Daphne had known for some time that he would marry Lady Sarah Monforth, and she felt a flash of anger with him. He was marrying that lady for duty’s sake. He did not love her.
Daphne opened her eyes, shoved away her anger, and put her cup gently back in its saucer. It was not her business.
“Did your friend know any of the details?” Lady Fitzhugh asked Mrs. Bennington. “The duke should marry, for he is twenty-nine years now but has an engagement been announced?”
“No announcement, but alas, I know nothing more than that, Lady Fitzhugh.”
“Well, he will choose someone suitable, I am sure.”
“Oh, I hope not!” Elizabeth cried. “Someone unsuitable would be much more exciting.”
“Elizabeth!” Lady Fitzhugh remonstrated sharply.
Her daughter was undeterred. “But Lady Sarah is said to be deadly dull.”
“Elizabeth,” Sir Edward put in, “it is not our practice to criticize his choice of wife.”
“Well, I suppose you are right. My only wish is that he would attend our local assemblies. Our cousin Charlotte has told me that Lord and Lady Snowden, as well as their son and daughter, attend at least three or four of the assemblies in their village in Dorset each year. Why, oh, why can our dear duke not do the same? Papa sees him at agricultural shows and race meetings, but I have lived in Wychwood all my life and seldom see him except at the yearly fete.”
“He does not seem to care much for local society,” Mrs. Bennington agreed, “but that is hardly uncommon for a duke.”
“True,” Lady Fitzhugh said. “The old duke took a very great interest in local affairs, but not every peer shares that interest, you know. And if the current duke does not, it is both acceptable and understandable.”
“But Mama,” Elizabeth replied, “isn’t it strange that he is so rarely in residence here? He’s never given a country-house party for any lords and ladies, nor even a hunting party, and that is odd, especially for the ducal estate, do you not think?”
“His obligations weigh heavy upon him, to be sure,” Sir Edward put in, and shot a pointed glance at his daughter. “Perhaps when he comes back to Tremore Hall, his intent is to rest in privacy and solitude, not gad about the countryside.”
Lady Fitzhugh sighed. “I hope he does intend to marry soon, for it would be most agreeable to have a duchess in residence. His mother was a beautiful woman, and so very kind. When she was alive, things were so lively up at the hall. All sorts of elegant and obliging people coming and going, and two fetes a year instead of one. Such a generous woman. The old duke was shattered when she died. I still remember how he wept at her funeral like a child. The son stood there, so stoic and stiff-lipped, without a word. It was more heartbreaking than the father’s tears, really.”
Daphne bit her lip and looked down into her teacup. That would be like Anthony, she realized. He would be the sort to just stand there, grieving inside, refusing to show it. She understood. Like herself, he prided himself on control of his emotions.
“Poor man!” said Mrs. Bennington. “It is not surprising he does not spend much time here. Difficult memories, I daresay.”
“Very difficult,” agreed Anne. “I should feel the same. Can you imagine anything more horrible than having your mother die and your father go mad?”
Shocked, Daphne stared at the girl, unable to quite believe what she had heard.
“Anne!” Lady Fitzhugh said sternly. “The old duke had just lost his wife, poor man, and it was grief made him so strange, nothing more. He did not go mad.”
“Some of the servants at the hall say he did talk to himself,” Mrs. Bennington said. “He used to roam the corridors at night and call for the duchess. He’d talk to the servants about her as if she were still alive. They say the old duke took a horsewhip to a groom who dared to say to his face that the duchess was dead. The son finally had to lock his father up somewhere in the house. Only time the boy ever wept, so they say. After that, it was he who ran the estates, and he was only a child.”
Oh, God. Daphne thought of the boy he had been and how that boy must have had the courage of a lion. She thought of the man, of his need for privacy and his hatred of gossip. She stared down at the teacup in her hand, and something inside her snapped. She set her teacup back into its saucer with a clang. “I do not think we should talk about such things!” she cried. “He has lost both his parents. A man’s pain and grief should be private, not bandied about in this fashion.”
Lady Fitzhugh turned to her and laid a hand on her shoulder. “You are quite right to chastise us, my dear. We shall not speak of it again.”
Daphne did not reply. The conversation veered tactfully to other topics, but she paid little attention. She thought of her own father, who had grieved his wife’s death with great pain, but whose work and child had been solace enough to see him through. Anthony’s father had given in to his grief and had lost his grip on reality, leaving his children to fend for themselves.
Love should never conquer reason.
Now she understood what he had meant about the tragic consequences of love and why he thought it a terrible and frightening thing. Oh, Anthony .
“Miss Wade,” Elizabeth asked, breaking into her thoughts, “you must tell us all about your travels.”
Daphne took a deep breath, grateful for the change of subject. “What would you like to know, Miss Elizabeth?”
“Heaps of things. Do the Africans really tear out the hearts of Europeans and eat them?”
“No,” she answered, trying to smile. “But the lions do.”
