No. To follow that path was to join the Dowager Lady Ashart in her obsession. Genova had to believe that these papers were as complete as they could be. She kept reading, hoping for a glimmer of something among the banal.
A distant bell began to ring.
“That must be the dinner bell,” Ash said, seeming pulled from elsewhere. “Well? Revelations that escaped Rothgar?”
Genova refolded the letter she’d been reading. “I don’t think so, but you might like to look at these drawings.” She pushed them over.
He spread them. “Not very good, was she?”
Genova didn’t mention her thoughts. She wanted to see what he made of them.
“We have none of her drawings at Cheynings as far as I know. I wonder if Grandy destroyed them.”
Genova started at the affectionate name for the woman she had begun to think of as Loki incarnate. “Why would she do that?”
“Nothing can be allowed to tarnish the angel’s halo.”
“Lady Augusta?” Genova couldn’t keep the astonishment out of her voice.
“Aren’t mothers supposed to dote? Anything else?”
Genova desperately wanted his account of the journal, but she gave him her impression of the letters, uncomfortable about judging the long-dead woman who had been younger than herself.
“The journal?” she asked at last.
He placed the drawings in the book to mark his place. “Flighty, self-centered, spoiled. At first all is honey, but she’s beginning to complain of his unkindness.”
Genova felt a chill. “Does she explain the cause?”
“Clearly. He scolds if she overspends her pin money. He spends too much time on estate matters. He expects her to read to his boring mother.”
“Oh.”
He stood. “She was a child. Why the devil did he marry her?”
“Perhaps he saw the girl in the sketch in the portrait gallery.”
“I wonder how quickly he regretted it. And,” he added, “how he behaved then.”
Genova wanted to argue, but she could imagine Augusta driving a sensible man to distraction. To violence, even. But to persistent cruelty that would break her mind?
The bell was still ringing, clearly being carried about the house to catch everyone’s attention.
“We are summoned to celebrate,” Ash said. “I’ll take everything to my room for further study.”
Genova felt some reluctance in giving over the letters with some unread, but she bridled her nosiness. She gave back his coat, and they left the room.
They detoured to his bedchamber so he could leave the papers there. Genova insisted on waiting outside. She still had some willpower.
He emerged moments later with his blond friend who had arrived yesterday. So, she would have been safe from weakness anyway.
Genova was trying to remember the name when Ash provided it. “Do you remember Fitzroger, Genova?”
Ash’s friend bowed, she curtsied, and she walked down the corridor between them, but with a feeling of being studied. Did Mr. Fitzroger not approve? Perhaps he, too, thought Ash should marry money, and didn’t know the betrothal was a sham.
Chapter Thirty-eight
They had just reached the bottom of the grand staircase when people began to look upward. Genova turned and saw Lord Rothgar on the landing.
