His mother’s chin went up. “I’ll do no such thing. There is only one sort of woman who would welcome the master of the house into her private quarters when she is nothing more than a servant.”
“Yes,” he agreed with deceptive calm, “and that is the sort of woman I intend to make my wife. Any lapse in judgment is purely my own. I went to Joceline’s room last night uninvited because I couldn’t bear to be apart from her a moment longer. I’ll not have her paying the price for my own mistakes.”
“The fault is mine for this outrage,” she said, shaking her head. “I should never have offered her such a tremendous sum to be housekeeper. And then the additional fifty pounds.”
His mother’s words gave him pause, for he hadn’t realized that she had lured Joceline to Durham with a fat purse. “A tremendous sum? How much?”
“One hundred pounds per annum,” his mother said, sighing. “I might have known, too, that she was lying about sending every bit of it to her mother and siblings. And then there was the fifty pounds for persuading you to decorate Blackwell Abbey for Christmas. It was meant to be for Lady Diana’s sake. I knew she would never agree to become your wife if I brought her to a desolate, decrepit old abbey bereft of any joy.”
He ought to have known that her meddling had been greater than merely hiring a housekeeper, and that her actions hadn’t been entirely altruistic. But he didn’t understand her insistence upon his marrying the earl’s daughter.
“Why were you hell-bent upon seeing me wed to Lady Diana?” he asked.
A cross expression soured his mother’s countenance. “Because I am in love with Lord Dreighton, you ungrateful scoundrel, and he will not marry again until he sees his daughter settled. She suffered a tremendous scandal in London, and all her prospects dried up. I was hoping that Mrs. Yorke wouldrender this heap habitable. It would have been quite ideal, really. Few women will have you with your terrible scars, duke or no, and no gentleman will have Lady Diana, given the gossip. You could have married, and then I could have wed Dreighton as I have been longing to do.”
His mother’s selfish reasons for wanting to see him married suddenly made perfect, awful sense. None of her plans had been about him. They had all been about herself and her own happiness. To say nothing of the cavalier fashion in which she had referred to histerrible scars.
Everything within him went cold. “Mother, I want you, Lady Diana, and the Earl of Dreighton to leave Blackwell Abbey at once, and I never want you to return.”
“Leave?” she sputtered. “But it’s Christmas Eve.”
He didn’t care.
“Trains will still be running. They are scheduled for tomorrow as well. I saw the advert inTheTimesmyself. I’ll have Dunreave make the necessary arrangements.”
She rose from her seat, quaking with fury. “Sedgewick, if you force us to leave and insist upon marrying so dreadfully beneath you, I will never forgive you. It is beyond the pale.”
He took in his mother, all burning, self-important ire, and he felt oddly at ease. “I don’t particularly care, madam. The only good turn you have brought me is sending me Mrs. Yorke. For that, I thank you. Otherwise, I bid you farewell.”
With a formal bow, he took his leave.
“I’ve been looking everywherefor you, Mrs. Yorke.”
With a start, Joceline turned from the last bits of holly she had been arranging with some freshly cut orangery flowers onthe dining room table. Her heart beat faster as her gaze settled upon Quint on the threshold, looking dapper in country tweed and a notable lack of gloves. He was so handsome, so beloved. It required all the restraint she possessed to keep from running to him and throwing herself into his arms.
Last night had been over in a blink, and she had woken to an empty bed and the fear that what they had shared had been nothing but a feverish dream. Until she had found his neckcloth, partially flung beneath her bed, the only hint that it had been real.
“Your Grace.” Remembering herself, she dipped into a curtsy. “I was finishing the table preparation for breakfast this morning.”
“That won’t be necessary,” he said, smiling as he sauntered into the room.
“It won’t?” She frowned, confused. “But surely your guests will arrive in a few minutes’ time. I wouldn’t wish to disappoint them with a barren table.”
“My guests are departing this morning,” he said, and she couldn’t help but to take note of his dimples, making a rare showing. “They’ll not be requiring breakfast.”
This news was most unexpected.
“But…it’s Christmas Eve.”
He stopped before her, gazing at her with a look of unfettered tenderness. “So it is.”
“Why would they wish to return to London with such short notice, and just before Christmas?” she asked. “Has something not been to their liking? I can have it remedied at once, whatever it is.”
“They’re returning to London because I told them to go,” he said simply. “I’ve discovered that the only reason they came at all was because Lady Diana requires a husband so that my mother can marry the earl. But Lady Diana was embroiled in somemanner of scandal in London, the magnitude of which rendered it more appealing for her to venture to the wilds of the north and consider a hideously scarred recluse as a potential suitor.”
She hated the way he spoke of himself, and she also hated the revelation he had just made. “You are not hideously scarred. And I am shocked that Her Grace would so place her own needs before her son’s.” Belatedly, she realized how forward she was being, recalling the necessary erection of boundaries between them. “Forgive me. I shouldn’t have spoken so bluntly.”
“You needn’t ask for forgiveness.” He reached for her, looping his arms around her waist and pulling her flush against him.
