“None of Them Will Be My Mother!” the Duke’s Son Declared — Until the Cook Brought an Apple Pie
Chapter 5
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Servants walked softly when his boots sounded in the passage; footmen swore that the temperature dropped when he entered a room; society mothers called him very handsome and entirely unreachable, which was another way of saying that he was a cathedral: fine to look at, and cold to pray in.He had come home from the quarter sessions in Hertford earlier than expected, at 20 minutes to 6:00, to find the nursery empty, Mr. Weatherby, the butler, clearing his throat at him with extraordinary tact: the young Marquess, it appeared, had gone below stairs.Theodore had descended the back staircase with his coat still on and a cold dread knotting his chest, because his son had not gone willingly into any room in this house since the night his mother died.He reached the kitchen doorway and stopped as if he had struck glass.His son was sitting on the kitchen floor with crumbs on his chin and a plate in his lap. His son was talking in the quick, scornful, delighted voice of a child about hedgehogs. And a tall woman in a plain brown gown and a flour-streaked apron was listening with her head tilted and her sleeves rolled to the elbow—not smiling, not coaxing, not performing, only listening as though what the boy said were the most reasonable thing in the world.The air in the room smelled of apples and cinnamon and honey. It smelled, Theodore thought with a lurch that nearly buckled his knees, like a Sunday afternoon six years gone.Rosamund felt the change in the room before she saw its cause, the way one feels a door open in winter. She looked up, and there in the doorway stood the Duke of Ashborne.She had seen him only at a distance, riding out across the park, and she had formed an impression of height and darkness and distance. She had not prepared for the eyes: they were pale, clear gray, like winter light on flint, and they were fixed on her with an expression she could not read. He had a sharp jaw, a mouth held very straight, and the clean, cold scent of bergamot and outdoor air; and he looked, she thought, like a man who has walked into the wrong century and found it strangely warm."I was given to understand," said the Duke in a voice as dry as autumn leaves, "that my son had been abducted. I see he has merely been fed.""Papa," said Master Edmund, scrambling up with a scrape of boots. "She told Aunt Honoria that kindness looks like a bill."The Duke's gaze did not leave Rosamund's face. "Did she?" he said.Behind him on the stairs, a cane began to tap.Power is quietest when it is certain. Theodore did not raise his voice in the kitchen that evening, and he did not need to.Lady Honoria arrived in the doorway, breathless with grievance, with Lady Philippa a miserable half-step behind her, and the speech she had prepared on the stairs came out in a single long breath: the cook had been insolent; the cook had hidden the boy; the cook had insulted a guest of the house, a lady of impeccable family, and there was no question of her remaining at Ashborne past Friday.