“That is not the same as the loss of a son!”
“Truly anyone can appreciate that, ma’am.”
“Not until they have suffered it.” Was the dowager truly wishing Kitty would one day?
“I lived with my mother-in-law for quite a while,” Kitty said, “and saw her grief daily. It is a bitter loss.”
“Cateril. A veryrecentelevation.” The sneer revealed long, darkened teeth.
“Nothing at all by comparison to the Godysons, ma’am. I understand they can be traced back to before the Conquest.”
“And the barony to 1176. A proud line brought down in the end to a mere woman—myself.”
“And to your granddaughter, ma’am.”
“The new viscount jilted Isabella to marry you.”
Kitty had expected that. “That can’t be true,” she said calmly. “And a marriage of sixteen to nearly thirty is undesirable.”
“Not in dynastic situations. He raised her hopes and broke her heart.”
“I doubt that, ma’am. I remember that age. It’s so easy to fall into infatuation with no encouragement at all. Whatever the case, he’s married to me now, and that’s an end of it.”
The dowager Lady Dauntry stared, definitely not accustomed to such blunt speech.
“As to Isabella,” Kitty continued, “I look forward to helping her to a good marriage in time. Thus your bloodline will continue.”
“Not in this house,” the dowager shouted, thumping the arm of her throne. “My life’s work! And my name will die. Isabella is a Godyson-Braydon, but that will not continue.”
“It would become cumbersome,” Kitty agreed. “Godyson-Braydon-Cavendish or some such.”
“I see I provide you with amusement.”
“I was merely agreeing with you, ma’am.”
A dog yelped. Perhaps it had been squeezed. The dowager soothed it, but her eyes fixed on Kitty. “If any of myothersons had survived, I would have demanded that the Godyson barony be re-created for the eldest of them. God did not choose that it be so.”
And that put God on the list of enemies, Kitty suspected. Here was a woman obsessed with one thing, but Kitty was shocked to realize that she’d lost a number of children. However, she’d aimed that tragic information as a weapon. Cullinan’s comforting hand on the dowager’s shoulder was a supporting volley.
Kitty was tempted to point out that if the dowager had made Diane Dauntry happy here, there might have been many more vessels of the Godyson blood, but she wouldn’t sink to petty cruelty. She took up a different line of attack. “I see that you won’t want to continue to live here, ma’am, in a place that must remind you of all your losses.”
“I would never abandon my duties.”
“You may do so with honor, now I am here to shoulder them. I’m sure Dauntry will arrange for whatever home you prefer. He and I have only your best interests at heart.”
The woman’s face was so set it could have been one of Madame Tussaud’s wax models of victims of the guillotine, and the rouge looked garish. “I have lived here for more than forty years,” she said.
“And have made it beautiful.”
“You have the ability to recognize that?”
Kitty ignored the sneer. “I’m sure anyone would, ma’am. The viscountess’s rooms were something of a shock.”
That brought the dowager back to life. “That woman had deplorable taste and she thwarted every attempt by me to improve matters. I was glad to see the back of her. Glad. She probably squandered her fertility on her lowborn lover.”
That sounded authoritative. “Do you know what happened to her, ma’am?”
“I have no interest in the strumpet.”
