He said nothing. Did he waver inside? Did he realize that he would be giving up far too much for her? She dared not even breathe.
He retrieved the dowager duchess’s fallen walking stick, and presented it to her.
“I understand everything,” he said slowly. “And I accept it as a price I’m willing to pay.”
“You do not understand.” The dowager duchess stomped the floor with the walking stick. “She, and consequently yourself, will be shunned everywhere. Doors will close in your face. Opportunities will flee before you. Your life, as you know it, will be finished.”
“No, Madame, my life will have finally begun. I do not need the blessing of the Liberal establishment to practice law. I do not need the approval of Society to keep Fairleigh Park. And I will gladly be shunned on her behalf.”
Tears came again, hot and sweet. This was how a prince slew dragons for his princess.
“You are mad, Mr. Somerset.” The dowager duchess’s voice trembled.
“I have loved her from the moment I first saw her, Madame. She has left me and I have left her. And now that we are at last together, nothing, save death, will part us again. Not you. Not the Liberal establishment. Not the opinion of every last man, woman, and child in England.” He bowed. “If you will excuse me, I’ve been away from her far too long this day already.”
He turned and walked toward the door. At that moment, the dowager duchess did something unprecedented: She broke down and cried, and not silent, ladylike tears, but great, shuddering sobs that racked her thin, aged frame. Verity almost fell off her chair. Stuart turned around, aghast.
He rushed back to the dowager duchess’s side. “Madame, are you all right?”
She turned her face away. Gradually, her sobs quieted to soft hiccups and then to complete silence. With great stiffness, she moved toward her seat. He caught up with her and silently offered his support. She leaned heavily on him and lowered herself with a hard grimace.
He bowed again.
“Mr. Somerset, please sit down.”
“Madame, you must understand, there is nothing you can say to me that will make me change my mind.”
“Yes, I quite understand that. I require only a few more minutes of your company. Will you humor an old woman?”
He hesitated. “Of course.”
“You too, Vera, sit down. There is nothing more ridiculous than a grown woman standing on a chair,” the dowager duchess said, without looking in Verity’s direction.
“I beg your pardon, Madame?” said Stuart.
The dowager duchess, of course, did not answer.
Verity climbed down from her chair. But she couldn’t sit. A dress, she needed a dress, simple and elegant and not too costly and—
“Do you remember, Mr. Somerset, what I told you about my brother-in-law and my sister the other day?” said the dowager duchess, her voice hoarse.
“Yes. They perished at sea together. You raised their daughter. And she died when she was sixteen.”
“Her name is Vera. The Lady Vera Drake. And I never said she died; I said we lost her.”
Utter silence.
“Do you understand now, Mr. Somerset?”
“My God, do you mean to tell me that—that—”
“Yes,” said the dowager duchess.
Verity stumbled into her chair. She was sure the chair shook violently. She had to dig her fingers into the armrests so that she wouldn’t be bucked off. Did she hear everything properly? Did her aunt just acknowledge her?
“The Lady Vera Drake was our joy and our despair. I worried about her constantly, more than I worried about my own four children altogether. Unfortunately, all my worrying was not enough. When she was sixteen, she conceived a child with a stablehand on our estate, who was himself only seventeen.
“The news shattered my well-run life. This was the beloved child of my sister, the beloved child of my husband’s brother. I’d never been so grieved and so angry in my life—I had utterly failed in my duties to her, to my husband, and to her dead parents.
“Her pregnancy was a secret known to only myself, her governess, and the physician who had looked after the Arlingtons for thirty years. It became my overriding goal to keep it that way, for I had a plan to make things right again: The physician would diagnose her with a wasting disease that required a long trip abroad for recuperation, the baby would be fostered with a reliable family that would be lavishly compensated for treating the child well, and she would return to England, still only seventeen, make her debut, dazzle Society, and live her life as if nothing untoward had ever happened.