The second course arrived soon after the first: stuffed haddock sautéed in butter and garnished with a sprig of parsley. If there was one advantage to being trapped under the same roof as her matchmaking sister, it was that the chef Lenora and Perth employed was anexcellentcook. Eloise wouldn’t have been surprised to step on a butcher scale and find out that she’d gained a stone over the past month alone.
Stabbing a piece of fish with her fork, she hesitated with the utensil halfway to her mouth when she felt the unmistakable weight of a gaze upon her. Stealing a subtle glance around the table and its occupants, she froze when she encountered the stare of Anastasia Stewart, the Dowager Duchess of Monmouth.
An imposing figure of authority, the dowager was a long-time acquaintance of the Rosewoods, having been a close companion of Catherine’s. She was diminutive in stature, shorter even than Eloise, but it would be a foolish person who mistook her small size for weakness. The dowager may have been approaching her seventieth year and her hair was more gray than blonde, but her tone was sharp enough to draw blood and her patience for any person or thing that wasted her time had worn thin decades ago.
Fortunately for Eloise, the dowager hadn’t seemed to take much of an interest in her…until now.
Eyes pinched closely together behind a wire-rimmed pair of spectacles perched on the edge of her hawkish nose, the dowager smiled thinly at Eloise–the way a shark might smile at its next victim–and then resumed speaking to Annabel on her right, leaving Eloise to frantically guess at what she’d done to earn the dowager’s attention…something she definitely didnotwant.
It was a question that went unanswered until after dinner when the men went to Perth’s study for a glass of brandy, the women gathered in the front parlor for a game of whist, and Eloise found herself cornered in the hallway by the dowager duchess.
“My dear,” she said, removing her spectacles and placing them in a jeweled reticule hooked around her wrist. “I was hoping we might have an opportunity to chat, and here you are. It must be fate.”
“Here I am,” Eloise replied, rocking onto her heels. “In the house that I live.”
“Did you enjoy the fish?”
“Mmmhmm.”
“Speak up, dear. These old ears aren’t as keen as they used to be.”
Eloise suspected that the dowager’s ears were just fine, but she raised her voice nevertheless. There were some people you could argue with; Lenora’s mother-in-law was not one of them. “Yes, I did enjoy the fish. Very much.”
“And the Season? You’re enjoying that as well?”
“No,” Eloise said honestly, and the corners of the dowager’s eyes crinkled ever-so-slightly.
“You’re like your mother, then.”
“I–Iam?” she asked, caught off guard.
Lenora was the spitting image of Catherine Rosewood. Annabel mimicked her ladylike grace. Even Bridget had been likened to their mother on rare occasion. Only Eloise, with her flaming red hair so different from Catherine’s silky ebony tresses and her temper so opposite of Catherine’s genteel demeanor, had never drawn any kind of comparison.
At least not any of the favorable kind.
“As you are undoubtedly aware,” said the dowager, leaning on her cane, a pearl-topped walking stick carved from the finest mahogany, “your mother and I were dear friends. Very dear. I dare say I didn’t have a closer confidant in all the world, and I had two older sisters. Both gone now, as Catherine is.” When her eyes misted, she blinked rapidly and cleared her throat. “We met in finishing school and went on to make our debuts together. I was nervous, but thrilled to make a match.Toothrilled, incidentally, but that’s a story for another time. Your mother, however, was nervous as a cat being held over a bucket of water.”
“Nervous?” Eloise said dubiously. “Are you sure?”
Granted, she did not have as many memories of her mother as her siblings did, but those shedidhave painted Catherine in a confident, glowing, maternal light. The countess had been a woman of self-assurance who had always known the right thing to say and do. Even as her health had weakened, she’d retained a positive, uplifting, gracious spirit. If she was ever anxious or afraid, Eloise had never seen it.
“Oh, yes,” said the dowager with a sage nod. “If she had her way, Catherine would have preferred to skip the entire thing. She never liked large crowds, or feeling as though she were on display. It’s a kindness that she met your father at our first ball, or else I’m honestly not sure if she could have endured a full Season.”
“My mother felt as I do,” Eloise said softly, and wasn’t that a revelation?
How often she found herself on the outside looking in! At her perfect, polished sisters. Even Bridget, for as shy as she was, had made her debut appear easy, and Annabel had been in the middle of wrapping the entiretonaround her little finger before her Season was interrupted by their father’s death.
To hear their mother had dreaded her debut for some of the same reasons Eloise hated hers…was…well, it was a much-needed reassurance that maybe she wasn’t as strange or different from her family as she sometimes felt.
“Had your grandmother permitted it, I am certain Catherine would have avoided London entirely.” The dowager tapped her cane on the floor, an absent gesture that revealed she didn’t use the implement for physical support but rather decoration. “Thankfully, Catherine was made to attend the Devereaux Ball and it was a good thing she did, or else she might not have met your father until after another woman scooped him up. But that night, after he laid eyes on your mother, she became the last and only woman that he ever saw.”
When an old, familiar prickling of guilt sank little claws into Eloise’s skin, she batted it away. “I’d be at Clarenmore Park right now if Lenora would allow it,” she admitted, and the dowager chuckled.
“I thought as much, my dear. You wear your emotions on your sleeve. In that way, you and your mother arenotalike. It was difficult to discern what Catherine was thinking behind those calm blue eyes of hers. But if she were alive and standing beside you instead of me, I am certain that she would be thinking what a lovely, independent, strong young woman you’ve turn out to be.”
The claws came back with a vengeance and Eloise abruptly decided that she’d had quite enough of this conversation, thank you very much.
“Your Grace, I’m sorry, but–”
