The dowager’s lips tightened. Her small barb had found its mark. “Tell us, Daughter dearest, how did you find Ridgeley Castle? Perhaps, since it is smaller and far more eccentric than Boswell Manor, it was better suited to you than a grand structure such as this.”
She wished that Spencer had not withdrawn. She had received only a vicarious notification earlier, passed from him, to his valet, to her lady’s maid, to her, that he had pressing matters to attend to with his broodmares. Some nonsense about an upcoming sale and a horse that had gone lame. Bo had been careful not to allow her disappointment and hurt to show upon hearing the news.
Why had she imagined her entreaty yesterday would have made a difference to him? Clearly, it had meant nothing. He had not come to her chamber last night, and she was not even of enough import for him to see her once during the course of the day, let alone defend her against his domineering mother as he had on their wedding day.
She pinned the dowager with a cutting gaze now. “I found Ridgeley Castle charming, thank you. The air was quite restorative. There were none of thesnipe, for instance, that I find so prevalent here at Boswell Manor.”
Her opponent lost a bit of her vigor at that, but she quickly redoubled her efforts. “Indeed? How comforting to know that you enjoyed your stay there. Bainbridge’s last honeymoon was so much more prolonged. I confess I was surprised that you both had kept to your schedule and returned within such an abbreviated span of time, but given the forced nature of your union, I suppose it is only to be expected.”
Bo could not quite conceal the intake of breath caused by the mentioning of Spencer’s former wife and the suggestion that he had honeymooned with the woman for far longer than the fleeting week she had enjoyed with him.
But she held herself still, using every ounce of her admittedly stubborn will for her expression to remain serene. “Indeed? How lovely that extended time must have been for them.”
It was all she could manage to say, and of course she did not mean a word. Gone was her wit, her ability to parry the dowager’s rapier insults. One mentioning of Spencer’s dead wife—Millicent, as Harry had once so helpfully supplied—and she was reduced to a trembling, weakened mess.
Through it all, Lord Harry remained silent, a troubled witness to his brother’s inability to relinquish the past and his mother’s shrewish nature. She drew her spoon to her lips without tasting and pretended to take a sip before lowering it carefully down.
“Yes, quite.” The dowager’s smile did not reach her eyes, and Bo noticed that they were not warm and green like Spencer’s but instead a cool, faded blue. “Bainbridge was rather out of his head then, however. Like a green lad, he was, hopelessly in love.”
Bo’s veins turned to ice. How fitting it was that she should feel as cold on the inside as her husband was on the outside.
“Mother,” Harry intervened at last in a brazen attempt to change the subject. “Bo has begun an estimable cause in the Lady’s Suffrage Society. Have you told her about it yet, Bo?”
Bo stared at her brother-in-law, wondering if he was attempting to help or hurt matters. It did not escape her that he referred to her familiarly, which not even Spencer allowed himself to do. She still wondered why. Maybe some day she would ask. Maybe by that time, it would no longer matter. As fiery as their passion was, they had drifted apart, and she was powerless to stop their slide.
“Lady’s Suffrage?” The dowager’s lip curled. “I am sure you might find better methods of utilizing your time, now that you are the Duchess of Bainbridge. There are expectations to uphold. I realize it may be a novel concept for you, but having become a part of the Marlow family, you must learn to adapt.”
Bo stared at her mother-in-law. “There is no better use of my time than the Lady’s Suffrage Society, Your Grace. It is my greatest hope to help in giving a voice to the voiceless, to my fellow sisters who have not been granted the right to choose how they are governed.”
The servants whisked away their bowls, Bo’s untouched, and the next course arrived. Steaming tureens offilet de sole à la Gasconnewere laid upon the table. More fish. Bo was not surprised in the least. Her stomach growled, feeling the effects of depravation.
“What nonsense,” the dowager pronounced. “I can only imagine all the world would go to the dogs if inconstant women were given the vote. Even our queen cannot countenance such a travesty.”
Bo could not hold her tongue, for egregious opinions such as the dowager’s were the sort that had kept women from their rights for far too long. “The only travesty is that women are still being denied their most basic right to this day.”
The dowager stared at her, not bothering to conceal her disgust. “What is it that they say? From the pan to the flame? It seems we have traded one lunatic duchess for another.”
“That is enough, Mother,” Lord Harry broke in at last, his tone forbidding. “It is hard of you indeed to insult the duchess in such fashion.”
“Oh.” His mother blinked. “I did not mean to insult Millicent. May God rest her soul.”
Silence descended upon the table. A wave of nausea stirred to life in her gut, prompted as much by the redolent aroma of fish as by the duchess’s pointed revelations about Spencer’s prolonged honeymoon and endless adoration for his former wife. Not to mention the matter of the dowager’s open aversion to Bo.
Coming back to Boswell Manor had shifted everything out of place. Being here before had not felt so out of place. Now, fulfilling the role of duchess, and with Spencer clinging to the past, she was hopelessly mired in an untenable position. To hear the dowager wax on, it sounded as if Spencer had shared the love match with his former wife that he pointedly declared he did not have with Bo.
He must have loved his wife deeply. What he had said to her long ago returned, mocking her, twisting her heart.Do you know what it’s like to watch someone you care for lose their mind, Lady Boadicea?And she had been the mother of his son, while Bo was the wife he would entertain with bed sport like any doxy. She stared at the sole on her plate, unwilling to eat it, feeling more hopeless than she had upon returning, when she had curled into a ball on the floor of the duchess’s apartments and cried into her skirts.
“Mother,” Lord Harry bit out again, splintering the awkward silence. “I was not referring to Millicent, as you undoubtedly know, but to Bo.”
“Oh dear.” The dowager’s expression resembled nothing so much as a feline who had just enjoyed a feast. It was rather fitting, given her boundless hunger for scaled, water-dwelling creatures. “Forgive me, will you not, Lady Boadicea? I’m afraid that the newness and suddenness of your marriage to Bainbridge combined has addled my wits.”
“Yours are not the only wits that have been addled, judging from Bainbridge’s absence.” Bitterness laced Harry’s voice as he met Bo’s gaze across the splendidly turned out table. “Tell me, where is my sainted brother yet again this evening?”
His question was pointed. Probing. He sensed that something was amiss, and she could not muster the ability to care about contriving a convincing denial. “Attending to his stables. He sends his regrets.”
Harry’s brow spiked up. “His stables? I daresay I thought that was the duty of the head groomsman. Has my brother taken to shoveling shit?”
The dowager gasped. “Lord Harry Marlow, I beg you to abstain from such uncouth language at the dinner table.”
