden, I understand?”
“Yes,” she said without glancing Lord Roath’s way. “It was devastating for us all.”
“He was a jovial fellow,” His Grace said. “Well liked.”
The Marquess of Roath really had kept his secret very close, Philippa thought. His grandfather obviously had no inkling of what havoc her father had wreaked upon his own family.
“And your mama,” the duchess added, glancing across the lawn in her direction. “She is still a very beautiful woman, Lady Philippa. Time has been kind to her despite the heartbreaking loss of your father.”
“I have come to realize that having to endure loss is an unavoidable part of living,” Philippa said. “But how lovely it is to be alive on a day like today and in such beautiful surroundings.”
“It is indeed,” the duchess agreed.
“Have you been out on the river, Lady Philippa?” the duchess asked after a while.
“I have,” she said. “It was almost the first thing I did upon my arrival earlier. Lord Edward Denton was obliging enough to take me out in one of the boats.”
“And you, Jenny?” her grandfather asked.
“Oh no, Grandpapa,” she said. “Mr.Jamieson did offer to take me, but I declined.”
“Because you were afraid he would drop you in the water?” the marquess asked.
“That was part of it,” she admitted. “I also chose not to make a spectacle of myself before so many people, or him.”
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
“To take me rowing in a boat?” she said, grimacing and then laughing. “I do not know. Do I, Luc?”
“You do,” he said, tossing his napkin onto the table beside his plate and getting to his feet. “With your life. If I drop you in while lifting you from your chair to a boat and you sink like a stone, I shall dive down and haul you up even though doing so will cause the ruin of one of my favorite coats.”
“We are not really going out there, are we?” she asked. “What if—”
“What if you trust your favorite brother?” he asked her, drawing her chair back clear of the table before turning it.
“As far as I recall, Luc,” she said, “you are myonlybrother.”
“Get someone to hold the boat steady for you while you lift her in,” the duke advised. “And again while you lift her out.”
