Ruth chuckled, but then bit her lip. “We shouldn’t be cruel.”
“You started it. I’ve met people like that. Quite tiresome. Don’t most country seats have traditional events when the lordly mingle with lesser people? Cateril Manor had some. Harvesttime, Christmas, Twelfth Night, May Day.”
“Not while we’ve been here. Note that I’m low on woodruff. I’ll see if anyone has an abundance. I gather the dowager used to go to London for long periods when younger. She was a lady-in-waiting to the queen.”
“My goodness.”
“Exactly. Far above our touch. Now she’s troubled by an aging hip and doesn’t travel.”
“Don’t highborn friends visit?”
“Rarely. That might be because of Lady Dauntry.”
“She’s haughty with them as well?” Kitty asked.
“Probably, but I meant the fifth viscount’s wife. She ran off with an actor.”
Kitty paused, pen in hand. “No!”
“Yes. Write what I said about fleabane before you forget. I shouldn’t gossip, but you need to know. It was long before I came here—Isabella was young and her brother an infant—but off she went. From servants’ stories, she was constantly squabbling with the dowager and raging at her husband for not taking her side.”
“So she ran away. Good for her.”
“Kitty! She ran off into adultery or bigamy and abandoned her children.”
“She probably had no other choice.”
“Nonsense. Bryony root.”
Kitty wrote it down, considering the story. “Are you saying I’m going to face the same challenges?”
“Probably, but I can assure you of one thing—Dauntry will take your side. He’d like the dowager out of there.”
“Then why hasn’t he moved her?”
“Anyone would hesitate to evict a grieving mother and grandmother from the place where she’s lived for forty years.”
“She expects to stay there forever?” Kitty asked in dismay.
“So it would seem. You knew part of his reason for marrying is to have someone to manage his female relatives.”
“I hadn’t quite grasped the extent of it.” Kitty put down the pen. “Yet that’s not reason enough for this rush to the altar. I don’t understand him, Ruth. Our encounter in the lane has to have exploded any idea he had of my being a pillar of stability. It wasn’t my fault....”
“It never is.”
“Ruth!”
“I’m sorry, but you must confess you’ve never been the most conformable woman.”
“So why is Lord Dauntry continuing with his plan, and why the urgency?”
Ruth leaned back against the shelves. “Perhaps he decided an unconformable woman would be a good match for the dowager.”
“Is that possible?”
“If it came to skirmishes, I’d place my bet on you.”
“Gambling? Horrors!”
