“There is always the church.”
Michael almost laughed. “I suspect I would be a most inappropriate vicar.”
“Of that I have no doubt.” Philip pushed up out of the chair, groaning a bit. “Now, boy, go to bed so the rest of us can as well.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And stay away from my brandy.”
Michael smiled. “I will, sir.”
“Walk with me.”
Michael did, but they said little as the climbed the stairs to the third floor. Michael noticed that his father was a little more winded than usual, remembering that his grandfather had died when he was Philip’s age. As they paused outside his mother’s bedchamber—where his father had been sleeping since her attack—Michael touched his father’s elbow. “Father—”
Philip waved away the concern in Michael’s voice. “I’m fifty and tired, not dead.”
Michael had to chuckle. “Yes, sir.”
But his father peered closely at him. “You have seen it, correct? The way we have gotten through the last few months?”
Michael nodded. The last six months had been chaotic for the entire family. “I have.”
“Never underestimate us, Michael. Never underestimate the power of family.”
“I will not.”
Philip eased open the door to the bedchamber and stepped inside. “Why areyoustill awake?” were his final words before it shut again, and Michael grinned, knowing his mother would expect a full accounting of the conversation.
Family.
And for the first time since Eleanor Carlson had abandoned him in Scotland, Michael was grateful he was an Ashton, son of the Duke of Kennet.
Ten minutes later, he was asleep.
Chapter Fifteen
Sunday, 21 August 1825
Wykeham Place
Half past three in the afternoon
When Clara turnedsix, the cook at Beckcott Abbey had made her a special pudding of raspberries, clotted cream, and puffy pastry. It had been three layers and almost six inches tall, five inches across the base, and topped with the ripest, reddest raspberry Clara had ever seen. The entire concoction was drizzled with raspberry juice and honey, and it almost melted in Clara’s mouth. She savored every bite so slowly that her mother had lost patience and left the table before Clara finished. It was a pudding meant to be remembered.
Although Clara doubted Cook would be flattered to know her pudding came to mind now, as Clara stared at the Dowager Duchess of Wykeham, whose rose, cream, and beige gown had settled around her ample hips on the settee, the rose and beige ribbons attached to her sleeves and décolletage drifting down around her like so much raspberry juice and honey. A silver-gray mound of fur lay next to her, and Clara idly wondered why the lady would have a wrap with her in the summer heat. Her grandmother had once told her that old people stayed cold, so perhaps that was the reason... for the dowager was, indeed, old.
The dowager’s soft cheeks lay in overlapping creases, like a sandy bank eroded by the surf, and her wispy gray hair had been topped with a rose and beige turban. Tiny gold spectacles perched precariously on the tip of her nose. Through those small round lenses, the dowager studied Clara, from the befeathered coiffure Radcliff had arranged down to the sapphire satin and leather slippers on her feet. Radcliff had done an admirable job of transforming a once-worn Christmas frock into a more summery contraption by replacing white fur with sky-blue lace and slitting the upper sleeves and slipping sky-blue panels beneath them.
They had been announced and shown into the dowager’s receiving room, where she had motioned for them to sit, although she had not spoken a word of greeting. No tea service graced the room, although one footman remained, stiff and proper, next to the door. After they settled, Clara forced herself to remain still under the examination, although her mother, in a straightforward emerald gown with white embroidery on the décolletage, fidgeted a bit on the settee next to Clara as the tense study went on for several excruciating minutes. Finally, Honora could stand it no more.
“Your Grace, we are honored—”
The dowager silenced Honora with a wave, her eyes never leaving Clara. “Owen said you were something of a bacon-faced chit. I do believe he was being kind.”
Honora stiffened, a gasp choking off whatever she had been going to say. Clara, having dealt with the duke before, refused to respond to the cut. She lifted her chin. “His Grace is a gifted wordsmith. He often flatters me when we are together. I am not surprised that he would be kind toward me in your presence, Your Grace.”
The brown eyes behind the spectacles gleamed. “Ha! He also said you were an intellectual match for him, which I did not believe until now.”
