Realizing with a jolt what she’d done with the lace, Elizabeth quickly lowered it away with a chagrined grimace. “Well, yes, I suppose that, too.” Then she paused, her brow creasing as she looked closely at Mariah. “Robert said you wanted suitors, but you’ve never shared those same sentiments. You do want to marry, do you not?”
Mariah uncomfortably averted her eyes. “I suppose.” Only a small dissembling, although she still couldn’t bring herself to look at Elizabeth as she said it. Because she did want a husband, family, and home of her own. “But only to the right man.”
One who didn’t mind sharing her with a shipping company.
Elizabeth nodded, as if that were obvious. “Of course, dear.”
“No, I meant…” Her cheeks pinked as she admitted, “I want a love match.” The words came hesitantly. Evelyn had been her only confidante in matters of the heart until this season, when she’d begun to confide in Elizabeth, and she dared not tell Evie a breath of how she truly felt about marriage. Oh, she’d never hear the end of it from her overly romantic sister! “Is it silly to wish for that?”
“Not at all.” Elizabeth gave her a melancholy smile, yet one full of affection. “My marriage was a love match.”
Mariah took hope in that. Her own parents had married for love, but with Mama dying so young and Papa working such long hours, she could barely remember seeing them together. She’d been too young to ask her mother about such things. But Elizabeth instinctively understood her need to learn about marriage and love, and Mariah treasured this moment of shared female intimacy more than she could express. “The duke loved you?”
“Deeply, but he wasn’t a duke when we married. Richard wasn’t even a baron yet.” Her eyes softened as they took on a faraway look. “He was an officer in the army, and I was so proud to have him for my husband. Then they sent him to war, and he returned a hero.” She smiled. “King George made him a baron. We already had Sebastian by then. Robert arrived the following spring, Quinton the year after that. A few years later we adopted Josephine.”
Adopted? No wonder Robert had behaved so peculiarly about the orphans she helped at the school. Mariah’s blossoming love for the duchess grew even stronger at discovering this.
“We were so very happy.” Despite her smile, her voice trembled with grief. “Richard’s been gone over two years, and I miss him more with each day that passes.”
“I’m sorry,” Mariah whispered, tears for the duchess stinging in her eyes. She knew how grief lessened but never vanished. For all their fighting, that was one thing that she and Carlisle had in common.
Elizabeth’s face melted at the tears she could so easily glimpse in Mariah’s eyes. With motherly affection, she lovingly brushed a stray lock away from her cheek. “I agreed to help with your season because I knew how difficult it would be…for me, not having Richard at my side, and for you, not having your mother to share this special time.” She smiled then, with such love and affection that Mariah lost her breath. “But, Mariah, I’m also enjoying simply spending time with you.” Her eyes glistened. “Very much.”
“Me, too,” she whispered, unable to find her voice.
In only a few days, Elizabeth Carlisle had found her way into Mariah’s heart. She finally had someone she could talk with about dresses and dances, flowers and fashion, love and grief…all those things mothers and daughters were supposed to share. She might never like Robert Carlisle, but because of him, she’d met his mother. For that, she would always be grateful to him.
An assistant brought over a dress for inspection, one Madame had already made for another client. Emerald-green silk with cream lace, a tight-fitted bodice, an old-fashioned waist…The entirety created a shimmering gown that reminded Mariah of something from a book of fairy tales.
Standing behind her so she could look over Mariah’s shoulder at her reflection, Elizabeth held the dress in front of her.
Mariah caught her breath at the sight. That was definitely not burlap and flour sack.
Elizabeth’s eyes sparkled with pleased amusement at her reaction. “So you like it?”
Oh, she absolutely adored it! It was the most beautiful dress she’d ever seen, and selfish longing to wear it ached in her chest. Yet she gave a wistful shake of her head. “I don’t need any more dresses.”
“Of course you don’t need it.” The duchess’s lips curled into a conspiratorial smile. “But wouldn’t it be wonderful to have anyway?”
Mariah stared at her reflection in the mirror and bit her lip. Such a beautiful dress, and so tempting…but she should say no. She already had enough dresses and accessories ordered to give Papa a fit of apoplexy when he saw the tallies.
Yet it was such a lovely dress, the color perfectly matching her eyes. And Elizabeth wanted so badly for her to have it…
“All right,” she acquiesced with a sigh.
“Good. Because we could all use some pleasant distractions this season, even in the form of a gown.” Elizabeth smiled at her as she fussed happily with the dress. “And I think that this season will be a good distraction for Robert, as well.”
Her mouth fell open. Carlisle? Well, the duchess was completely wrong about that! His interest in her season was purely mercenary. “What could he possibly need to be distracted from?”
“Oh, lots of things.” Elizabeth’s attention strayed to the drape of the dress, her gaze moving away from Mariah’s. She busied herself with adjusting the bodice, but Mariah could see a troubled concern cloud the duchess’s face. “His father’s death, for one.”
A stab of shame pierced her. She should have thought of that immediately. She’d lost her mother fifteen years ago, yet she still carried grief inside her and feared she always would. Of course Robert still mourned his father. The fact that he had been twenty-five instead of ten wouldn’t have lessened his loss.
“Richard’s death devastated all of us,” Elizabeth explained. Avoiding Mariah’s gaze, she picked up a velvet wrap from a nearby chair and placed it over her shoulders. “It was an accident. There was absolutely nothing that could have been done, but—” She choked off, then inhaled a deep breath before continuing, and the glimpse of pain Mariah saw in her at that moment ached into her own chest. “Robert blamed himself.”
Mariah’s gaze snapped to the duchess’s reflection in the mirror. Good God, to blame himself for that…For the first time, she felt a prick of empathy for him, and she understood completely why his mother believed he needed to be distracted.
“He seldom speaks of it,” Elizabeth continued, “yet it changed him. He’s not the same man he was before. For the longest time, I was so very worried about him.” Finally, she raised her eyes to meet Mariah’s, and hope sparkled in their cornflower-blue depths. “But this year, he’s finally setting a path for himself.”
“Oh?” Dread at what the duchess meant panged dully inside her. Because Mariah knew full well that Robert’s path drove right through her own.
Elizabeth smiled at their reflection, oblivious to the way that the hope for her son underpinning her expression sliced into Mariah’s heart. “This business venture with your father could prove to be the purpose he’s been searching for.”
Robert wanted purpose, and she understood that. But at what cost to her own dream?
Fresh frustration swelled inside her. Why did he have to pick Winslow Shipping? He could find another partnership in no time at all, while she…Well, it was the family business or nothing. She only wished Robert would realize that and gracefully concede.
Elizabeth smoothed down the skirt to check its fall around Mariah’s legs. “Then there was Diana Morgan, of course.”
“Of course,” she mumbled. Who on earth was Diana Morgan?
“You might know her. I believe she’s your sister’s age. Blond, very attractive…” She played with the drape of the gown. “A lovely girl.”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t.” What the deuces did a very attractive blonde have to do with Robert?