He gave her a sharp look. “What makes you think so?”
“I saw her just the other day. She looked terrible. I got the impression she had just days to live.”
His eyes narrowed. His hands tightened on the reins. “You met my mother? How? Where?”
“At her home, of course. Aunt Agatha took me to see her. She’s clearly not fit even to leave her bed.”
His face hardened; his eyes blazed cold and fierce. He said in a clipped voice, “So, you visited her, and talked with her. Can I assume it was the day you changed your mind and decided to marry me after all? The day before I came to arrange the settlements?”
“Yes, but— What are you— Watch out!”
Pedestrians scattered as the duke pulled his horses around in a circle and drove rapidly back the way they’d come. George clung to the side of the curricle. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”
“Taking you to see my mother.”
“Now? But why?”
He didn’t answer. With a grim expression he wove swiftly through the London traffic. George would have admired his skill with the reins had she not been so bemused by his overreaction to the idea that she’d met his mother. What was so bad about that?
It was only natural that a mother would want to meet her son’s intended.
Or did he not know of his mother’s grave illness? Had she broken a confidence? Nobody had mentioned it was to be kept from him.
“Hold ’em,” he instructed his groom as they pulled up infront of the duchess’s house. The lad jumped down and ran to hold the horses. The duke swung George down, took her hand in a firm grasp and towed her up the steps to the front door.
“What are you doing?” She pulled to release her hand but his grip only tightened.
He yanked hard on the bellpull and a bell jangled loudly inside the house.
The butler opened the door. “Your grace, I—”
“Upstairs, is she?”
“Yes, your grace, in her dressing r—”
The duke pushed past him and, keeping George’s hand firmly in his grasp, took to the stairs. She tried to pull back. “What are we doing here? You can’t go into her dressing room unannounced!” But he kept going and as he didn’t release her, she had no option but to go with him.
He flung open a door. “Ah, there you are, Mother.” With a curt gesture he ushered George into the room. Two elegantly dressed young gentlemen immediately jumped to their feet. They bowed, but George had no eyes for them.
The duke ignored the men as well. In an icy voice he said, “You’ve met Lady Georgiana Rutherford, I gather, Mother.”
The duchess turned toward them, showing no self-consciousness. “Yes, of course. How do you do, Lady Georgiana?”
George forgot to respond. She stared at the duke’s mother, stunned.
The duchess was seated, fully dressed, in front of a large round looking glass where she had clearly been making the final touches to her toilette. Her skin glowed, her cheeks were delicately tinged with color. She was dressed to go out, in an elegant, rose-pink silk ball gown, a lacy shawl draped over her almost bare shoulders, darker pink satin slippers on her feet. A magnificent diamond set graced her throat, ears and wrist. On the dressing table before her lay a pair of long white satin gloves and a painted ivory fan.
She was the picture of health.
The two gentlemen, also in the most formal of dress,were, it seemed, her escorts for the evening. They were about the duke’s age.
George didn’t know what to say. “But you’re looking so well, your grace. I thought...”
“It was a miracle,” the duchess said composedly. “Snatched back from the brink of the grave, I was.” She smiled at the two gentlemen, who made sympathetic noises.
The duke said in a hard voice, “You’ve had a lot of miracles in your time, haven’t you, Mother?”
The duchess was oblivious of her son’s sarcasm. “I have been blessed,” she admitted modestly.
