He left her no time to argue or refine on his point—of course her family loved her—before he planted a swift, no-nonsense kiss on her lips, then opened the parlor door and ushered her through.
“Your Grace, if I might have a word with you privately?”
At Elijah’s question, the duke stopped pacing and aimed a glacial stare at his guest. “A word? With you? Most assuredly.” He bowed to his wife and left the room with Elijah, while Jenny regarded her mother.
“A medicinal tot is in order,” the duchess declared. “For both of us, and, Jenny, you must not let your papa’s temper dismay you. He’s… he blames himself when I’m upset, and he’s surprised.”
Which was exactly what Louisa had warned Jenny against.
Jenny glanced at the door, foreboding expanding in her middle to the proportions of dread. When she accepted a drink from her mother, the duchess’s fingers were cold.
“What can they be discussing?” Jenny asked nobody in particular.
“A marriage proposal?” the duchess suggested.
“I doubt it.”
Her mother gave her a considering look from the sideboard. “If Bernward offered, Genevieve, would you choose Paris over him?”
Her Grace was a pragmatic woman, also a mother who would cheerfully kill for her children or for her dear Percival. Her instincts were not to be discounted, ever.
“I did.”
“Oh, my dear, whatever could be more important than love?”
And now the dread moved up, north of Jenny’s belly, into her throat, because that one question befuddled and hurt and made a hash of Jenny’s ability to think.
The door opened, and His Grace rejoined them, though of Elijah there was no evidence. To Jenny’s eye, the duke’s paternal fire had been snuffed out, and where his blue eyes had held the promise of retribution for anyone fool enough to cross him, now he looked… sad.
“Ah, you’re drinking. My love, might I have a tot as well?”
Something was wrong. When His Grace’s temper was so completely replaced with what looked for all the world like regret, something was dreadfully wrong.
The duchess held her drink out to him. He brought it to his lips but kept his gaze on his wife, as if imbibing courage with the very sight of her.
“Bernward is a canny young man,” the duke said. “Shall we sit?”
Jenny did not want to sit. She wanted to find Elijah and wring from him a recounting of what had aged the Duke of Moreland ten years in less than two minutes. She wanted to take the worry from the duchess’s eyes, and she wanted to go to Paris right that very instant.
Her Grace took one end of a small sofa and Jenny the other. The duke peered around the room as if he’d not spent many and many an hour reading to his wife in the very same location.
“Bernward claims you are not determined on Paris so much because you want to paint,” the duke said. He set his little glass down on the sideboard and turned his back on Jenny and her mother.
That was rude, and His Grace was never intentionally rude to his duchess. Jenny’s heart began to thump a slow, ominous tattoo in her chest. Please rant and bellow, Papa. Please be in a magnificent temper and hurl a few thunderbolts, then tell me I can go with your blessing.
The duchess’s hand stroked over Jenny’s shoulder, an it-will-be-all-right caress Jenny knew like she knew her own reflection, though it brought no comfort.
“Genevieve, Bernward claims…” The duke’s shoulders heaved up and down, slowly, as if he were sorely fatigued. “Bernward is of the opinion that you seek the Continent not because your talent compels it, or not solely because of your talent, but because you blame yourself”—behind his back, the duke’s hands were laced so tightly his knuckles showed white—“you blame yourself for the death of not one, but of both your brothers, Bartholomew and Victor.”
The duchess’s soft gasp sounded over a roaring in Jenny’s ears.
“Bernward claims,” the duke went on softly, “you must exile yourself out of guilt, because you are of the daft notion that only your happiness will atone for the loss of your brothers’ lives, though he suspects you disguise these sentiments even from yourself, or you try to. I cannot credit this. I simply cannot, and yet… you are our daughter. We know you, and Bernward, God damn the man, is not wrong.”
An ache grew and grew inside Jenny. An awful, choking, suffocating ache, an ache she thought she’d learned long ago how to manage. She wanted Elijah. She wanted to sprout wings and fly from the little parlor where she’d sat on her mother’s lap and learned to embroider with her sisters. She wanted, in some way, to die rather than contain the pain pressing at her very organs.
When His Grace turned from the cold, dark window, Jenny did not look away quickly enough. Even through the sheen blurring her own eyes, she could see that tears had also gathered in the eyes of His Grace, the Duke of Moreland. She looked down, seeing nothing, while her misery increased without end.
“Oh, my child.” The duchess enveloped Jenny in a ferocious embrace. “Oh, my dear, dear child. How could you think this of yourself? How could you possibly— Percival, more drinks and your handkerchief. This instant.”
Fortunate indeed was the man whose wife had the presence of mind to keep him busy when sentiment threatened to render him… heartbroken. His Grace poured himself a shot of whisky, downed it, and poured another. This one he considered, while across the room Her Grace held a quietly lachrymose daughter, a young lady exhausted by her emotional burdens and by a failure of trust in her parents’ love.
And dear Esther… Percival fished out his second handkerchief—Windham menfolk were prepared for the occasional domestic affray, particularly around the holidays—and passed it to his duchess. She pressed it to her eyes while keeping an arm around the girl plastered to her mother’s shoulder, then gestured toward the sideboard.
“Of course, my dear.”
Brandy for the ladies. More brandy. Percival dallied by pouring just so, arranging the glasses just so on a tray, and opening and closing the drawers to the sideboard until he’d found two clean serviettes. When the weeping sounded as if it was subsiding, he brought the tray over to his womenfolk.
“Drink up, young lady, and prepare to explain yourself.”
Over Jenny’s head, Esther’s slight smile indicated he’d gotten it right: brusque and unsentimental, but more papa than commanding officer or duke.
Jenny accepted a drink from her mother, but the poor girl’s hand shook, and the duke had to make a significant inroad on his second whisky. At this rate, he would be drunk before the guests arrived, which was a fine idea all around.
“I think I can guess some of it,” Her Grace said. She hadn’t touched her drink. The woman had fortitude beyond description. “You blame yourself for Bart’s joining up, because you had such a very great row with him before I finally relented.”
Jenny stopped folding and unfolding her damp handkerchief to peer at her mother. “Relented?”
Oh, this was difficult. Percival pulled up a rocking chair and sat at his wife’s elbow. “Lest you forget, missy, Windham men have a long and distinguished tradition of serving King and Country. Bart needed to work out the fidgets, so to speak. He was setting a terrible example for the younger boys, wreaking havoc with the domestics, and upsetting your mother. I’d started negotiating for a commission, but your mother could not…”
Could not put her son at risk of death. Percival met his duchess’s gaze, thanking her silently yet again for never once blaming him for Bart’s death.