“Her Grace has arranged to have an orangery built.”
“She’s donewhat?”
“You can see for yourself.” Mr. Bradford pointed. “Your Grace, please believe me when I say I had no knowledge of this. If I had, I would of course have told you at once.”
“I believe you,” Edward said.
He hurried around the side of the house in the direction Mr. Bradford had indicated, and the butler followed after him. Sure enough, a large building was in the process of being erected there.
Edward could hardly believe that the work was being done so quickly. There had been nothing here just this morning. He hadn’t been with Lord Hartford for that long. He hurried forward and stopped one of the men who was involved in the construction.
“Who’s in charge here?” he asked.
“I think this property belongs to the Duke of Westfrey,” the man replied.
“Yes, it most certainly does! I am the Duke of Westfrey! What I’m asking you is, who is in charge of your project? To whom do you answer?”
The man looked a bit shaken. “Norris there is our foreman,” he said. “I can get him for you.”
“Never mind, I’ll get him myself.” Edward marched over to the foreman. “Excuse me.”
Norris seemed a bit more aware than the last man he had spoken to. “Your Grace, I take it?”
“Yes, that’s right. On whose authority are you and your men building on these grounds?”
“Why, we were told by the Duchess of Westfrey that this was where the orangery was to be constructed. Was there some mistake?”
Edward had half a mind to tell the man to disassemble everything he had done and take it all away, but he took a breath and steadied himself. It might be nice to have an orangery here—his biggest objection was the fact that he hadn’t been consulted. And, after all, he had given Lydia no reason to believe she needed to consult him on things like this. She had always been free to do whatever she liked.
Of course, therewasthe matter of the expense. He’d looked the other way on the purchase of the stallions and the hiring of the new stable hand, but a new building on the property would be the most expensive thing Lydia had done so far by quite a bit.
She needs to know that she’s gone too far this time. I’ll let this happen, but the next time she wants to do something so extreme, she is going to have to discuss it with me.
“There’s no mistake,” he told Norris. “You may proceed. But from now on, you’re to communicate with me directly, not with the Duchess. And if she tries to give you any further instructions about this project, you may tell her that you’ve been forbidden to follow her orders, and that if she wants something done, she must also go through me.”
“I understand, Your Grace,” Norris agreed. “I’ll make sure my men all get that message as well.”
“Thank you,” Edward said. “And now, I must go and speak to my wife. I don’t suppose you know where she is?”
“I’m afraid not. I saw her a few hours ago, when we started to build the orangery, but not since then.”
“That’s all right. I’m sure I’ll be able to find her in the house. Thank you.”
He went inside, thinking about everything he had just been witness to.
Lydia had grown very bold.
And perhaps, Edward thought, he should have seen it coming. But the fact of the matter was that he hadn’t. With every move she’d made, he should have seen that she was building toward something like this, but somehow, he had convinced himself that everything she tried would be her last impetuous action. She would run out of rooms to decorate. She didn’t need anymorestallions.
Never in a million years had he envisioned something like this.
And it occurred to him that he had almost no idea how to talk to her about it. The two of them had rarely had a conversation in all the time they had been married, and the conversations they did have were stilted and awkward. How was he supposed to talk to her now? How could he make her see sense?
What if she refused to listen?
He didn’t want to make her unhappy, to take away the freedoms he had given her and the power she had as Duchess. But if she wouldn’t be reasonable, he told himself firmly, that was a step he would simply have to consider, for the sake of the dukedom and for his own financial well-being.
CHAPTERFOURTEEN
