“None of Them Will Be My Mother!” the Duke’s Son Declared — Until the Cook Brought an Apple Pie
Chapter 2
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Lady Honoria Pelham, aunt to the Duke and sister to his late father, descended the stairs like a warship under full sail: 60 years old, straight as a mast in purple silk that had never knowingly met a kitchen. Behind her trailed Lady Philippa, a viscount's daughter who had arrived at Ashborne two days before with four trunks and a great many hopes. She was a pretty, fair young woman of 22, and her eyes were wet, and her gloves were crumpled in her fists.A kitchen was no place for a lady, but Lady Honoria had never allowed a rule to stand between herself and an opinion."Where is the boy?" Lady Honoria demanded. "Lady Philippa offered him nothing but tenderness, and he repaid her with a scene that the servants will be repeating in Hertford by supper.""Beneath my table, my lady," Rosamund said, with a curtsy so correct that it was very nearly insolent. "I believe he would prefer to remain there."The cane struck the flagstones. "What he prefers is of no consequence. You will remove him at once and send him upstairs to apologize.""I will not drag a ten-year-old from beneath a table, my lady," Rosamund's voice was steady, her hands hidden in the folds of her apron. "If he wishes to come out, he will come out. If you wish to speak to him, I believe it would go better if you waited until he was calm."The silence that followed was short and terrible."Do you know who I am?" Lady Honoria asked very softly."Yes, my lady. And I know who he is. And I know that he is frightened."Rosamund began to count the pans: eight, nine, ten. She counted the way another woman might pray, with her eyes fixed on the shining row, and her mind retreating to the one place where that voice could not follow. Lady Honoria was saying something about insolence, and station, and the kind of creature who forgot herself, and every word dropped into Rosamund like a coin into a well.Forty-two pounds a year was her wage; six of every quarter went to her sister Hannah in Porlock, who had three children and a husband buried in Belgium. A cook turned off without a character could not get a post scrubbing pots in any respectable house.Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen."I only wished to be kind to him," said Lady Philippa with a small, wretched hiccup.And Rosamund, who should have been counting, heard herself answer: "I believe you did, my lady. But kindness that arrives with a purpose looks very like a bill to a child who has already paid too much."The words hung in the air, and she knew at once, with the cold clarity of a woman who has stepped off a cliff, that she could never take them back.Lady Philippa's mouth opened and closed; for one moment, something like recognition flickered across her face, quickly smothered by humiliation.Lady Honoria drew herself up to her full and considerable height. "Friday," she said. "I shall speak to my nephew tonight, and you will be on the Hertford road by Friday with nothing in your hand but your own two empty fists. I shall see to it that no house in England will take you. Do you understand me, Miss Vale?"