Page 23 of The Hidden Heart

His gaze slid past Jessica to Gabriela, standing on the step above her. His eyes moved quickly away, and he turned, saying, “Baxter! Send up one of the maids to Lady Vesey.”

“You had better make it someone who doesn’t mind being slapped,” Jessica said crisply, irritated by the fact that he had just snubbed Gabriela.

“I beg your pardon?” Richard swung back around.

“Lady Vesey looked to be in something of a temper—no doubt it’s the pain of her ‘broken ankle.’ And I have observed that she is apt to take her temper out on the servants.”

Richard looked at her for a moment, then said to Baxter, “Send Katy, and tell her if Lady Vesey slaps her, she has my permission to break her other ankle.”

With those words, he strode off rapidly.

* * *

Jessica turned to Gabriela, trying to think what she could say to lessen the sting of Richard’s not speaking to her. Gabriela was standing looking after Cleybourne’s retreating form, and there was an aching loneliness in the young girl’s gray eyes that tugged at Jessica’s heart.

“I am sorry, Gaby,” she began, reaching out to take her arm.

“Why does he dislike me?” the girl asked, turning to her mentor and friend.

“It isn’t that. Please believe me.”

“Yes. It has to be. He has not met me. He hasn’t spoken to me. That was the first time I have seen him except at a distance.”

“It was very rude of him. But he is not a sociable man. He is used to a solitary life. I understand that for the past several years he has lived almost like a hermit, never going out, not seeing anyone but a few people.”

“I don’t require that he converse with me a great deal,” Gabriela explained earnestly. “It is just—he was my father’s friend! I wanted—I thought he would want me because of that. That he would want to raise me. I thought, in a way, that it would be a little like having a father again. I mean, I know what it must be like, at least a little, to have a mother, because you have been very like a mother to me. And I thought that he might be like a father. Or at least something like a father.”

Touched, Jessica slipped her arm around the girl’s waist and hugged her. “You are very like a daughter to me. But perhaps the duke simply is not capable of being that way with you. The housekeeper told me that he has had a great deal of sorrow in his life. His wife and daughter died four years ago, and apparently he has never recovered from the blow. I think it is that which causes him to avoid talking to you. I think it is painful for him because his daughter is dead, and he misses her.”

“Oh.” Gabriela looked at Jessica, and though there was still sorrow in her face, there was also a measure of relief. “Then it is not just me that he doesn’t wish to have around—it would be any girl.”

“I think it is not so much what he wishes as what he is afraid of—the hurt he would feel. But yes, I am sure he would be the same about any young person, boy or girl. And he is thinking of you, too. However rude and stubborn and thoroughly hardheaded he might be, I do think he wants to do what is best for you. He knows that he never goes out, that people do not visit here. It would be a very lonely life for you and would ill prepare you for your future. I am sure he is right, that it will be better for you to be with a couple. A father and a mother. When your father made his will, the duke was married. No doubt your father intended for you to be brought up by a man and wife, not by a widower.”

“I suppose.”

“And he is right that in a few years, when you are eighteen, you will need the expert guidance of a lady who moves in the highest circles of the Ton. A man would never be able to manage it, nor can a governess. I can tell you about some things, but you need an experienced woman there at the parties with you, helping and watching over you.”

“But I don’t care about some stupid old parties!”

“Not right now, you don’t. But, believe me, in a few years, they will be the center of your existence. I’m sorry. I know it is difficult for you right now. You want to have a home, to be where you belong, to have a family again. But it will be better to wait a bit and get a proper home, and not have to leave and go to someone else in a few years so that you can make a proper coming-out. The duke mentioned his sister-in-law, and from what the housekeeper told me, she seems to be a good woman. So that might turn out to be a much better thing.”

“Maybe,” Gabriela admitted grudgingly.

“Now, then, I think we’ve had all the excitement we are likely to receive today. It’s time we returned to our books.”

Gaby sighed and nodded, and the two of them turned and walked up the stairs.

* * *

It did not surprise Jessica that, throughout the rest of the day, Lady Vesey managed to disrupt the household. She kept the servants busy running up and down the stairs to her room to answer the ring of her bell. She wanted food; she wanted drink; nothing that was served was quite right; she needed her pillows fluffed; the bed linens had to be changed—the list seemingly went on forever.

Finally Leona realized, after several boring hours stuck in her bed all alone, that while she might have managed to remain in Castle Cleybourne, she was also completely unable to work any of her wiles on the duke. She had expected him to come to her bedside to check on her, which he had not done even once. When she inquired after him, the maid replied that he was busy in his study, going over the books with the estate manager.

By the middle of the afternoon Leona decided that she needed a change of scenery and had the footmen carry her back downstairs. She lay half-reclining on the blue velvet chaise longue in one of the drawing rooms, her skirts arranged attractively about her legs, with just the hint of bare ankle showing as she propped that injured appendage on a small pillow. Daylight was not her favorite lighting, as it tended to reveal all sorts of tiny lines that the kinder candlelight left hidden, but at least the drapes of the tall windows opened on a south prospect, and no direct sunlight fell upon the chair where she sat.

Still, she found, the duke did not come to visit her, and she grew more bored and irritable by the second. She was, finally, reduced to talking to Vesey, who wandered in to see how she was doing. He came up with the idea of sending one of the maids up to fetch the governess and the girl.

“It would be quite natural, you know, for the child’s cousins to take an interest in her. Children are always being trotted out to speak to boring old relatives.”