“Yes, yes,” Fletcher cut her off. He knew all this. “But I think the key to your relating to your future husband will be to have a discussion with him. I am a poor stand-in. I can’t know what’s in his head or his heart. And you speak frankly with me all the time, and I am a man. Rotherfeld is not much different.”
“All right.” Louisa seemed disappointed in that answer. “I will take that under advisement.”
They rode silently for a moment, and then Louisa said, “How did you manage to extract a feather from Lady Winter’s hat?”
“Cunning and guile,” said Fletcher with a wink. “Nice to know I’ve still got them.”
Chapter Six
Matilda was buried on a sunny Saturday afternoon, in the crypt at St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the ceremony was somber and a bit ostentatious.
Anthony still wore a look like he’d been terrorized by her ghost since her death.
Anthony had invited a handful of people over for luncheon after the funeral, but only Lark lingered after everyone else had left. He didn’t know what made him stay, aside from a sense that Anthony needed him.
Indeed, Anthony held up a bottle of wine. “A gift from Clairborne,” he said, “straight from a vineyard he owns in Bordeaux. Shall we partake.”
“I probably shouldn’t.”
“A single glass, Lark.”
Lark sighed. “All right. I will. Unless you want me to leave.”
“I do not. Drinking alone at home is too sad to do for one more night. If you are here, I am not alone.”
He led Lark to his sitting room, a gaudily decorated but lushly appointed room that had Anthony’s touch all over it. Anthony loved over-the-top decorations. Everything he did had always felt just this side oftoo much. In fact, most of the house looked as it had the last time Lark had seen it, at Anthony’s wedding breakfast. It was like the marchioness had never lived here.
Lark was intensely curious about all of it, but he didn’t dare ask. Had Anthony undone her feminine touches already?Had she made those touches to begin with? They’d spent the summer at his country home, Lark knew that much, so perhaps the late marchioness had not lived here long enough to redecorate. But the whole house was covered in evidence of Anthony’s predilection for ornate decorations.
Anthony gestured at a pair of chairs near the fireplace and went about opening the wine. He poured a bit into two glasses and presented one to Lark as they sat down together.
One of the maids was arranging flowers in a vase, which prevented Lark from speaking his mind. He kept an eye on her as she fiddled with the arrangement.
“The vase is new,” Anthony said, “a commission from a favorite sculptor. I ordered it months ago, but it only just arrived a few weeks ago. Did I tell you of my suspicion that the artist is not a handsome recluse, as I had imagined, but in fact your dear friend Owen’s wife?”
“What?” The accusation struck Lark as absurd. Grace dabbled in pottery, yes, but she couldn’t have made anything that pretty. The vase itself was much more to Lark’s taste than most of what was in Beresford’s house. It was a tall vase, maybe eighteen inches in height, and it was pale blue with little purple flowers painted on the belly of it. The top was made to look like the bloom of a flower and the handles looked like ivy vines.
“I don’t know if Owen knows or not, but he has a few pieces in his home that the countess made, and they are remarkably similar stylistically to the artist I like. In fact, I thought Owen had also discovered said artist when I saw a vase in his dining room and remarked that it looked like a Makepeace, and he corrected me and said his wife had made it.”
“Hmm.”
“I guess I see some reason for subterfuge, because surely if the public knew those vases were made by a woman, there’d be much less clamor for them, but I don’t see why Owen couldn’t have just toldme. Unless I’m wrong, of course.”
The maid finished fiddling with the flowers, briefly bowed to Anthony, and then left the room.
Lark sipped his wine and thought about what he should speak with Anthony about. Not vases, surely; Lark cared not about the vessels Anthony stored the copious flowers around his house in.
But before Lark could come up with a topic, a footman appeared and said, “Mrs. Church would like a word, my lord.”
“Oh. Yes. Send her here.”
“Mrs. Church?” Lark asked after the footman left.
“The nurse.”
A woman who was perhaps in her mid-thirties appeared at the door a moment later. “I hope the funeral was not too dreary, my lord.”
“Difficult for it not to be. Mrs. Church, this is my old friend the Earl of Waring.”
