"Stay Out of This, You're Only the Governess," His Fiancée Snapped — The Duke Stood in the Doorway
Chapter 6
Theme:
Font Size:
24px
"You should have woken me, Your Grace," she said."I should not," said the Duke. "You told me a great deal last night, Miss Fenwick, and I do not think you said 20 words."By Friday afternoon, Thomas was sitting up in bed demanding toast, and the Duke began to walk through his own house with his eyes open.He found that in six weeks the old nurse, who had rocked him in that same nursery, had been sent to the village on a pension she had not asked for. He found that the children's Sunday walk to the chapel had been stopped as morbid. He found that they were to come downstairs only when sent for, that their dog had been banished to the stables, and that the schoolroom was to be moved to the attic floor so that the family rooms should be quiet.His aunt told him these things with her lips pressed together, and the housekeeper told him the rest.At dinner, Lady Arabella told him the remainder herself, and she told it charmingly."I have arranged everything, dearest Merivale, so that you shall not be troubled with it. I have written to a very superior school near Winchester that will take Thomas at six—boys are so much better among boys—and my aunt will take Charlotte until she is out. She has brought up three girls, and they have all married well.""You have been busy," said the Duke."One must be, with a house like this. And the governess, of course, will have a month's wages and go on Sunday. I told her so this morning, so you need not have the scene. I said you had agreed to it by letter before you came home."The Duke turned his wineglass once upon the cloth. "I wrote no such letter," he said."No, but you would have. It comes to the same thing." She laughed and laid her hand upon his sleeve. "You cannot keep a girl of that sort in the house once there is a mistress in it. Everyone says so."Across the table, the Countess looked at her plate, and the Duke's aunt looked at the Duke. The Duke looked at nothing. He said that the dinner on Saturday would go forward as arranged, that 30 people were coming, and that the Earl, her father, was expected by 4:00. Then he turned to his aunt and spoke of drains.That evening, he met Lady Arabella's lady's maid on the back stairs with a red mark across her cheek and her eyes swollen, and she dropped a curtsy and fled before he could speak. He stood on the stairs for some time. He did not go to Lady Arabella. He went to his aunt and asked her to send to the village in the morning for the old nurse, and to put her back in her own room beside the nursery as though she had never left it. Then he went to the library and wrote one letter, very short, which he sealed and locked in his desk.On Saturday morning, Lydia Fenwick corded her trunk with her own hands because she would not ask a footman to do it.