“What will you wear for the tea tomorrow, Rosalyn?” Isabel asked, changing the subject perceptively.
“I have not really decided. My russet gown, perhaps,” Rosalyn suggested. She had a reddish-brown gown in thick velvet for an occasion less formal than a ball, but more formal than a usual meal. It would suit the special tea that the duchess had planned rather well.
“Oh, yes! That sounds grand. I want to wear my red dress,” Georgina said. “And you, Isabel?”
“The blue, I think,” Isabel commented.
Rosalyn listened somewhat distantly as her sisters chatted about their choice of gowns, focusing on peeling off her wet gloves from her frozen, aching fingers. Her mind strayed back to the duke and how angry he had seemed when she had fallen, and then to the concern and care in his voice. He had gazed at her so strangely, as if he was drinking her in. She blushed, her body heating up, her heart quickening as she recalled that strange, intense stare that he gave her. She had never experienced anything like it.
Perhaps he was looking judgmentally at me because my hairstyle has come undone,she thought, reaching up shyly to touch her damp, cold locks where they rested on her shoulders. Her fingers throbbed and burned, still recovering from the terrible cold. It had not seemed a censorious look, though. She flushed. It had seemed rather more appreciative.
Nonsense,she told herself stiffly.You are imagining things.
She reached for her gloves and pelisse to hang them by the fire so that they could dry. She had important things to think about. She had no room to focus on the duke and whathe thought of her, though she could not help wondering—wondering when she would have the opportunity to speak so closely with him again.
Chapter 10
“And pull! And pull! And... Your Grace! Stand back for his grace at once!” The butler’s orders rang out in the downstairs hallway.
Callum, who had been walking to the door to take the air on an unusually sunny morning, stopped and gazed in disbelief.
“What is this?” he demanded loudly. “What is all this doing here?” A bale of green branches, holly boughs, ivy leaves, and Perdition alone knew what else, blocked up half the hallway. He gazed at it, eyes wide. The butler frowned.
“Your lady mother ordered it, Your Grace.” He swallowed and his frown deepened. “We followed her instructions. Were we mistaken, Your Grace?”
Callum ran a weary hand through his hair. A vague memory from before the guests arrived drifted through his head. His mother had asked him if she could cut greenery in the woods, and he had given permission without much thought. He gazed at the vast bale—around the size of the chaise-longue in the drawing room—and sighed. He was not about to reprimand the butler for doing what he had been told to do.
“You did the right thing,” he said to the butler, who slumped in evident relief.
“Thank you, Your Grace.”
“Where are you expected to deliver that?” Callum asked wearily.
“Ballroom, Your Grace. Her grace said we should put it in the centre, near the back.”
Callum inclined his head. “Well, then, that is what you should do,” he said lightly. His frown deepened as he heard footsteps on the stairs. He recognised his mother’s soft, even walk. He turned away from the butler and left his crew ofgardeners to haul the massive bundle across the entrance and into the next room.
He went upstairs briskly and found his mother on the first landing. She looked up at him.
“Well? Is that the greenery for decorations?” she demanded crisply.
Callum tilted his head. “Mother...are you certain that we should do this? You really think we should challenge local custom and put it up now?” He still felt unsure about the idea of ignoring the traditions and putting up the decorations straight away.
His mother looked at him. Her blue eyes held his and Callum took in how weary she seemed, with blue-grey prints of exhaustion under her eyes and her brow deeply lined. She was five-and-fifty, but she looked much older in that moment.
“Son, I have a house of twenty guests,” she said, and even her voice grated with tiredness. “They need entertaining. Since I cannot put on a ball every night, we need to do something with them. This will be a diversion for them.”
Callum sighed and nodded his head. “Well, I cannot argue with that. Turn the season on its head if you must.”
His mother’s eye held his, and he was relieved to see her old spirit in her gaze.
“I might have to,” she said. Callum shrugged.
“As you see fit, Mother,” he said wearily.
“I shall bear that in mind,” his mother said. Callum was secretly pleased to hear her old asperity in her voice. However much she grated on him sometimes, she was his mother, a constant in his world, and he would miss her unyielding strength.
“Good day,” he greeted her and hurried off up the stairs. She replied, but Callum was already on the upper floor when he realised what she had said. “Tell Harriet we are going tomake the kissing boughs,” he repeated, deciphering his mother’s words. He sighed. He had forgotten that tradition. A ball of woven greenery embellished with apples and—in some, less religious houses, mistletoe—would be hung somewhere in the house. It was considered good luck—indeed, mandatory—to kiss underneath it.
