“Neither did I.”Johanna gave herself a little shake.“Has mama eaten… anything?”
“She has.”Rose’s gaze shifted slightly.“Montagu brought us food for supper when he arrived, after he realized what we had to offer.”
Even though what they had to offer would have been extremely sparse and not up to snuff for a duke, Rose obviously took exception to the duke’s rejection of it.Or maybe it was just because it was that particular duke who had shown up on the Falmouth doorstep.Montaguhadrubbed her the wrong way from the first.
“She is eating, but…” Rose’s voice trailed off, and she frowned before shaking her head.“Something is upsetting her since we arrived.I do not know what.But she was also, well… she was not able to speak much before we arrived.Regular meals have helped bring her back to herself, so it’s possible she was unsettled before as well, and I did not realize.”
“She will not tell you why?”Johanna asked with a frown.In some ways, her mother and Rose were closer than she was with her mother.It was unheard of for Johanna’s mother to insist on only speaking of something with Johanna, especially because she knew that Johanna would tell Rose.
Rose shook her head, and a little thread of tension wound its way through Johanna’s stomach.An extremely unwelcome one.
Something very dire must be afoot.
“Very well.I should go see what she wants from me then,” Johanna said, mostly because she could not imagine what her mother would wish to tell her but not Rose.Not knowing was going to drive both of them batty.
“Do.I will find Lady Stark and the girls.”A ghost of a smile lit Rose’s face again.“I am most curious to hear what she thinks they’ll need to learn to become ladies.”
Quite a bit, Johanna would imagine.Their mother had been too ill to give them lessons, and Rose and Johanna too busy to have time to spare for such things.Rose strode off down the hall as Johanna squared her shoulders and went into her mother’s room.
The room itself was beautiful, very much like Johanna’s, but decorated with soothing blues and creams.Just stepping inside helped to calm some of her nerves.Her mother lay in the huge four-poster bed, looking impossibly small on such a large piece of furniture.Pillows were piled up behind her, helping to prop her up in a sitting position.
“I told you, I want— Oh, Johanna,” her mother said, her tone going from peevish to relieved.Her eyes widened.“I almost did not recognize you.”
Johanna glided forward.
“Lady Stark, the duke’s grandmother, took me shopping,” she told her mother, settling down on the bed beside her and taking her mother’s slim hand into her own.The fragile bones felt sharp against her palm.“I believe she plans to outfit me as a duchess by the end of this week.”
Rather than smiling back, her mother looked more agitated at this pronouncement.
“It is the Duke of St.Albans whose house we’re in, yes?”she asked.Johanna nodded, and fear lit up her mother’s eyes.“You cannot marry him.”
Johanna just stared at her mother for a moment, aghast.This was literally the answer to all of their prayers, and her mother was telling her not to marry him?Her mother stared back at her, her grip tightening on Johanna’s hand, as though willing Johanna to say that she would not.
“What?Why not?”Her mother could not just make such pronouncements, given the circumstances, and expect Johanna to fall in line.She’d always done her best to be a good and dutiful daughter, but her mother had literally been starving herself to death.What else was Johanna supposed to do?
Exactly what I had been about to do, and if mother knew that…
“You cannot marry him.”Her mother’s voice dropped to a whisper, eyes darting this way and that, as if seeking to see whether they were alone… but there was no one in the room but the two of them.The fear and worry in her mother’s expression was the only thing that kept Johanna from growing angry with her.
“But why not?”
Her mother’s gaze met hers again, terrified, quelling Johanna’s impatience.
“Because I killed his father,” she whispered.
Matthew
Watching the young earl pacing back and forth, muttering under his breath, Matthew wondered if he should interrupt.Surreptitiously, he pulled his coin from his pocket and gave it a quick flip.
No.This was something the young man needed to work through on his own.
Matthew did not envy him the task.
Hard enough to feel as though he was too young to be much use at his own position, and that he was ill-trained for it, hard enough to see his elder sister shouldering more than her fair share of the burden, but to discover that it might not have been necessary?While Matthew did not have proof—yet—he had a gut feeling about Mr.Blash, and he would be shocked to discover he was wrong.
“That bastard.”Falmouth punched his fist into his palm, likely in lieu of being able to plow it into his guardian’s face.“I asked him—Iaskedhim—to show me the accounts.Even if they were failing, I thought that I could learn from them.He kept putting me off or forgetting them, and the last time I insisted…”
His voice trailed off.