“Very good, Your Grace,” said Dowell, bowing.He slipped from the drawing room to prepare for the guests’ departure.
While Selwyn sipped his tea, a familiar be-ringed hand settled on his shoulder.He turned to find Uncle Bertrand at his back.“Goldsworthy is not a name I’ve heard before,” said the gentleman.“Do you know her people?”
Twenty years ago, Bertrand Beausire had known Lady Mathieson.It was no surprise that he recognized the strong resemblance this young lady shared with her mother.
Selwyn nodded, understanding completely what his uncle implied.“Yes, I do.”
“And?”Uncle Bertrand’s gaze was unflinching.
He felt his face grow hot, for how did one speak of the depths of one’s soul?“Is it any wonder why I love her?”
“You walk a precarious path, my dear boy, but I commend you for it.You’re a man of principle and integrity, and your darling Mama always said that you must follow your heart if you are to find any happiness in this world.I do not envy you your position, Selly, but I think—if you have indeed chosen—that you’ve chosen well.”
He embraced his uncle, who had been his mother’s most beloved brother.If Selwyn’s father had taught him everything necessary to become a dutiful aristocrat and a country gentleman to his core, then Uncle Bertrand had helped Selwyn learn to appreciate the finer, gentler, more beautiful aspects of life.Nobody understood his predicament, battling between his head and his heart, better than Bertrand Beausire.
“Does she know?”his uncle asked.
“Some, but not everything,” Selwyn answered with his teacup arrested at his lips.“Mathieson has shut her out, and I wager she won’t look kindly on our lot when the sticklers of society follow suit.”
Uncle Bertrand frowned.“Then you must tell her the truth so that she can make her decision fully informed of the facts and well aware of the fight she’s taking on.”He gave Sewlyn a fond clap on the shoulder, somehow without even rippling his tea.“Don’t worry, dearest boy, if she loves you, she’ll wed you, and damn the consequences.”
If only it were so easy as that!
With the games over and the gifts exchanged, the group began to gradually and naturally disperse.He bid goodnight to his Aunts Thea and Thyra, and was happy to have them escorted to the kerb by Margie and Fannie.He walked the MacFanes downstairs, allowing Anne to place a quick kiss upon his cheek as he vowed to call upon them at their barracks when he returned to the East Riding.
Alongside Perry, he bid goodbye to their cousins, Lord Kexby and Lord Rudston, who would be back at Oxford after the New Year and soon to take their places at the pinnacle of English society.Sometimes, Selwyn felt ages older than these jolly young men, when in truth, he’d been born only a few years before them.His own university days were treasured memories, and he hoped that Kexby and Rudston rejoiced in their time flirting, clubbing, and sporting, as well as learning.
The Charltons wished Uncle Bertrand well, and with a kiss to Miss Goldsworthy’s brow—a familial blessing if ever there was one—the gentleman climbed into his carriage and set off down Park Lane bound for another party or some other merriment, as Bertrand Beausire’s life was rich, full, and busy.
Still, Selwyn felt glad to wave them off.
After his guests were gone, he guided Aurelia away from the busy pavements, his hand laced with hers in the dim glow of the street lamps.
“Come upstairs with me,” he asked, and she followed.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Curiously, he led her up the servants’ staircase.The Duke of Brantingham grinned at her like a mischievous boy as they climbed the tight, twisting, freezing stairs.Music and laughter arose from the staff party in the kitchens far below, yet Aurelia’s destination was—or so it felt—the very top of the house.
Whispering to disguise their progress, His Grace explained, “I cut through here from time to time, since it’s a more direct route to the bedrooms, bathrooms, and my bolthole of an office.”He paused before a baize door and shifted it open with his shoulder.“Tonight, however, I don’t want Margie, Fannie, or Perry to know where we’re going.”
Theirs was a clandestine journey.
Aurelia and the Duke exited the service passage into a quiet, carpeted corridor that she’d walked many times before, but never from this direction.Gaslight burned from fixtures overhead and from candle sconces along the walls.She admired China vases on marble pedestals, potted ferns in window planters, and family portraits of haughty ancestors whose eyes seemed to follow them as they sneaked through the house.
She recognized the door to the duchess’s apartments, where she had encountered him behaving strangely on the night of their jaunt to the Victoria Embankment.Her pulse quickened as His Grace turned the knob and stepped inside, for whatever he’d tried to hide from her before was no longer forbidden.
“Come,” he said, taking her hand and guiding her forward.“Don’t be frightened.Everything you wish to learn lies beyond this threshold.”
His words intrigued her—as they were doubtless meant to do—and she followed him into his mother’s bedchamber.The room was dark, the curtains and shutters closed, yet His Grace strode purposefully across the space which was so familiar to him, even in relative blindness.He lit the lamps along the perimeter, and she watched as the gaslight flickered to life.
The walls were hung in a soft rose silk, which grew warm and inviting in the gas-glow.A large, four-poster bed with a high canopy and matching silk curtains dominated one side of the room.Across from it sat a pink-veined marble chimneypiece, with the tall gilt-framed mirror above it shrouded in black crape, for this beautiful bedroom was only empty because its occupant had died.
Aurelia hugged herself against the chill, yet the Duke made no move to build a fire.She imagined that they would not be in here long enough for it to make a difference.Yet he noticed her shivering and shrugged out of his jacket before draping it across her bare shoulders.
She leaned into the warmth of his evening jacket, relishing in the scent of his shaving lotion on the soft wool.“Does it pain you to come here?”she asked.“Is it difficult for you to see it empty?”
These seemed foolish and hollow questions—so inadequate in the face of his significant loss—but she’d never known a family, never mourned a mother.She felt terribly sorry for him, though.
