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He was going to have to return to London and take up his responsibilities one day. The longer they put it off, the more nervous she was likely to get about taking her place at his side. Besides, Lady Mixby and the redoubtable Benderby were coming, too. Both of them were in high spirits over the prospect of overseeing her presentation, her first ball as Duchess of Halstead, and the many and varied delights of the subsequent season in London.
It wasn’t that she was letting everyone ride roughshod over her. She wasn’t. She was just so blissfully happy that she didn’t want to do anything to spoil it. And, really, what would be the point of throwing what might amount to a tantrum because her husband was anticipating her every need before she could even voice it?
She would be wise to choose her battles carefully—not rip up at him over every little thing. Or the combination of his autocratic nature and her independent spirit would result in them spending their whole life fighting.
* * *
They had been in London for a week before she finally had no choice but to take a stand.
‘There—what did I tell you?’ he murmured as yet another doyenne of society bowed to them as their carriages passed in the park. ‘Nobody has shown you anything but the greatest respect. Not even your grandfather.’
They’d gone to visit the Earl of Sterndale privately only the day before. And, just as Gregory had predicted, the old man had welcomed her with open arms.
‘You have a look of my boy,’ he’d said, with the suspicion of a tear in his eye. When she’d bristled with indignation that his boy had died without ever having been forgiven, the old man had said, ‘Ah, yes, just that look.’
‘It must be very gratifying to be always right,’ she said now to Gregory. And then, because he’d raised one eyebrow at her, she hastily added, ‘Even about your driving. You are managing these horses very competently.’
‘Baggage,’ he responded, though at least the brow had gone down. ‘I would defy anyone to make the creature Hugo foisted on me go in a straight line.’
‘It may be less cantankerous after having that week’s rest at the inn, eating its head off,’ she replied, paraphrasing the landlord.
‘We will soon find out,’ he replied with an evil smile. ‘I’m making Hugo a present of it.’
‘I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it doesn’t make a very good sort of horse for a cavalry officer,’ she said. ‘It will need very little encouragement to lash out with its hooves, or bite persons who dare to attempt to get near its master.’
‘Providing Hugo can persuade it that he is its master.’
They both laughed at the vision of Hugo attempting to train the horse, and harmony was restored.
‘Good afternoon, Your Grace,’ said the butler of the house in Grosvenor Square of which Prudence was now mistress, when they returned later that afternoon. ‘Wrothers has informed me that the person you have been expecting from Liverpool is waiting in your study.’
From the way he’d said ‘person’, Bispham clearly did not think much of Gregory’s visitor.
She half expected Gregory to tell the butler to dismiss them, as he’d dismissed so many people since their arrival in London. Gregory’s secretary appeared to do nothing but turn away people who wished to have an interview with her husband.
Instead, Gregory turned to her with an abstracted air after tossing his gloves into his hat and handing them over.
‘You will go to the morning room and take tea with Lady Mixby,’ he said sternly. ‘I will deal with this.’
He then strode off, leaving her standing in the hall staring after him.
Fuming.
She was not his servant to order about.
‘Who is this person, Bishpham?’ she asked as she shrugged her furs into his waiting hands.
‘I really couldn’t say, Your Grace,’ he replied. ‘But His Grace frequently has to have dealings with all sorts of odd people in the performance of his duties to the Crown.’
‘Yes, I suppose so...’ she began. Then went rigid as she heard a voice raised in anger. A female voice. An all too recognisable female voice.
All thought of meekly going upstairs to drink tea, as she’d been told, went flying out of the window. She stormed past the butler, across the hall, through the room over which Wrothers presided, and straight through into her husband’s inner sanctum.
And she saw that she had not been mistaken.
‘Aunt Charity!’
Her aunt was sitting on a hard-backed chair to one side of her husband’s desk. He was standing over her, looking particularly intractable. Wrothers was standing in a corner, his arms folded across his chest.
