He leaned down again and kissed her more deeply. “I’m not. You were very wise to remind us all of our own appetites.”
“Oh, I see.” She laughed as she put her arms up now around his neck and buried her fingers in his hair. “You were thinking of your old conquests just then.”
“No,” he said seriously. “I was thinking of you and I was thinking that I wished that I had drunk a little less whisky tonight.”
“The good news is, Jamie, that I will arrange to be next to you in the morning when you wake up and the whisky has worn off.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
And then she sent him up to bed, saying that she would be upstairs soon but she had laid down her book and she wanted to find it.
She went to a shelf and scanned the volumes there. Yes,Debrett's Correct Peerage. 1820. This year. She took the first volume out and put it on the table.
She began to look at the coats of arms depicted, looking for the symbols she had seen on the door of the carriage. There it was. A dragon and a griffin, flanking a shield with three chevrons, topped with a hawk. Morpeth.
She went to the front index and found Morpeth. Family name Fortescue. Baron. She flipped to the correct page and read. And blanched.
She had seen the man in the carriage. He looked about thirty. That matched the age of the Baron Morpeth, also known as Giles Fortescue.
According toDebrett's, Lord Morpeth was already married.
Six
Catherine went into Arabella’s room in the late morning, carrying theDebrett's.
Arabella screamed. It was not possible. Catherine opened theDebrett's, and Arabella read it through her tears. Shaking. And then screaming again.
Catherine sent James and their son Sebastian out of the house, to the former Lovelock town house, now owned by her stepdaughter Harry and her husband Thomas Drake. She sent as many servants as she could to both the Lovelock and the Tregaron town houses. Harry and Mary then came to stay in the Middlewich town house to help supplement the skeleton staff of only the most-trusted and longest-serving retainers.
Mary and Catherine were experienced in dealing with unmanageable emotions—after all, hadn’t they raised Harry together?—but Arabella was inconsolable. The only time she quieted was when Harry sat on her bed and held both her hands tightly, while looking at the ceiling. Then Arabella’s tears might stop and she would sleep. But only an hour or two, and then she would wake and the tears and howls would start again.
Catherine worried that Harry’s baby Hypatia would miss her mother, but Harry assured her that Thomas did more for Hypatia than she did.
“It is not fair to call him a doting father,” Harry said. “In truth, he is a mother without the breasts. Between him and the nursemaids, I scarcely get to hold her. They think I will drop her. Arabella needs me. And I am in no danger of droppingher.”
After three days of Arabella’s wretchedness, Catherine came into her room with a tray of breakfast—to replace Mary and to try to force Arabella to eat.
Mary was asleep in a chair and Arabella was awake, staring at the ceiling.
Catherine woke Mary up and sent her to her own bedchamber.
“Good morning, Arabella,” Catherine said when the door closed behind the yawning Mary.
“It is not a good one but I presume it is morning, since you say so,” Arabella said. Her voice was hoarse from screaming and crying and moaning for so many hours, for so many days.
“Will you eat, Arabella?”
“Yes, Mama.” And Arabella took a spoon and had a bite of porridge. Then she laid the spoon down.
Catherine waited.
“I am sorry to have been so foolish and false and caused so much trouble for so many people.”
“You have been hurt and betrayed, dearest, and you know that all of us would do anything for you.”
“I woke up, and I saw Mary in the chair. She should not have been asleep in a chair, not with her pregnancy that she has wanted for so long! It made me feel dreadful.”
