“Ah, how do you do, Lady Helen, Sir Ethan? So pleased you could make it in time, er, that is, I’m sure you’ll want a word alone with his grace, so I’ll just step outside, shall I? If he should take a sudden turn for the worse, I’ll not be far away.”
Suiting the word to the deed, he quitted the room, leaving the black bag that held the accoutrements of his profession standing on the small table at the duke’s bedside. Clearly, he did not expect to be long absent from the sickroom.
Lady Helen advanced into the room, saying, “What’s all this, Papa? Has Teddy been plaguing—” Her voice faltered as she stepped up to the bed and saw her father’s gray skin and sunken eyes. “—been plaguing you again?” she concluded bracingly, in an attempt to cover her consternation.
“So you’re here at last, are you? Took you long enough.” The voice, which would normally have been a growl, was scarcely more than a whisper.
“We came as soon as we could.” Reiterating her words to her brother, she stooped and dropped a kiss onto her father’s forehead. “The roads between Exeter and Manchester are quite shocking, you know.”
“No more than you should expect, living in such a God-forsaken place,” grumbled the duke.
Sir Ethan Brundy, standing behind his wife, could not quite suppress a smile. The duke’s contempt for his son-in-law’s Lancashire cotton mill had never hindered his willingness to avail himself of its profits.
“Well, don’t just stand there!” snapped the duke with a trace of his old manner, struggling to sit up straighter in the bed. “Got something to say to each of you. You first, Helen.”
Lady Helen dutifully seated herself on the single straight-backed chair drawn up beside the bed. Sir Ethan gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze, then followed the viscount from the room.
The duke watched them go, but waited until the door closed behind them to remark, “I did all right for you there, didn’t I?”
“Where?” asked Lady Helen, feigning ignorance.
“Don’t play the wigeon with me! I mean your marriage!” He chuckled with satisfaction at the memory. “Although you were none too happy with my choice at the time.”
“No,” she conceded. “Nor was I aware that it was you who did the choosing.” She was willing to make certain concessions to ease her father’s passing, but she would not allow him to take credit for a match that had been all her husband’s doing.
“You always were an impertinent chit,” he said, not entirely displeased with this show of spirit. “I’ll admit, he’s not what I would have wanted for you, but I’ll not deny he’s been good for this family. How old are those boys of yours now?”
“Three,” said Lady Helen with a hint of maternal pride at the thought of her twin sons, left to their nurse’s care, along with their two younger sisters, while their parents made the hasty trip to Devon.
“I’ve a small property in Kent that came to me as part of your mother’s dowry. I’m leaving it to your elder boy.”
“Thank you,” Lady Helen said, much moved. “That’s very—”
“That way one of ’em won’t smell of the shop, at least,” continued the duke, considerably cooling his daughter’s warmer feelings.
No mention was made of any bequest to his grace’s other three grandchildren; nor did Lady Helen expect it. Theirs was a world of male primogeniture, where the eldest son (or, in this case, grandson) took all, and Master William Brundy had the misfortune of being twelve minutes younger than his brother Charles. As for the two girls, the duke had no opinion of females, and gave his granddaughters no more thought than he had given their mother, whose dowry of a paltry five thousand pounds had constituted the fulfilment of his paternal obligation.
“Most of the jewelry will stay here for Tisdale to give his wife someday,” rasped the duke, as if in confirmation of this assessment, “but your mother left a pearl ring. Trumpery thing, I daresay, next to the sort of baubles your husband buys you, but it did belong to your mother. It’s yours, if you’d like to have it.”
“I would, Papa. Thank you.”
“One other thing: you’re not to go draping yourself in black when I’m gone. Damned waste of money, in my opinion, although I don’t doubt your husband could stand the nonsense.”
“Yes, he could,” said Lady Helen, not without satisfaction.
“Well, he won’t, at least not on my account. He’d do better to put his brass into setting that property to rights for that boy of his, as he’ll soon find out. Now, if you’ll send him in, I’ve got a thing or two to say to him. No, you may not stay and listen,” he added, anticipating her intention of supporting Sir Ethan through the ordeal that awaited him. “Daresay he’ll tell you anything he wants you to know.”
Lady Helen, who in twenty-five years had learned to pick her battles where her father was concerned, offered no objection, but left the room and joined her husband and brother, who were in hushed consultation with the doctor.
“Ethan, Papa wants a word with you,” she said.
Sir Ethan, no doubt expecting a request for money, excused himself to Dr. Grant and returned to his father-in-law.
The duke’s relationship with his low-born son-in-law was complicated, although Sir Ethan Brundy, who took people very much as he found them, would have been surprised to hear it described so. To be sure, his grace had never expected to give his daughter to a man such as the one who now stood before him. To the extent that he had considered her future at all, he had thought to see her wed to a gentleman of her own class, preferably one with a title and certainly one who was capable of—and agreeable to—settling a great deal of money on her in order to procure
