“Mr. Somerset,” said the dowager duchess, “I was just about to tender my felicitations to Miss Bessler. I do not believe either of you has ever told me how you decided to marry. It has been a friendship of long standing between you, has it not? What prompted the change?”
Stuart looked almost riled by the question. Lizzy knew, of course, that he wouldn’t blurt out such frank answers as that she’d hounded him with invitations to dinner and her almost continual presence at the Palace of Westminster at teatime. But she panicked nonetheless—the dowager duchess had that effect on her.
“I was unwell for quite a long time,” she said. “Mr. Somerset sent me a beautiful arrangement of flowers every month. They were the one bright spot in an otherwise dreary time.”
Stuart slanted her an astonished look. She supposed that as private a man as he was, he preferred that such details of his life not be shared with others.
“Indeed,” said the dowager duchess. “I did not take you for the kind of man who communed via buds and blooms, Mr. Somerset.”
“I am not, by and large. But a man must make exceptions for an exceptional woman,” he answered.
Lizzy wished he’d continued with the exceptions after her recovery. She missed the flowers, missed the lift they gave to her heart and the sense of kinship they brought her.
“Charming,” said the dowager duchess coolly. “Now, Mr. Somerset, won’t you be so kind as to fetch me Sir Randolph Beresford?”
Stuart tried to avoid both Lizzy and the dowager duchess. With Lizzy it was easier, as the host and hostess were not expected to socialize with each other. He also had hopes where the dowager duchess was concerned, thinking his interview with her had come and gone. He was mistaken: He was summoned back to her later that evening.
The dowager duchess rarely participated in, let alone initiated, small talk. But with him sitting next to her, she prated on about her plans for Christmas, her charities, her grandchildren—torrent upon torrent of inconsequential details. He had the sensation of having been fed too much laudanum, his awareness woolly, reluctant, his smiles stiff and hollow.
Then all of a sudden, she said, “I never knew anyone could cook like that.”
And it was as if someone had thrown him overboard as he slept, the return of alertness abrupt and full of dread. He sat frozen, too stunned to gather himself properly, his reaction plainly exposed.
But the dowager duchess did not look at him. Her gaze was solely upon the sculpted handle of her walking stick. “It was…it was as if my entire life, I’d never dined on anything but air and water until tonight.”
Don’t say anything, Stuart warned himself. Don’t say anything. “I believe I felt the same the first time she cooked for me,” he said.
The dowager duchess rubbed her thumb against the ebony of her walking stick’s handle. It was shaped like the head of a dragon. “It made me remember—how it made me remember—all the best and worst days of my life. The day I met the late duke, the day of his funeral, the birth of my children, the ones who did not survive.”
He did not believe he’d ever heard her speak of such personal matters. His astonishment served him well, for she looked at him, and smiled wryly at his expression.
“Do you know, Mr. Somerset, that my late husband’s elder brother—the ninth duke—was married to my sister?”
Stuart shook his head. The ninth duke and his wife were long dead.
“She was much younger than me, beautiful, and clever. I’d always adored her. And my husband had a fierce admiration for his brother. For a time they were the most handsome and magnetic couple in Society—that was, for as long as they lived. They perished at sea together.”
There was the beginning of a crack in her voice.
“They had three children, but only one who survived them—she and her governess had been traveling on a different vessel. My husband and I became her guardians and raised her with our own children, who loved her as much as we did.”
Her voice now faltered audibly. “But we lost her when she was sixteen—and it devastated us. It devastates me to this day.”
“I’m sorry,” said Stuart. And he was, grief-stricken. Was life nothing but a continual bereavement, with a few moments of misguided happiness thrown in to keep hopes alive and the days bearable?
In another uncharacteristic move for her, the dowager duchess laid her gloved hand over his and gave a small squeeze. “I will take my leave of you now, Mr. Somerset,” she said, rising. “It has been an evening I will not forget.”
Lizzy thought it had gone well. And she said so to Stuart, after the drawing room emptied. “Although you must have a word with your cook. She simply cannot cow the guests into silence every time. I want my dinner table to be known as much for the conversation as for the food.”
She flashed him a teasing smile. The smile he returned her was drained. “I’ll let Madame Durant know.”
Her father had gone to use the water closet; the two of them were alone in the drawing room. She went up to him and embraced him, laying her cheek against his lapel.