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“Oh dear,” Fanny said when her daughter had gone. “I hope Katherine doesn’t do something rash—again.”
“I rather hope she will—if it makes her happy,” countered Antoinette.
Chapter 20
Jack had taken the unconventional approach to Quamby House, cutting across the back garden having slipped through a hole in the hedge after being visited by quite an outrageously impulsive plan to see his…mother. Yes, he’d come purely to see his mother whom he was sure would be visiting her friends, Ladies Fenton and Quamby.
Katherine was unlikely to be there, so, as there was no reason to concern Odette with that faint possibility, he hadn’t thought it warranted mentioning. Besides, Odette had various fittings with the dressmaker and had been in a fluster as to certain important decisions regarding the merits of lace or beading.
Jack didn’t mind that Odette liked to know what he was doing at all times. With her father so ill, she really only had Jack to look to. She’d depend upon him for the rest of their lives, so the fact he could be her rock in a stormy sea now, when her father’s illness was draining her, meant a great deal to him.
Jack liked to help and be needed. He was a man who did not shirk from life’s challenges. He was not a man like his father who would abandon those who depended upon him. The challenge of finding that his heart was not dancing to the tune of moral necessity disturbed him deeply. That kiss in the darkness with Katherine had been more than unsettling. It had tilted him off his moral axis. He should never have kissed her in the first place. Even now, three days later, he wondered what he’d been thinking. He hadn’t. He’d just done what had seemed the most natural, pleasurable thing in the world, and now he couldn’t get Katherine out of his mind.
It was a good thing she was about to become betrothed to Lord Derry. Jack would ensure their paths would not cross until he was thoroughly immersed in the role he’d not undertaken lightly: to be a good husband and a good father.
Yes, the moment he was a father to the children he and Odette would have, he knew his heart would act in line with the moral fibre of his being. Nothing and no one would tempt him from being the most devoted and loyal husband and father.
When, to his surprise, he saw his mother and a small figure he took to be Diana, strolling across the lawn in his direction, he was both pleased and disappointed. His intention had been purely to see his mother—of course—and now he could do so without fear of running into Katherine. And that was a very good thing. A very good thing, he told himself. For then he could answer all of Odette’s questions about what he’d done that day with complete transparency.
/> “Why, Jack, this is the most wonderful surprise!” his mother greeted him when she was close enough to identify him and had appeared round the bend of the gravel path that bordered the small stream. She bent down to the little girl. “Diana, you remember Jack, don’t you?”
Diana politely executed a little curtsey saying she did, and appeared to lose concentration before swinging her head back to him and asking with a frown, “Are you the Jack my mummy talks about?”
“I don’t know. Does she talk about a Jack?”
“Yes. She said one day her best friend Jack would come back. I’ve never met any other Jacks. Are you that Jack?”
“That’s right. I came to visit your mama as soon as I came back to London.”
Diana nodded. A butterfly had caught her attention but she swung round to correct him. “Not right after. She was waiting.”
Jack looked awkwardly at his mother who in turn sent an interested look back in his direction. “You were always thick as thieves when you were Diana’s age—or a little older,” she said with a smile, adding to Diana, “Jack and your mama played together when they were seven years old. That’s a year older than you are now. But they’ve not seen each other for a long time because Jack went away across the sea.”
Diana nodded as she wobbled a front tooth. “Across the sea,” she repeated, staring at the ducks that paddled over the surface of the nearby ornamental lake. She glanced up at Jack. “Mama was always looking through the window. When I asked her what she was looking at she always said: across the sea.”
Of course, that meant nothing, Jack told himself, and if he imagined there was the slightest connection to Katherine telling an inquisitive child she was merely looking ‘across the sea’ it hardly meant Katherine had been looking for him.
Yet, something niggled in his chest. The way Katherine had looked at him in the brief seconds when the room had been flooded with light as the others had interrupted their unconventional reunion suggested so many possibilities.
He shook his head to clear it while his mother said, “And now Jack is home, and he’s going to get married. You know what that means, don’t you?” Her tone was indulgent but Diana answered sadly, “Poor Jack.”
Startled, Jack and his mother exchanged looks before Diana said brightly, “I can see Thomas over there! I must go and say hello.”
Without waiting for a response, the little girl took off towards an old man balanced on a ladder clipping the hedge that bordered the kitchen garden.
His mother turned and laid a hand upon Jack’s arm. “I think Katherine was very pleased to see you. I hope she approves of Odette.”
“I hope you do, Mama,” Jack said, awkwardly, to deflect the subject. “After all, we are to be married in little over a month—or earlier depending on her father’s health. The decision is hers to make after she visits him this afternoon.”
“Would Odette really want to bring the date forward when all the preparations are made and her wedding dress will not be finished?”
“I think that her preference is for the grand ceremony in her lavish finery, Mama, but she is very attached to her papa and wants him to witness her happy day.”
“And your happy day, Jack. I never thought you’d meet someone who reached the high standards you set for yourself and everyone else. Odette must be a paragon of virtue, a true angel. She is certainly very pretty, and from what I can tell, her nature is sweet and pliant.”
“Oh, she can be headstrong too, Mama. Like Katherine, she knows what she wants.” He looked away, fearing he’d said too much but his mother pressed him.
“You know a lot about Katherine when you didn’t spend too much time with her in your adult years. I suppose the time as children cemented a very brotherly relationship in you towards her.”
