He ran a hand through his gray hair. “I do. You must accept it. Now go to bed, Jenny.”
Her sisters and brothers had gathered in the parlor. The dog scurried over tail wagging while the two cats watched with apparent disinterest from the window seat. Beth’s latest find, an orphaned baby otter she was raising to return to the river, observed her from its box. As Jenny curled up in an overstuffed armchair, her fingers plucking the fraying damask arms, they all began to speak at once.
“What is the duke’s home like, Jenny?” Edmond asked her. “Does it have a chapel?”
“Yes, I believe so, although I didn’t see it. We always went to church on Sunday.”
“Is the house very big?” Beth asked.
“It’s enormous, three times the size of our home, and very old.”
Beth widened her eyes. “Older than this?”
“Indeed yes. Two hundred years or more.”
“Was the duke in the army?” Charlie asked, elbowing his brother aside on the sofa.
Jenny pushed away the image of a pair of warm blue eyes. “No, he was a diplomat in Vienna.”
“What’s a diplomat? Did he fight duels?”
“Only with words, Charlie.”
Charlie slumped down and crossed his arms.
Papa walked into the room. “Go to bed, children. It is long past your bedtime.”
The boys grumbling, they filed out of the parlor and climbed the stairs.
Bella came into Jenny’s bedchamber to see to the warming pan. “I hope these sheets aren’t damp. You might suffer from rheumatism.”
“I am not yet in my dotage, goose,” Jenny said with a smile. She sobered. “How are you really, Bella?”
Bella shrugged. “I wish I might be more content marrying Mr. Judd. But I do want my own establishment. Papa says if I don’t marry soon, I’ll be too old and must remain to care for him, because you wouldn’t. I’d die if I had to stay here forever.”
Jenny bit her lip on a retort. “That’s the last thing that would ever happen to you, dearest.”
Bella perched on the bed and pushed back a golden ringlet from her brow. “Why did you come home?”
“Your letter shocked and upset me.”
Bella’s lovely blue eye’s grew shadowed. “Papa wishes it.”
“But you do not.”
“Mr. Judd is all politeness. But I can’t warm to him, although I do try. His mother seems kind.”
“Judd is well into his thirties. He is far too old for you.” She studied her pretty sister. “What about Glyn, Bella?”
Bella sighed. “Papa will never accept him.”
“He considers a farmer’s son to be beneath us. Do you ever see Glyn?”
“Papa says I will begin to speak like a Yorkshire farmer, so I am forbidden to speak to him now. Sometimes I see him working the land when we drive to the village. He waves to me, but we never meet.”
Jenny sat down on the bed, anger bubbling up inside her. “Do you still care for him?”
Bella sighed. “I try not to think of him, but I must confess I do, at night especially. I have tried to forget him, but it doesn’t help that there are no eligible men at the assembly dances either in York or Harrogate. Many are even older than Mr. Judd, or too young to marry, and none are as wealthy as Judd is.”
