“I see I have not made myself clear. Henrietta Berring will never step foot inside Ashbourn House again while I live. So either you join Lucy for the Season, Mrs. Pickford, or you may all three pack up and go back to Wiltshire. The choice is yours.”
Chapter Five
“Of all the arrogant, insufferable, high-handed, pig-headed, unreasonable, snobbish, hateful?—”
Bess took a sip of tea and waited for Lucy to run out of epithets. But Lucy was a self-described scribbler, always writing stories and anecdotes on whatever scraps of paper she could find. She seemed likely to run out of breath before she ran out of insults to lob at her absent half-brother.
“Oh, my dear girl, must you?” Henrietta interjected, wringing her hands together and twisting her dainty lace handkerchief into knots. “I need to think. What is best to be done?”
“We should tell Ashbourn exactly where he can stick his unmannerly, ungentlemanly invitation!” Lucy was out of breath, her eyes blazing and cheeks red with the heat of her fury.
“Have some tea,” Bess suggested, pouring out a cup. “Settle your nerves.”
“My nerves don’t need settling! I am perfectly calm!”
Bess met Henrietta’s fondly wry look over the rim of her teacup. For someone who’d been known to indulge in a few dramatics of her own, once upon a time, Henrietta had steadied over the months Bess had known her. She’d gone from a frail shadow locked in her own personal grief for the loss of her beloved husband, to a mother her two grown daughters could rely upon.
She was someone Bess could rely upon. And for Bess, who’d lost her own mother at the tender age of sixteen, the kindness, care, and attention Henrietta shared in such abundance was something to treasure. Bess absolutely adored her.
So when Henrietta bit her lip and said, “I hate to say it, but I think we ought to consider the duke’s offer,” Bess already knew what would happen.
“Absolutely not,” Lucy cried, with predictable vehemence.
“If,” Henrietta said, with emphasis. “If, Bess, it’s not too much of an imposition to ask you to stay with Lucy, as her chaperone.”
“I don’t need a chaperone, because I’m not staying!” Lucy gripped the back of a spindly legged chair, white-knuckled. “And Bess doesn’t want to be my chaperone, Mama. She doesn’t like Ashbourn any more than I do—it wouldn’t be fair to ask her to spend any more time with him than she already has.”
Henrietta had gone back to torturing her handkerchief, but her faded blue eyes were steady on Bess’s face. “You’re right, Lucy. It isn’t fair. In fact, it’s very wrong of me to presume upon Bess’s generous nature. But we are in a bit of a pickle! Your sister and my darling new son-in-law have contributed all they can afford, at present, to this endeavor. These rooms cost money, new gowns cost money, and you honestly need far more of them than we’ve been able to order, but between the refurbishment of Kissington House and the repairs to the tenant farms and whatnot, there just aren’t a lot of surplus funds. Truthfully, I think it would ease your sister’s burdens quite a bit if we were to let this place go and avoid paying the rent for the rest of the summer.”
“Yes, yes, Gemma is very busy and has made so many sacrifices for me.” Lucy swung moodily into her chair, slouched and spiky as a hedgehog.
“You know how much Gemma wanted to be here with you, but?—”
“I know, I know. Newlyweds.” Lucy pulled the face of someone who had accidentally walked in on Gemma and Hal enjoying their newly wedded status in one of the many corners of Little Kissington that had now borne witness to their conjugal bliss.
Bess sympathized utterly. If she could’ve scrubbed her brain with a vinegar solution to rid it of the images of the boy she’d grown up with in the throes of passion, she would have.
“And I, myself, would give anything to be able to help you, to be here when you make your debut,” Henrietta went on, voice going a little thready with impending tears. “And to see everyone at Ashbourn House, all our people! But it is not to be. Your brother has a will of iron; he takes after your dear father in that way.”
Bess wondered. She had never met the previous Duke of Ashbourn, but everything she’d heard about him suggested a man of great charm and lively disposition—not necessarily a man who laid down the law about anything.
She couldn’t imagine that the current duke took after him much at all.
“I could wish that…well. If wishes were horses, something something, I can’t quite recall. But wishes aren’t horses, are they? Which is to say, Lucy, my girl, I know you’d like to come home with me. And Bess, I’m sure you wish the same. But I’m asking both of you to stay. Try to make the most of this opportunity—this chance to right the wrongs your father and I did in the way we raised you, Lucy.”
Lucy bit her lip and turned pleading eyes on Bess, who understood at once that Lucy hoped Bess would be the one to gently refuse Henrietta’s request.
“Come, Bess. Tell her it’s a travesty. I know you think as ill of Ashbourn as I do, and have as little wish to put yourself under the control of such a horrid, stuck-up, disagreeable man.”
Lucy could not have been more correct. This was not at all the manner in which Bess would’ve chosen to extend her stay in London. To have the great metropolis spread out at her feet, and all its varied wonders and delights entirely closed to her?
And all the while to be faced with the humiliating fact that while she’d come near as damn it to losing her entire head over an almost-kiss with Nathaniel Lively, the Duke of Ashbourn—he had been nowhere near as affected.
But what she’d said to him in that carriage was true. Bess truly believed that Lucy could and should have choices, and that a reconciliation with Ashbourn was the best way forward.
Bess looked at Henrietta, anxious and fluttery and with those occasional flashes of startling wisdom. She looked at Lucy, loyal and headstrong, yet sweet underneath it all.
It was true, too, that Bess loved these women, these new friends who had upended her life and welcomed her into their family. She would do anything for them, she’d said, and she’d meant it. So how could she refuse?
