My Last Duchess, стр. 26
“There’s no point in further discussion of Phee,” Hugo said. “She doesn’t want me and made that quite clear.”
“I shall make that determination myself,” Louisa retorted.
Hugo tossed back a glass of sherry. His twin was a pain in the arse, and she would only complicate things. “Horatius willapprove of Lady Woolhastings.”
“Of course he will. Edith is a pleasant woman who won’t be so inconsiderate as to have more children and burden the estate.”
Hugo frowned at her.
“I adore Horatius,” his sister said, unrepentant. “I have since the moment I laid eyes on that bawling, red-faced little monster.But he can’t help himself, Hugo. It must be some sort of disease that erupts now and then in the ducal line. He thinks likea duke, and I don’t mean that as a compliment.”
“He’s not yet a duke,” Hugo said. But he felt far older than his years at the moment.
“When will you see Lady Woolhastings next?” Louisa asked, polishing off her sherry.
“Thursday for the theater, then supper with Lady Fernby,” he said, dispirited. “She’s a friend of Lady Woolhastings, or Edith,I should say. Though Edith has not given me permission to use her given name.”
“Lady Fernby is a friend of mine,” Louisa said, looking delighted. “I shall send her a message immediately and ask her toadd a cover to the table. But first I shall send Edith a message and ask her to accompany us to the Frost Fair tomorrow morning.”
“With the children?”
“Of course, with the children,” Louisa said. “They’re your children, and if you marry, they will be hers as well. They must meet her.”
“You told me not to mention children,” Hugo objected. “If she sees how many there are, and how lively they are, she mightdecide not to marry me.”
“I know I gave you that advice, but on reflection, I decided I was wrong. The children ought to have a chance to meet thewoman who would become their stepmother.”
“All right,” Hugo said reluctantly.
“I shall have a word with them over breakfast about minding their manners. Edith is punctilious with regard to etiquette anddeportment. Her girls were delightfully well behaved from the age of two, as I recall.”
“Joan seems to have calmed,” Hugo said.
“When she isn’t shrieking like a night bird,” Louisa said briskly. “I think she’s going to have a gift for drama: She is eitherjoyful or tragic. And just so you know, she is still throwing crockery whenever she has a chance. Leonidas has been desperatelynaughty in the last few weeks. I think he misses you most of all, Hugo. He needs a man in the house.”
“He’s only six!”
“A troublesome age for boys,” his sister stated.
She was given to pronouncements about children, though Lord only knew where she got the authority. She read that thought inthis face, because she added, “As I well know from watching your four older sons grow up, Hugo.”
“I suppose that’s true.” He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Louisa. If you arenot comfortable with Edith, I shan’t marry her.”
“Your sister’s opinion is not a good measure by which to choose a wife,” she said, rising to her feet. “I need a bath and a restorative nap before the eveningmeal.”
“I mean it,” Hugo said. “You come before Edith. I’ve already scrapped one possible duchess whom I thought you wouldn’t like.”
Louisa raised an eyebrow.
“The Dowager Countess of Webbel.”
“You must be jesting!”
Her outraged shriek carried them out of the study and up the stairs, and he found himself grinning for the first time sinceleaving Ophelia’s house.
He would always feel a pang when he thought about Phee. But he was a grown man, who was long acquainted with disappointment—notto mention grief. He had a loving family, and that was the most important thing.
The only important thing, really.
Chapter Eleven
Ophelia woke the next morning suffused with melancholy. Perhaps she felt dour because she and Viola had been trapped in thehouse for weeks. Ever since the snowstorm, the weather had continued to be bitterly cold, with snow flurries blurring whatsunshine made it through the London coal fog.
It had to be almost morning, but frost patterns scrolled over the window.
Hitching herself up against the pillows, she tried to decide why she felt so sad, and finally put it down to a combinationof two things: She missed the Duke of Lindow, which was absurd, because she scarcely knew him. And secondly, there would soonbe a baby in the house, but the baby wouldn’t be hers.
Maddie would be a marvelous mother; she had no doubt of that.
She sat with the second emotion for a while, surprised by it. It had never occurred to her until she sent the duke away thatby not marrying again, she had consigned herself to a life with no more babies.
Viola was perfect, of course. She almost felt guilty thinking of another child. Before she met the duke, she had been completelycontent.
Her thoughts tangled around each other in a beastly fashion. By the time Viola came toddling down the corridor, Ophelia wasdesperate to leave her bedchamber and indeed, the house altogether.
“Viola and I shall go to Hyde Park today,” she told her maid later, over a breakfast tray. Her daughter was tucked besideher, and she squealed with happiness to hear it, buttered toast falling out of her mouth and landing on the linen sheet.
Ophelia brushed off the crumbs and smiled down at Viola. “You’d like to go to the park, wouldn’t you?”
“Go!” Viola said with great enthusiasm.
“The park is piled with snow,” her maid said. “Oh, madam, I know exactly what you should do: They were just saying in thekitchen that the Frost Fair opened last night!”
“On the Thames tideway?”
“Mr. Bisquet says as how there hasn’t been a Frost Fair for a quarter of a century,” her maid enthused. “You must take MissViola, madam. It might not happen again in her lifetime. My grandmother went to one as a girl, and she said that there wereshops on the ice selling everything you can imagine, and carriages went to and fro