Chapter 25

TWENTY-FIVE

X avier took an hour before dinner to train in the estate’s gym, so I decided to go for a walk around the grounds, even dressed as I was in comfortable leggings and one of his enormous shirts belted around my waist. Apparently, men’s dress shirts made perfect maternity wear. Who knew?

It occurred to me that I had generally kept my exploration of Kendal to a minimum over the summer, venturing only where Sofia was interested in going, which was mostly the sheep paddocks and the library Xavier had “given” me. But this whole place was mine now too, in a way. And one day, might belong to the little one inside me. He’d share it with his sister—I’d make sure of that. But the title, the management, all of it would be his if he made the choice to take it on.

And I would make sure he had a choice. Neither Xavier nor I would ever force this little lord to be anything other than what he wanted. Should he decide that washing windows was his bliss, I’d be the one to provide the very best bucket and rags.

In the meantime, I knew it was time to stop shying from the place and learn to take charge—starting with a tour of the back gardens, which I’d never really explored beyond the library patio.

I didn’t get far, however. Just as I started to round a particularly tall boxwood hedge, two voices stopped me in my tracks.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Frederick was saying. “He’s married her. The ceremony was a bit unorthodox, but perfectly legal. It’s done.”

“But it can’t be done.” Imogene’s voice was shrill and shaking, almost like she was crying. “She must have tricked him somehow. I’m sure of it.”

“I’m very sorry to inform you, but there are no tricks involved. And you must have heard the rumors.”

“Bah. What rumors?”

There was an awkward pause. “They are…expecting. Or so Mother has suggested. Don’t ask me how she knows—I haven’t the foggiest.”

I peeked around the hedge just in time to see Imogene’s jaw practically drop onto her lap where she was sitting on a bench, facing Frederick. She was too surprised to spot me, so I popped back safely behind my boxwood, shamelessly listening in. Honestly, after what she’d done, I had no qualms about a little eavesdropping.

“But there’s been no announcement,” she said. “And she doesn’t look pregnant.”

“Yes, but…”

“But what?” Imogene sounded for all the world like a little girl who’d been told she couldn’t have ice cream before bed.

I could practically hear Frederick’s nonchalant shrug in return. “Well, I was at the wedding. And the reception. And I noticed the bride failed to partake in any of the libations.”

“She didn’t?”

“Nor did Xavier.”

“No!”

“And then, of course, there’s the fact that her family isn’t exactly discreet. I’m afraid there were several toasts to the bride, groom, and their, er, children. Plural. To great applause, I might add.”

At that, Imogene didn’t appear to have an answer at all.

I smirked to myself. Take that, you brat.

“My God,” she said. “So she’s really done it? Forced her way in and produced an heir all in one go. That is the next duke in her belly, isn’t it?”

“Not if Mother has anything to do with it,” Frederick remarked wryly. “It’s why they’re here, you know.”

I made a face. Oh, we definitely knew. These stupid Parliamentary shenanigans were replacing my honeymoon, and I was not happy about it.

“Oh, please,” Imogene argued. “Papa told me all about that, and he says the committee thinks it’s a joke. They’ve only agreed to call the meeting as a ruse to please the old guard. They’ll snap at him a bit, but then they’ll let him go because the one thing they really want is for Xavier to take his father’s spot in the House of Lords next year.”

“Mmmph,” Frederick replied.

Imogene just rattled on. “Papa said the Earl of Lonsbury, in particular, has had his eye on Xavier since your stepfather passed. One of only ninety-two hereditary peerages—they won’t let him squander it. They want him to take his place, not to mention help modernize the party. Golly, can you just imagine it? Someone who looks like Xavier for the Tories?”

My mouth curled. I could practically taste the lust dripping off every syllable when she spoke about him. Clearly, she had imagined it plenty of times. With herself on his arm.

“You might want to try sounding a little less excited about the prospect. It’s not polite to salivate.”

I snorted. Frederick’s dry tone matched the sardonic comments I’d been silently making to myself throughout the exchange.

“Did you hear that?” Imogene wondered.

“Not at all,” Frederick said as I stepped farther behind my hedge.

“Are you saying you don’t believe me?” she pressed. “Papa is on the committee, after all.”

“I just wouldn’t be so sure,” Frederick replied. “Mama hasn’t played all the cards up her sleeve. Lonsbury might want him, but there are plenty who don’t. And if there is anything I’ve learned as Georgina Parker’s son, it’s never underestimate a Parker woman. The men are hapless dogs, but the women are wolves to the core.”

Something in his final statement chilled me to the bone. Perhaps that was always what had seemed wrong about Georgina Parker. That, for all her ladylike composure, the woman really was ruthless. She had been on the hunt for me from the moment we met.

“Well, whatever she does, I believe I’ll place my bets on the winning pony, Freddy. Xavier will come ’round and make the right decisions. I know he shall.”

I’d had enough. I stepped out from behind the boxwood, arms crossed, ready for battle. “And which decisions would those be?”

Imogene jumped in her seat with a decidedly unladylike yowl. Frederick barely moved a muscle, only turned and greeted me with a shallow tilt of his head.

“Your Grace,” he called. “Fine evening for a walk, is it not?”

“You—why you—you were listening the whole time!” Imogene screeched. “Freddy, do you believe her?”

Frederick looked as nonplussed as ever. Certainly not surprised as I approached. He only offered the same patented shrug I was starting to think was something they taught these boys at Eton. They all seemed to do it.

“Well, it is her garden now,” he pointed out. “I daresay she’s allowed to walk wherever she likes. Or listen to whatever she wants.”

“It was very interesting,” I said. “I came out here to listen to the birds and ended up hearing your squawking instead. What’s the matter, Imogene? Didn’t get enough of a reality check in Xavier’s office?”

Her eyes blew into saucers. “I-I only?—”

“You were only interfering,” I finished for her. “Again.”

Frederick frowned between us. “What does she mean, again?”

“Imogene likes to watch what goes on at Kendal, doesn’t she?” I said. “Just like she really likes to have her hands on things. Even if they don’t belong to her. Isn’t that true, Imogene?”

Imogene just continued to gape at me as if I were a statue come to life.

“I suggest you stop boring Frederick with your plots and run along home,” I told her. “I know my husband already said that you were no longer welcome. It’s time to get the hell off our property.”

“Your— your property!” Imogene stood in a rush, towering over me by at least three or four inches at her full height. “My family has been here for generations! You’ve been here five minutes! You are nothing but a rude American !”

I didn’t back down, though. It helped that her eyes shifted nervously to my rings, which gleamed in the afternoon sun. But it helped more that I believed everything I said.

I didn’t have to let any of these people walk over me. I had nothing to prove anymore.

“I know you love him,” I told her. “And honestly, I don’t blame you. He’s very easy to love.”

Her face started to heat visibly, while Frederick’s gaze, still carefully flattened, continued to bounce between us with curiosity he couldn’t quite hide.

“But if you ever touch my husband again,” I said in a voice low enough that it forced her to lean down to my level, “you will learn just how rude Americans can really be. Right in that pretty nose of yours. You got me?”

It took her a second to fully comprehend that I had just made a physical threat on her person, then a second longer to figure out that I meant it. And I did. I might have been small, but I was strong. Not to mention raised in a house full of sisters and a brother who knew how to fight dirty. Catfights were something I was very familiar with. Pregnant or not, I would have no problem taking down someone like Imogene Douglas if it really came to that.

It didn’t. Gradually, she took a step back, then another. She glanced at Frederick, then appeared to realize he wasn’t coming to her proverbial rescue any time soon.

“Right,” she said. “I’ll just be on my way, then.” She nodded to Frederick.

“I’ll come ’round tomorrow,” he replied.

But she was already fleeing the garden.

We both watched her go, waiting until her footsteps on the pebbled gravel were no longer audible in the deepening afternoon.

Then Fredrick turned to me and gestured that I might take her seat.

Gingerly, I did.

“I shouldn’t have said that if I were you,” he remarked.

“Oh?” I said.

Frederick examined his fingernails as though we were discussing the weather. “She doesn’t seem that way, but in her heart, Imogene can be a vindictive little cunt.”

I blinked. I didn’t think I’d ever heard Frederick use such language.

“Like her mother, my mother, and all the rest of them, she is exceedingly scheming and conniving. Even better at planning her revenge.” He cocked his head, like he thought he’d heard something. “She thinks I’m too young to remember what she did to Lucy.”

I frowned. “Her sister?”

Frederick nodded.

I gaped. “She didn’t—she wasn’t the reason Lucy?—”

“Died? God, no.” He shook his head. “But she did cause her a fair amount of stress. I don’t suppose Xavier told you about their failed engagement?”

Two months ago, something in me would have tensed immediately at the memory of his last engagement. But I found I trusted Xavier, just as he trusted me. Now, I was only full of curiosity.

“What happened?” I asked.

Frederick sighed, almost as if the entire affair bored him. “The Orthams always dreamed they might one day join their estate with the Kendal. When Xavier was announced as heir, they were over the moon about it. Mostly because he was already friendly with one of their girls.”

“Just not the one he could make an heir with,” I said wryly.

“No,” Frederick said. “I suppose you could say they all found it rather insulting when, in the end, he got engaged to Lucy simply to spite the duke and give the girl a bit of romance before she died.” He shrugged. “Rather nice of him, I’d say.”

“How old was Imogene at that point, though?” I wondered. She was younger than me. She couldn’t have been more than twenty.

“Old enough that she’d heard the talk of their imminent match for years.” Frederick shook his head. “Imogene made Lucy’s life bloody miserable there for a bit, just before things really went pear-shaped. She was so angry that he’d not only refused her but had gotten engaged to her sickly sister instead. Everyone knew Lucy wouldn’t live very long—Lucy herself most of all. So to Imogene, it just felt unfair. An entire family’s dream tossed to the side out of spite.”

“Well, no one should have forced him to begin with,” I said, feeling the need to defend Xavier. “He was already shoved into this world where he didn’t belong, and suddenly everyone was pressuring him into essentially an arranged marriage. That’s not fair to do to a twenty-five-year-old.”

Frederick appeared to agree. “Indeed. But I still felt for the girl. She’s always thought she was in love with him, waited forever for him to come back. She’d complain to me about it. It’s very hard to love someone when they can never love you back, you know.”

Something in his voice made me stop. It made sense then why she had come to Frederick, of all people, to act as a sounding board for her concerns.

Something else made sense too. Why else Frederick might have been listening to her nonsense at all.

“Do… you …love Imogene Douglas?” I wondered.

It was only a split-second, but the entirety of Frederick’s blue-blooded being froze there in the garden before he resumed his typically stiff, yet nonplussed pose.

“Ah,” I said. “I see.”

He shot a sharp, brown-eyed glance my way. “I didn’t realize you were so direct.”

I shrugged. “Not always, but you people seem to bring it out in me.”

Frederick seemed to relax more as he gazed in the direction Imogene had gone, as if he was envisioning the pair of them walking together. “I am four years younger than Imogene Douglas. She still thinks of me as barely out of nappies and knee socks. I can’t imagine she would ever consider me as anything more than a sympathetic ear. And therefore, neither would I.”

“I see,” I said again. “Well, things change. She’s young. You’re young. Give it another few years. A four-year difference won’t mean anything at all.”

He seemed to think on that for several moments. Frederick, I noticed, rarely gave anything away. It was an unusual trait for someone so young.

“For what it’s worth,” he said at last, “I think you will be an excellent duchess. You may be exactly what this place needs.”

I balked. Whatever I’d been expecting him to say, it certainly wasn’t that. Ever.

“What’s your deal?” I asked him. “Are you on your mother’s side or not? You came to our wedding, so obviously you care about Xavier a little. But now I hear you gossiping with Imogene and practically plotting your stepbrother’s demise.”

“I was doing no such thing,” Frederick said blandly. “I was simply conveying the different scenarios in play and the fact that my mother is a formidable woman.” He looked at me pointedly. “I believe I offered the same message at your wedding.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Walking a bit of a tightrope, are we?”

He just nodded, then got up from the bench. “I see you have finally learned the way things work around here, Your Grace , in a way my dear brother never has. Keep it in mind in the coming days. It will serve you well.”