“How are you feeling?” she asked her mother at once, pulling back to search her face for signs of illness. “Have you been sleeping well?”
There was a mottled bruise on her mother’s right cheekbone that she recognized at once. It looked to be several days old, having begun its healing process, and was covered poorly in afine layer of pearl powder that did nothing to hide what must have happened.
“I have been sleeping well enough,” her mother said brightly.
It was the same sunshine-smothered voice her mother always used to make excuses for her father’s moods and rages.
“Have you been eating?” she asked instead of calling attention to her father’s behavior in the presence of servants, which would have only served to embarrass her mother.
“I have been taking my meals when I’m able,” Mother answered, which scarcely told Sybil anything at all.
A light rain began falling just then, reminding Sybil it wouldn’t do to linger in the air, lest her mother take a chill.
“Come inside, and we shall take our tea before we continue to London,” she said, trying to tamp down the anger rising within her toward her father. “I’ll see to it that some food is brought for you as well.”
At least Everett had rescued her mother. It was something Sybil had never hoped to do on her own. Her father never would have allowed it. If she had thought for a moment that the husband who had so coldly abandoned her would have concerned himself with Mother’s plight, Sybil would have confided in him at once.
“To the green salon, if you please,” Sybil directed the footman who had been tasked with pushing her mother in the invalid chair.
They walked over gravel in silence, Mother’s hat keeping the rain from her face.
“Where is His Grace?” Mother asked.
“He is preparing everything so that we can leave,” she explained.
Following their surprise discussion, he had begun arrangements for their departure, taking all the details on himself. She had protested that she happily would, for she knewhe must be weary after journeying through the night. But ever stubborn, Everett had declined.
“That is quite kind of him,” Mother said.
Sybil’s smile felt far too tight. “It is indeed.”
Kind was not a word she would have used to describe her husband. Not in the months since they had wed. She still wasn’t certain why he had taken matters into his own hands like this. His sense of honor, perhaps? Surely he wouldn’t be so moved by the plight of the wife he plainly did not want and the mother-in-law to whom he had spoken only a handful of times. It made no sense.
But then, nothing ever had when it came to the man she had married. He had been a charming and attentive suitor, and in retrospect, she had wondered if her eagerness to leave her father’s rule had made her overlook his chillier nature.
Their little procession finally arrived in the salon, where a tray of tea and cakes was already waiting. Sybil thanked the footman and waited for him to leave before she began preparing a cup for her mother, weighing how she might approach the subject of the bruise on her cheek.
“It is so good to have you here with me,” she told her mother as she handed off her dish of tea.
“It was good of the duke to offer the invitation.”
“You are to stay with us indefinitely,” she said gently, uncertain of what Everett had said to Mother about theinvitation, as she had called his rescue.
“You know that your father will not allow it.”
“He doesn’t have any choice,” Sybil countered sternly, still more grateful than she could comprehend at having her mother out of her father’s clutches. If only Henry could be also.
Perhaps, in time, she might broach the subject with her husband. It was a delicate one, and she still didn’t know where she stood with him.
“Sybil, that is not the way of our world.”
“The duke is more powerful than Father is.”
“I shall enjoy this visit whilst it lasts,” Mother said with a wistful smile.
“It will last forever,” she countered, selecting a cake and offering it to her mother.
Mother accepted the cake but not Sybil’s assertion. “You know it cannot, dearest daughter.”
