“She was always congenial enough,” he muttered as he took a large sip of his port. The alcohol was a welcome warmth in the back of his throat as he sank into his armchair. “I always enjoyed her company when she came to visit Martha.” Even if there was nothing marked about such visits, he could remember a fond warmth from the period.
“She is grieving, as you said,” Harbuttle offered, again almost cryptically.
Henry’s frown deepened. “I don’t suppose I need to tell you the purpose of her visit the other day?” One eyebrow rose on his forehead as he shot a frank look at the older man.
Harbuttle didn’t look the least sheepish as he shook his head. “Of course not, Your Grace.”
For a moment, Henry was suitably distracted.
“Just how much of my personal life is it that you overhear, Harbuttle?”
The butler’s lips twitched, his eyes glimmering as he looked over at Henry.
“I’ve always found it a better practice not to answer that question quantitatively, Your Grace.”
By which, of course, he meant everything. All of it.
Henry shook his head, running his hand down his face in aggravation. As much at his butler’s lack of acknowledgment as the memory of Catherine’s last visit.
“It is a singular reaction to grief,” he muttered, his hand falling from his face as he leaned back in his chair. “I expected for the other day not to be the end of it. I already made the mistake once of just assuming that things were over. I just assumed this time that she would come with her husband to my wedding and that it would put things to rest once and for all.”
“Is that not still possible, Your Grace?”
Henry exhaled roughly, staring off into the fire in the hearth with the fervent wish that it could be.
“No,” he muttered crossly. “Not if she approached Lady Josephine. That is a step too far.” As if the ones that had preceded it hadn’t been. He shook his head, taking a more conservative drink of his port as he looked back at his butler. “I will have to have words with her about it.”
“Ah.” Harbuttle excelled in the art of keeping his opinion to himself. He looked neither surprised nor agreeable to such a thing, and for once, Henry wished that he was the butler of his youth once more, lecturing him on the behaviour befitting a duke.
“Do you disagree?”
“It is hardly my place to agree or disagree on such matters, Your Grace.”
Henry huffed. “It is if I am asking you to weigh in, Harbuttle.”
The faintest smile hovered over Harbuttle’s lips as he met Henry’s gaze head-on.
“It sounds, Your Grace, as if you have already decided on a course of action. You do not want me to weigh in on it; you want me to tell you that the course of action you decided on is indeed the one you should pursue. I am neither a duke nor part of the ton. I am merely a butler … However, in this butler’s opinion, I think it might be wisest if you sought an audience with Lady Brisby, not on your own.”
“Wonderful, you’ll join me tomorrow then,” Henry muttered sarcastically. He hated knowing that Harbuttle wasright almost as much as he had hated Harbuttle’s reminders to do his lessons growing up.
“She does have a husband, Your Grace.”
Oh.
Henry laughed, finishing his port and running his hand over his face again. “She does, doesn’t she? A much more reasonable Brisby as chaperone and witness all in one.” Henry sighed. “I suppose there’s no help for it.”
“As I said, Your Grace, you were already decided on your course of action.”
“And you just knew what that course was?” Henry challenged with the barest of smiles.
“No, Your Grace. I imagined, though, that you might share it with me at some point.”
The beginnings of Henry’s amusement faded as quickly as it had appeared.
“I shall call on Catherine at her and her husband’s country estate tomorrow. I will need to clarify that I will no longer tolerate this behaviour. Her grief only excuses so much, and she needs to be aware that Lady Josephine is, above all else,off limits.” Her behaviour had clearly already upset Josephine. Henry hated to think what might happen should she go as far as she had that day that she had come to the manor … or the day of Martha’s funeral.
“The late duchess was always good at keeping her sister on more even ground.”
