"He spent the weeks at house parties, but he left orders. Once, I put up holly in the parlor and took it down before he returned."
"Good for you."
"Stowe told him. Emery beat me and turned off the two servants who helped. I never did it again. He hated me." He felt a tremor go through her body and wished his late brother-in-law to one of the lower rungs of Hell. At least she finally said the words, he thought.
When they reached her room, Will took her face in his hands. "Someday, Sister, when you are ready, you will tell me everything, and I will tell you again how very sorry I am that I didn't protect you from that man."
She smiled sadly. "He was my husband. He had every right. You could do nothing."
Her words didn't assuage his guilt, but they fed his determination to make it up. "He's gone, you know. Make yourself believe it. If you let him continue to blight your existence, you give him power over you still. Don't do it. Flourish, instead. Your revenge will be joie de vivre."
A twist of her mouth almost looked like a smile.
"Disobey his every rule, Sylvia. Defy his every unreasonable dictate." He leaned his forehead to hers. "Fly free."
"Such as entertaining Lord Arthur's family?"
"Absolutely."
"But there's something about that woman, Catherine …"
"Whatever it is, if it came from Emery, it is poison, and we will not let it blight our lives!"
She nodded, but Will wasn't convinced that she meant it.
When his sister shut the door, he slumped against the wall. She looked skeptical and, he suspected, afraid. Catherine's words came back to him. "Give her time." He couldn't undo eleven years of damage in a few months.
How am I to endure years of this? If he had to do it alone, he couldn't bear it.
For now, he had boys to oversee. I need to remind them to hang mistletoe. A smile took hold, and he stood a bit taller. He hurried to the family parlor.
Chapter Eight
Now for the hard part, Will thought, when he entered the family parlor.
The Wheatlys' arrival had gone smoothly, primarily because Will had thrown the fear of God—or of being turned off—into Stowe. Lord Arthur looked relieved to be in the guest wing, where fewer memories haunted him. The boys greeted cots in the nursery with hoots of joy. Catherine looked merely resigned, until she saw that her room looked out over the gardens. He expected that, by morning, she would have drawn up plans to restore them.
Dinner also passed without incident. Lord Arthur remarked that he had few memories of the dining salon.
"I was seldom at home, you see, once I was an adult," he had said.
Stunned silence greeted that pronouncement, and Will once again offered a prayer of gratitude for Glenaire. The marquess diverted the discussion smoothly.
Both Sylvia and Catherine made a greater effort than they had at the previous dinner. Catherine's disinterest in fashion and Sylvia's distaste for crop rotation limited them, however, and only Glenaire's gambits kept the conversation flowing. When the ladies rose, they left the gentlemen to their port with no sign of animosity.
"That went well," Will mused, holding his crystal glass out for the footman to fill.
A rueful smile lit Glenaire's austere face. "I've had an easier time managing conversation at diplomatic dinners with the Prussians and French."
"I'm sorry, Chadbourn. Returning here will take some adjustment," Lord Arthur said.
"No apology necessary," Will said.
"Indeed not. I found the discussion about your research fascinating," Glenaire added. Will couldn't tell if the marquess was serious, but the remark, and the relief it brought to Lord Arthur's face, gratified him.
"My Catherine isn't used to this, but she managed it well."
"Your Catherine would grace any dinner, Lord Arthur." Will meant it. Her breeding showed in the very line of her wrist when she ate, in her tone of voice, and in her instinctive good manners.
