If only he could find her.
*
As the duchessand Lady Easton barreled toward Hertfordshire, the rain came down in buckets. There was nothing to see out of the carriage windows but sheets of water blurring the countryside beyond.
“I do not understand what the weather is thinking of,” the duchess said. “Carlson assured me that we would have only a mild cloudiness. A piffering cloud cover, he said.”
“What is a piffering?”
“Oh, you know, just one of his technical terms he throws about.”
The duchess was very proud of Carlson. It was not just anybody whose butler was a scholar. He had studied with the great Lord Ingraham who had records of the weather going back to the dark ages and he still regularly corresponded with that gentleman.
Lady Easton looked pointedly at the streams of water rolling down her window. “Not exactly piffering, is it?”
The duchess ignored the jab. Of course, Carlson was sometimes wrong. A pod of whales creating a disturbance in the North Sea, or a shooting star, or a sudden flight of crows, or an overrun of foxes, or even a foul wind coming from the poorer neighborhoods could all throw predictions off. He’d explained it many times.
The carriage careened around a turn. The duchess held on. She assumed Rumson was tiring of the weather, though he wore his oil skin. Carlson had informed him that he would have no need of that garb, but her coachman maintained a terrible disdain for her butler’s advice. On a day like today that was perhaps fortunate.
“Do you suppose we’ll end up having to pull Penelope aside like we did with Louisa?” Lady Easton asked.
The duchess sighed, as it had been on everybody’s mind. Last season, they’d had to counsel Louisa to leave her grandbaby at home when making calls and to stop regaling near-strangers with the allegedly charming things the toddler said and did. Including outlining how advanced she was and that she called her grandmotherBwandbaba.
Now, Lady Heathway had been showing similar signs of that particular madness. She had a grandniece a year old and at their last meeting she’d spent a good quarter hour explaining how alert the baby was.
“Another VAB,” the duchess said. “First we had Louisa’s Very Advanced Baby and now we have Penelope’s Very Alert Baby,” the duchess said drily.
Lady Easton nodded. “Are we to be expected to cheer over an account of how determinedly the baby reaches for things? Is that not what they do—just grab hold of everything in sight in an attempt to break it?”
“At least she does not have the baby in her possession,” the duchess said. “She cannot bring it with her on calls like Louisa did, as the girl remains at Barlow Hall with her mother.”
“For now,” Lady Easton said ominously. “Though I fail to understand how Louisa and Penelope could have both lost their minds over babies. Those small creatures have no rationality, and they do things on their own schedule as if there are no other people in the household to consider.”
“Louisa and Penelope have seemingly forgotten it is why we have nursemaids and governesses,” the duchess said.
“This is Bertridge’s lane to his estate,” Lady Easton said, peering out the window and attempting to see through the rain on the glass. “Yes, I am certain of it. We just passed by that old oak that’s been there forever.”
They had arrived. The following morning, they would make their way to the earl’s estate to collect Lady Isabel.
The duchess absentmindedly smoothed her brocade skirt. Her adventure as mama to a charming daughter was set to begin.
Chapter Two
Isabel had readthe duchess’ letters over and over again. Though they were only comprised of paper and ink, she was very careful of them. The letters and the news contained in them were the most precious and valuable items she had ever been in receipt of.
There had been one other letter arrived since the duchess had written that she would come on the 9thand depart on the 10th.The lady informed the earl that she would go to Lord Bertridge overnight and then come to collect Isabel the following morning.
That had been an enormous relief. She had not known how they were to accommodate a duchess. Isabel had recoiled from visions of the duchess coming in too late for dinner and finding it gone. Or an evening trying to communicate with her father. Or Rogers dropping a tea tray in the hall. That had happened so often that Isabel had taken to going to the kitchens to carry it up herself and they were down to one very chipped old teapot. The silver sets had been long sold and the rest of the porcelain sets had been shattered in one mishap after the next.
She did not blame Rogers for it, the poor old fellow, but it had become apparent that he could not shoulder so many burdens on his own and Isabel had done what she could to alleviate some of it.
All of those calamities in the making had disappeared and she could relax while continuing to study the duchess’ letters to try to better understand the lady.
The duchess, along with some friends, had foundedThe Society of Sponsoring Ladies. Each season, they would bring out a girl who had not the means to accomplish it on her own. The duchess wrote that the scheme had been wildly successful, and thetonwas very admiring of their efforts. Now, it was time for the duchess herself to dip her toe in the sponsoring water.
Isabel realized rather quickly that the duchess had been drawn toher, as opposed to the hundred other ladies who must be in a similar situation, because of her family’s history. The duchess used the wordnoblequite a lot in her missives. She mentioned the family’s history and the links to the Plantagenets several times. She claimed there would be no gentleman out of reach for her.
There was even to be a dowry. The lack of a dowry had hung round her neck like a stone, though lack should weigh nothing. She did not know what the amount would be, nor did she care. If the duchess thought it sufficient, it must be.
