She Fled Her Wedding — Then Found the Duke Escaping on the Same Train
Chapter 16
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The Dowager listened to the news about Italy without interrupting. When Piers finished, she looked at Annora."Had you intended to tell me yourself?""Yes.""When?"Annora felt the familiar answer rising: at a suitable moment, when she had been certain of the arrangements, when the older woman was feeling stronger."I kept hoping Piers would do it first," she said.The Dowager's gaze shifted to her son."So did I," he admitted.His mother sat back. For a moment, Annora thought she might smile. Instead, she said, "I appear to have become a rather frightening person.""You were disappointed," Piers said. "I didn't want to give you something else to be disappointed about.""Then you had better find a more effective method than keeping me ignorant."There was no answer to that. The Dowager picked up the letter lying beside her chair, then put it down again."I am not asking you to abandon your journey, Annora.""I had not known there was a journey to abandon.""I should have told you.""Yes, you should."Annora accepted the rebuke. It was deserved, and somehow easier to bear than the imagined catastrophe that had kept her silent.His mother did not ask whether there would be a wedding; she inquired about their route instead. When Annora described the months they hoped to spend abroad, the older woman mentioned a visit she had made to Italy before Piers was born. She remembered a staircase, a quarrel about luggage, and a hotel dining room in which her husband had mistaken someone else's hat for his own.Piers had never heard the story. "You never told me Father did that.""He did a number of things before becoming your father." Her voice was dry.He laughed, surprised, and she looked at him with the old affection briefly unclouded.After Annora had gone to fetch her gloves, Piers lingered beside the chair. "I cannot promise how it will end," he said.His mother looked at his hands. He had them clasped behind his back, exactly as he had as a boy waiting to confess broken glass."Neither could I," she said, "when I married your father. We merely had fewer people asking us to supply a satisfactory account of our feelings."He bent and kissed her cheek. She caught his sleeve before he straightened."I should like to be invited to luncheon sometimes when there is no announcement to make.""I should like that, too."She did not forgive every disappointment that afternoon, nor did she ask him to repair them all before he left.Annora departed in September. Her father came to the station with Rowena's gloves, which Rowena was already wearing, and a parcel of food nobody needed. He complained about the number of trunks, then he kissed both daughters and told them to send proper letters, not pictures of buildings with three words on the back.