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He looked at Harriet with concern in his eyes. She nodded, attempting to maintain outward dignity.
“I wished to leave you to your conversation, Simon. You seemed quite absorbed and I wished to see something of the house. It is a magnificent place.”
“You should be careful, going off alone in a strange house. People will talk,” Simon said.
“I was not alone. I met the Duke of Wrexham,” Harriet said.
That made Simon’s head whip around.
“The Duke? You met the Duke? When…who introduced you? Was it your mother?”
Harriet looked at Simon. His eyes were slightly wide and he was stumbling over his words.
Why so interested, Simon? Unless you are suffering the very same affliction that I have just felt. Is this jealousy?
The thought made Harriet’s heart sink. She and Simon had become friends since he had inherited, but she had no desire to be anything more. They were distantly enough related that there would be no scandal if they were to marry. In fact, she was aware that some would consider the match to be very much to her advantage. But, it did not change the fact that she regarded Simon as family and as a friend. Not a potential suitor.
She could not allow Simon to believe there could be anything between them. And she could not forget the darkly, magnetic eyes of the Duke of Wrexham.
CHAPTER 9
“Aunt Olivia, I do not appreciate this cryptic behavior,” Edward said with no little exasperation.
“Would you prefer I discuss your personal family affairs in front of your guests?” Olivia replied curtly.
They were ascending the staircase to the residential wing of the house, where Olivia and Rebecca both had rooms. Edward himself occupied what was known as the Duke’s Wing on the other side of the house.
“My guests are all downstairs. What is the matter with Rebecca? I take it this lateness is more than a desire to make a dramatic entrance?”
“She is…unwell,” Olivia replied with noticeable hesitation.
“Unwell?” Edward said. “She did not seem unwell when last I spoke to her.”
“That was days ago, Edward. Shortly after you announced your intention for her to marry this Grantley gentleman.”
They reached the fourth floor and turned for the east corridor, which in turn led to the Ladies’ Wing.
“It becomes clear now. This ailment she suffers from, does it strike when Philip Grantley is near?”
“There is no need to take such a tone,” Olivia scolded. “You may be Duke now but I remember when you were a boy in short trousers.”
Edward laughed. “Does anything frighten you, Aunt Olivia?”
“Well, certainly not your temper,” Olivia replied with a bite to her voice.
Edward grunted. The corridor was paneled in the same pale wood as was present throughout the house. Tall windows looked out over the grounds, and landscape paintings, chosen by the two ladies who were herein residing, decorated the walls.
“What she fails to realize is that the lives of those lucky enough to be born into nobility are not the same as those who are not. More than just wealth and title separate us from the farmers, laborers, and traders of this world. We have a duty. A duty to our family name.”
“But not freedom, as others have?”
“What freedom do they have? The freedom to starve or die young in the squalor they live in. The freedom to choose their own work? Those are our freedoms but we, in turn, lack others. Like deciding to whom we should marry and for why.”
Olivia sniffed, clasping her hands together in front of her. Her lips pressed together in a thin, white line. It was a sure sign of anger from her. Edward wondered at it. He knew she felt responsible for her niece as the only other woman in the house. She had always been a mother figure in the absence of Rebecca’s real mother, a servant that Edward’s father had once seduced.
But he had not expected to find Olivia taking Rebecca’s side so strongly. He paused before knocking on the door and leaned closer to Olivia.
“I had hoped to consider you an ally in this, that you would help me to persuade Rebecca of the rightness of it.”
