“I instructed Houghton to pay Miss Hamilton and dismiss her,” she said breathlessly, looking at him with her wide blue eyes. “He told me that he must consult you first. What are you going to do about it, Adam?”
“Ask your reason for wanting to dismiss the governess, I suppose,” he said. “What has she done or failed to do?”
“I mean about Houghton,” she said, tears springing to her eyes. She was wearing a flowing white silk-and-lace robe. Her blond hair was lying loose along her back. She looked, her husband thought dispassionately, quite breathtakingly lovely. And as fragile as the young girl with whom he had left his heart when he went to Belgium. “Are you going to let him get away with speaking to me like that?”
“Houghton is my personal secretary,” he said, “answerable to me alone, Sybil. I would release him in a moment if he forgot himself to the extent of taking orders from anyone else in this house without first consulting me.”
She flushed. “So your secretary is more important to you than I am,” she said. “It was not always so, Adam. You loved me once, or so I believed. It seems I was deceived.”
“You should know by now,” he said, “to come to me personally with all your problems. You would save yourself some humiliation if you would do so. An efficient secretary cannot take orders from two people. What is the problem with Miss Hamilton?”
“You should not need to ask that question,” she said, twisting a handkerchief in her hands. “It should be enough that I wish to see her gone. I don’t think she is suitable to have the care of my daughter. Please dismiss her, Adam.”
“You know,” he said with a sigh, “that I do not dismiss even the lowliest of my servants, Sybil, without a very good reason. I don’t know if you realize how close members of the servant class live to the edge of poverty. I will not dismiss anyone merely to satisfy a whim.”
“A whim!” she said, her eyes widening and filling with tears once more. “I am your wife, Adam.”
“Yes.” He looked at her steadily. “You are, aren’t you?”
She lowered her eyes and sat gracefully on the edge of the daybed. “I am the Duchess of Ridgeway,” she said quietly.
“That sounds like a more accurate description of you,” he said. His voice held a note of weariness. “Must we always havethis sort of conversation, Sybil? Must I always appear to be the tyrant? I’m sorry for my sarcasm. What is the problem with Miss Hamilton?”
“She took Pamela outside yesterday afternoon,” she said, “despite the cold wind and the direct sunlight. She nagged at Nanny until Nanny said yes, just for an hour. And she returned more than two hours later. Pamela was dirty and exhausted and is too ill even to rise from her bed this morning, the poor darling. She deliberately disobeyed Nanny, Adam. Even you cannot defend her against that.”
“They were with me,” he said. “I would not allow them to return to the house when Miss Hamilton would have come.”
She looked up at him sharply. “She was with you?” she said, raising her handkerchief to her lips. “For more than two hours?”
“You have the wrong pronoun,” he said. “I saidtheywere with me—Pamela, Miss Hamilton, and the puppy. If Pamela was dirty, it was because I rolled in the grass with her. If she was tired, it was because I ran and played with her and gave her more than two hours of sunshine and fresh air. Children should be tired after an outing and a romp.”
The duchess was very white. “This is intolerable,” she said. “I have told you before, Adam, that you are far too rough with Pamela. She is delicate and should be left to my care and Nanny’s. And a dog! She can catch goodness only knows what disease from it. Oh, I knew this would happen as soon as you came home. You have no regard for my sensibilities at all. You are so very selfish. I was quite deceived in you.”
He looked steadily at her until she lowered her eyes again.
“I will continue to spend as much time with Pamela as I can spare,” he said. “She needs a parent’s attention more than the coddling of an elderly nurse, Sybil. And she needs activity, both physical and mental. And let me understand you. Does Miss Hamilton take her orders from Nanny?”
“Yes,” the duchess said, “of course she does. My darling is just a baby.”
“In future,” he said, “it will be the other way around. I trust you will inform Nanny of the change. She will pout when you tell her, though you will do so. I will inform Miss Hamilton of the new rule.”
Two tears spilled over from the duchess’s eyes. “You are a cruel and hard-hearted man,” she said. “You will do anything to thwart my will, won’t you, Adam? Just because you once did me a kindness, must I be in your debt forevermore?”
He looked down at her tight-lipped. “You know that there has never been any question of any such thing,” he said. “And never will be. Only in your imagination, Sybil. Sometimes you almost have me persuaded that I am a tyrant and a villain.”
She brushed at her eyes with her handkerchief and twisted it in her lap. “So I am to subject myself to having my daughter taken from my care and from her nurse’s care and put into that of your doxy,” she said. “Very well, Adam. I am too weak to fight you.”
“My doxy?” he said. “Have a care, Sybil. Perhaps I should suggest that you make it unlikely that I would wish for the services of any doxy.” The right side of his face smiled fleetingly when she glanced up at him, startled. “No, I didn’t think that idea would appeal to you.”
“Sometimes I think you will force me to hate you,” she said in a low voice that shook from her tears.
“You become tedious,” he said.
He watched her as she coughed and sank back against the cushions of the daybed and pressed the handkerchief to her lips.
“I should have insisted that you have that cough looked at by another doctor months ago,” he said quietly. “Hartley seems quite unable to cure it. Let me send for a physician from London, Sybil. Let me do something for you. Let there be some kindness between us for a change.”
“I think I would like to be alone,” she said. “I need to rest.”
