Chapter 30

Grace thrust the door open of her father’s house, not even bothering to knock as she entered. Behind her, Diana and Violet raced to keep up with her, holding each other”s hands.

“She’s quite determined, isn’t she?” Diana whispered, clearly shocked at the transformation in Grace’s character.

“I’ve never seen her like this.”

Grace didn’t look back at her friends as they marveled at her. She marched through the house, suddenly in no danger of tripping at all. She had a feeling there was still mud on her dress from the garden back home, but she didn’t bother wiping off the dirt. Her mind was focused completely on one thing — find Tabitha.

“Tabitha!” Grace shouted the name loudly.

Toward the back of the house, a door opened. It was pushed open by her father. She smiled momentarily to see he was standing. He looked a little better; there was more color to his cheeks though his expression told all of his concern as he stared at her.

“What’s wrong, Grace?” he asked.

Behind him, just past his shoulder, Grace could glimpse that Althea and Tabitha were in the music room with him. Tabitha must have just broken off from her piano practice, for she had halted with her hands in the air.

Grace walked into the room. She briefly laid a hand of reassurance to her father’s arm then left him and walked straight toward her cousin, aware that Violet and Diana stood in the doorway, their eyes wide as if they were at the theatre.

“How could you?” Grace ranted, rounding on her cousin.

Tabitha looked like she had been frozen into a lady made of ice. Her jaw was slack, her hands still raised as she sat before the piano.

“What is going on? What is the meaning of this?” Althea asked hurriedly. “Grace, a duchess should not shout —”

“The sort of duchess I am means I can do whatever the hell I like, Mother.”

“A lady should not say ‘hell’ —”

“Not now, Mother!” Grace snapped, turning back to face Tabitha again. “How could you do it? How could you give all those stories about me to the scandal sheets? You made them up, didn’t you? The ones about me falling off my horse with my skirts falling up. As for the one about Philip’s father…”

She paused, glancing at her own father who was now gripping to the back of the nearest armchair to support himself. “You heard us that day talking, didn’t you?” she observed in horror. “And you saw an opportunity to embarrass us all?”

“Wh-what?” Tabitha stammered, speaking for the first time. “No, no, it wasn’t like that, Grace.”

“Then what was it like!?” Grace snapped. “You have ruined my marriage, may well have ruined any chance I had of being happy in love, and I would like to know why you saw fit to treat my life like it was a puppet game of yours to control. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Tabitha’s lips opened and closed, but no sound came out.

“Tabitha?” Althea asked, her voice deep and low as she moved to Grace’s side. “Is this true?”

It was this that seemed to break Tabitha. She had clearly lost the respect of the woman whose affection she had come to take for granted in that house.

Tears sprang into her eyes.

“It was not supposed to happen like this,” Tabitha said in a sudden rush as those tears leaked down her cheeks. She stood, appealing to the two of them. “Grace, I thought you didn’t want to marry him. I thought you wouldn’t care. Aunt, you were so keen for me to marry well. My parents were too.”

“You thought you could marry Philip!?” Grace shouted in shock.

“It was what my parents wanted.” Tabitha shook, holding her hands to her cheeks. “My mother writes to me every week from the country. She’s always asked me about my prospects, about when I’ll marry a rich duke. Look, look, I’ll show you.”

She strode away and dove her hands into a box full of sheet music though she didn’t retrieve music. Instead, she pulled out letters from her parents which she had hidden there.

“Read them. You’ll see the pressure I’m under.”

Grace didn’t bother to catch them though. Althea did. What she read briefly in those letters clearly horrified her, for she pushed them away fast.

“That is no excuse,” Althea said darkly. “You could have written back and told your mother and father you would find a man in due course. You are a fine lady, Tabitha. You could have your pick of the gentlemen. You have so many suitors.”

“But none of them is a duke,” Tabitha suddenly wailed. “None of them! Yet Grace, Grace has a duke, and she didn’t even want him.”

“I do want him,” Grace confessed. It was like a stone dropping in water. There was sudden silence in the room. “That doesn’t matter now. He’ll never accept this. Never.”

She took a step back from her cousin, feeling tainted by association to a person who would be so willing to condemn them all by putting all of their names in a scandal sheet.

“I’m sorry,” Tabitha murmured hurriedly. “Truly, I am. I didn’t know he mattered to you this much. I was just…” She paused, looking around the room, clearly trying to find someone who would understand, but no one would. “I was just trying to find a way to make my parents happy.”

“Enough, Tabitha. Enough,” John said from his chair, rubbing his brow. He looked very sorry indeed.

“Yes, enough.” Althea took control of the situation. “Tabitha, clearly you are not quite the lady I thought. All the formalities and fine manners in the world cannot make up for something so underhanded, so… cruel.” Althea’s condemnation made Tabitha cry all the more. “I think it best you retreat from London at once to consider what you have done.”

Tabitha nodded, her tears stifling her next words.

“Ye-yes, if you like… I’ll go-go to my parents?”

“I’ll write to them. I’ll let my sister know what her insistence on a good match has produced.” Althea pointed toward the door. “Go and urge your maid to pack for you, Tabitha. I shall speak with you again before you leave.”

Grace watched open mouthed as Althea turned her back on Tabitha. In seconds, Tabitha had gone from being the apple of Althea’s eye to nothing better than the apple’s pips.

Tabitha fled the room fast, great wails escaping her. Violet and Diana barely stepped out of the way in time to avoid being knocked over by her.

“This is difficult,” Althea murmured once a door slammed shut upstairs, muffling Tabitha’s cries. “She is not alone to blame though I doubt I will ever forgive her for this betrayal.”

“She felt backed into a corner,” Grace said, trying to understand her cousin though just like her mother, she was finding it hard. How could she ever forgive Tabitha for such an action?

No matter what pressure Tabitha was under to marry a man of such high position, she had willingly chosen to see Grace’s name disgraced in the scandal sheets a number of times. She had even disgraced the name of the man she claimed she wished to marry as well as the uncle who had been so good as to give her a home for the summer and introduce her to society.

“She has ruined everything,” Grace managed to utter these words eventually, feeling tears prickle the backs of her eyes.

Althea stepped toward her, placing her hands on the tops of Grace’s shoulders.

“Moments in time pass much quicker than you think,” Althea said in a softer tone than Grace could remember hearing her mother speak for some time. “There will come a moment when the scandal sheets are forgotten as hard as that is to imagine right now. Especially if we are able to put our own story in the scandal sheets and set the story straight. Things will move on fast.”

Grace nodded though she was not convinced by her mother’s words. Come what may, she had lost something that mattered to her.

I have still lost Philip.

“Do not worry, Grace.” Althea smiled at her. “You will make quite the duchess in your own way.” There was a glimmer of humor in her face. “You have a good heart. That is more important than anything else.” She shot a resentful glare to the ceiling, clearly referring to the fact that a good heart was what Tabitha had been missing after all, deep down.

“Thank you, Mother,” Grace whispered, wanting to say how much her words mattered.

“Why don’t you go home to your husband? You can explain all to him now.”

“That doesn’t matter.” Grace shook her head, knowing the truth. She recalled the arrangement they had made ahead of the wedding. Clearly, he intended to keep to that deal. “It won’t make a difference. He only wanted me for a month anyway.”

* * *

Tired and aching, Grace stepped down from the horse. She swept the black veil she’d worn to keep her face hidden from the scandal writers, who might be walking the streets back over her updo. In the darkness of the night, she barely saw where she was going. One glittering lantern from the Dowager Hall shone, urging her toward it.

As she stepped up onto the marble front stoop though, another light caught her eye. Turning to her right, she saw an entire line of lanterns, rich orange candles hidden within glass lanterns leading away through the grounds, far from the Dowager Hall. They looked oddly like giant glow worms, hovering in the air, just out of reach, creating a path.

“What is this?” Grace murmured.

Her maid stepped down from the Dowager Hall entrance, bearing the one lantern in her hand that had first drawn Grace forward. The apricot light fell on the maid’s face.

“You have to follow the light,” the maid said excitedly, scarcely able to hold in her giggles. “He has left a gown for you to wear too.”

“Has he now?” Grace didn’t need to ask who her maid meant. The thought that Philip was leaving new demands for her infuriated her. After everything she had found out that day, the discovery that one of her dearest friends, her family, her kin, had worked so hard to hurt her reputation and her happiness had turned her world upside down. “I’m in no mood to see him.”

Grace stepped past the maid and climbed up into the house, but the maid scurried after her, still bearing that lantern forward.

“Please, Your Grace. He’s most eager to see you.”

“I doubt that.” Grace scoffed at the idea. “He made it perfectly plain he had no wish to see me for this next month.”

Unless he wishes to try again for an heir. Only then will he call me to him.

The mere thought of Philip making love to her whilst he disliked her so was gut-wrenching. She longed to hold him in her arms, to tell him that she had never sought to embarrass him, that she loved him, but how could she? How could she do such a thing when he had only ever married her to save his own reputation?

“I have no wish to see him.”

“Your Grace —” The maid said no more though.

Grace had stumbled to a stop as she looked across the entrance hall. Hanging at the bottom of the staircase was a golden hued gown. It was made of dark golden silk, that material accented in the lantern light. It was the same cut as the burgundy gown Grace had worn before. It would accent her curves and her cleavage — she didn’t doubt that.

“He wants me to wear that?” Grace asked in disbelief, staring at it.

Why? What game is he playing?

“Yes.” The maid nodded at her side. “Will you go, your Grace?”

Grace couldn’t deny she longed to see him. She blinked, thinking about the tears she had shed earlier that day when she thought of him. Yet she had another reason to see him too.

I’ll play his games. I must.

“Very well. Would you help me change, please?”