“Penweather talked to me, Bea,” Daisy said, tossing herself onto the sofa. “He listened to me.”
He had also, briefly, held her. Not quite an embrace, more of a passing hug. The intensity of that comfort had grown worrisome in hindsight.
Beatitude sank into the wing chair with a sigh any expectant mother could translate. Relief, pleasure, and a bit of resignation, because she who sat had to contrive somehow to rise, and that undertaking would require effort.
“Penweather has lost a spouse of whom he was apparently quite fond.” Beatitude put her feet up on a hassock. “If I ring for tea, I will drink the tea, and if I drink the tea, I will have to excuse myself five minutes later. I do not know how you managed three births in less than five years.”
“Eric had something to do with that.” Everything to do with that, for which Daisy could and did fault him. She’d threatened to take her babies and repair to the Hall at one point, and because the implications of such a visit would have shamed Eric, he’d heeded her threats.
For a time.
“Penweather doesn’t strike me as a particularly warm fellow,” Beatitude said, “but then, my first impression of your brother was not warmheartedness either. Casriel was hopelessly polite, which I did not trust. Widows, as you are probably becoming aware, aren’t always treated with the greatest courtesy.”
“Neither are wives.” In Daisy’s experience, daughters didn’t seem to merit a lot of respect either, though that wasn’t fair to her brothers. Her mother, the late Francine, had viewed children as so many unpaid servants put on earth to cosset and condole an aging countess on the indignities suffered in her unfortunately impecunious state.
Mama had spent money like a drunken sailor in his home port. Only in recent years had Daisy gained a glimmer of insight into Mama’s motivations.
“You are angry with Eric,” Beatitude said, lacing her hands on the mound of her stomach. “Good.”
“Good? I fantasize about destroying his effects in a great bonfire, but the children would not understand.” And Walter’s scolds would be endless.
“I know that feeling, of wanting the blighter to still be alive so you can deliver him a good dressing down for having abandoned you. Eric was a disappointment in many regards. I am growing too comfortable in this chair.”
“Eric was a good father,” Daisy replied, though she was weary of that sentiment. “If he had to get one thing right, that was the one to choose. Where might I find Lord Penweather?”
Beatitude leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “Look in the library. He’s a great one for scribbling away at correspondence or reading. He and Valerian got into quite the discussion of the sugar boycott.”
Valerian, being the local magistrate, took some interest in public policy and law. Being a Dorning male, he also loved a lively debate for the sheer pleasure of exercising his intellect and his vocabulary.
Daisy rose. “I’ll tell Grey you’re having a short nap, shall I?”
“Mmm.”
Daisy covered Beatitude with an afghan and took herself down to the estate office. There, she found Chloe sitting in Grey’s lap, regaling him with a recounting of yesterday’s snowball fight. Grey was listening with every appearance of rapt attention until Daisy knocked on the doorjamb.
“Come along, Chloe. You have a call to pay in the nursery, and then Uncle Grey and I will have a little visit. I left Beatitude slumbering in her office, and, Grey, her time approaches.”
“One surmised as much,” he said, setting Chloe on her feet, “but she says we have a few weeks yet, and I do not presume to argue with her.”
“You don’t need to, trust me on this. At the next full moon, if not sooner, you will be a papa again. Chloe, let’s away to the nursery. Grey, do not think to run off. I need to discuss some details of Eric’s estate with you.”
“Of course.”
Was that of course a little nervous, a little… reluctant? Daisy would soon find out why, if so. Something about Walter’s visit yesterday, the third such visit he’d timed to coincide with her weekly trek to Dorning Hall, made the discussion of Eric’s affairs urgent.
First, however, she had a pair of little girls to introduce. She led Chloe to the library and tapped on the door.
No response. She tapped again, then opened the door a few inches. “My lord?”
Still no sound save the soft crackling of the fire in the hearth. Daisy took Chloe by the hand and advanced into the library.
The pride of the Penweather succession lay sprawled on the sofa, a cat curled on his lap, a book open on his chest. His glasses were perched low on his nose, and he’d draped his coat over the back of the chair at the reading table. His boots stood at attention beside the sofa, and his eyes were firmly closed.
“He’s asleep,” Chloe said in a loud whisper. “Why do all the grown-ups at the Hall take so many naps?”
Penweather’s eyes opened. He scooped up the cat with one hand, set the book aside with the other, rose to sitting, swung his feet to the carpet, and pushed his glasses up his nose, all in the same instant.
“Ladies.” He rose and bowed, still holding the cat. “Good day, and I beg your pardon for my shocking state of undress. Do I have the pleasure of meeting Miss Fromm?” He gently set the cat on the sofa.
He was so self-possessed, so polite in what could be an awkward circumstance. “Let’s make our curtsey, Chloe,” Daisy said, executing a small dip while holding Chloe’s hand. “And now I will introduce you.”
His lordship indulged Daisy in her homily-by-example regarding introductions, and bowed over Chloe’s small hand.
“The pleasure is entirely mine, Miss Fromm.”
Chloe dimpled at that display.
Penweather sat to pull on his boots, a casually masculine bit of business that caused an odd twang of Daisy’s heartstrings. She pushed that unwelcome sensation aside to hold his morning coat for him. The garment was well made, and as she smoothed the line of the shoulders onto his person, she noticed a lack of padding. That excellent physique was real, and Beatitude’s question came back to her:
Are you inclined to play with Pandora’s papa? Well, no. But where was the harm in thinking about playing with him?
Lady Daisy knew how to hold a man’s coat for him. There was an art to even that small courtesy, involving the garment held at the right height at the right time. Fabianus’s late wife had always held his coats too high.
Yes, he was a tall man, but his hands were still located at the ends of his arms, and the shoulder joint still did not allow a fellow to raise those hands very high when reaching behind himself.
And then that final little caress to his shoulders—firm, to work out the wrinkles in the fabric, but also sweet. A habit doubtless left over from married life, which for her ladyship had apparently also had some sweetness.
“Tell me about your daughter,” Lady Daisy said as Fabianus buttoned his coat. “What makes her happy? What sends her into a temper?”
Rather than admit he had no clue on either score, Fabianus used a window to examine his reflection. He took out the ribbon holding his queue, finger-combed his hair into a semblance of order, then retied the queue. The world beyond the window was endless undulations of snow, pewter sky, and an occasional plume of white stirred from the trees by a frigid breeze.