Captain Marsh had had excellent taste, all around. ‘Courting is not as I remember it. I thought I was the quarry, not the hunter.’
‘Because you are titled, Your Grace,’ she said with a smile that was much less sad. ‘I am a widow. Should I be the pursuer, society will think I am searching for something far different than a father for my children.’
Might she be longing for companionship? Did she miss a man in her bed? Or was that just what men wished to think, so that they need not worry about the reputation of the widows they claimed to be protecting? ‘I hope my presence here does not lead to more gossip,’ he said. ‘When I arrived, I assumed there was a man of the house. Now it is evening and we are unchaperoned.’
She laughed, and it was a sweet sound, as youthful as her daughter’s face. ‘If anyone talks, I will inform them that you are a duke and ask them if they thought you rode all the way from London because you had heard of my beauty. Then I will remind them of the fleas at the inn. If I could think of a house that was not already too full to hold you, I might have sent you there. But I could not.’
‘As long as I am no trouble,’ he said.
‘It is only for a few nights.’ Then she remembered their original plan. ‘And I wished for you to meet my daughter.’
Should he tell her now of the hopelessness of that particular plan? Better to wait until he could offer another. Though one was already forming in his mind, he had no evidence that she would approve of it. ‘Your daughter. Ah. Yes. Gwendolyn is a lovely girl. I suspect I will have a chance to talk to her again tomorrow. But tonight, I will retire early. If you will excuse me, Mrs Marsh?’
‘Of course, Your Grace.’ She hopped from her perch on the arm of the sofa and offered him a candle to light the way to his room.
Once there, he found the boy sound asleep on the far edge of the mattress. Boney, the spaniel, was monopolising the hot bricks that had been tucked under the sheets to warm their feet. He had a good mind to wake the boy and demand his penny back. He had bought the rights to the bed that afternoon.
But on feeling the cold of the floor through his stockinged feet as he undressed for bed, he could not find it in his heart to displace the child. Instead, he pulled back the covers, climbed into the space remaining and tried to sleep.
It came as some relief that the duke was an early riser on Christmas Eve morning and willing to partake of the breakfast Generva had ordered for the rest of the family. Only Gwen was absent. No amount of prodding could convince the ungrateful girl to leave her bed and take another meal with the duke.
For some reason, Generva could not manage to be as disappointed as she ought to be at the utter failure of his suit. A match with a duke should have been an answer to a mother’s prayers. But she had not been looking forward to calling this particular man son-in-law. It would spoil some part of the friendship that had sprung up between them once she had set down the broom.
She smiled at the memory of their meeting.
The duke paused midbite to stare at her. ‘At last the sun has come up, for Mrs Marsh is smiling. What are you plotting? Some surprise for Christmas, perhaps?’
Christmas. In the fuss over the wedding, she had forgotten to treat it as a holiday in its own right. She would have to find some nuts and an orange for Ben, and perhaps a few pennies. He must think he had been forgotten in the rush to marry off his sister. ‘No surprise,’ she admitted. ‘It will not be as merry as some holidays we have shared. But we will manage.’
‘I noticed the lack in your decorating thus far, madam.’ He glanced at the bare mantel over the fireplace.
‘Perhaps it is because in the country we cannot afford the extravagances of a ducal manor, Your Grace.’ It was wrong to snap at him. It cost nothing to pull down some ivy from a nearby wood. She had been remiss.
‘No worries,’ he said with a smile. ‘Ben and I will handle it all. The weather is fine and I fancy a walk after breakfast. We will return to green the house. And if it is not too early to do so, we might hunt a wren for St Stephen’s Day.’
At this suggestion, her son’s eyes brightened and he began shovelling kippers into his mouth as though fearing the duke might leave without him, should he linger too long at table.
Generva gave him a worried look. ‘I shall only permit it if you promise me that no harm shall come to the bird. It is one thing to carry it alive from house to house. But to call it the king of all birds only to beg pennies for the burial of its poor little corpse, when it has done no harm to anyone...’
The duke laid a hand on her arm to calm her. ‘I promise we shall build him a little cage and let him go when we are done.’
‘Very well, then.’ She gave him an approving nod. ‘My son is quite bloodthirsty enough without encouragement.’ The duke was saying we as though he meant to be here for the twenty-sixth to take the boy house to house himself. She could not exactly send the man away. But if there was no hope for a match with Gwen, how long did he mean to stay?
‘Very well, then.’ The duke was staring at the little boy across the table from him. ‘Finish your breakfast. Then we will cut down some greens and harass the wildlife.’
It was only a moment more and Ben was pushing away from the table to search for a muffler and gloves. The duke took another sip of his coffee, then smiled at her and rose, bowing in her direction. ‘Madam, if you will excuse me? Duty calls.’
She managed to contain her amazement until he had cleared the doorway. Was it fair that the man should be gallant, good-looking and willing to escort her fractious son into the woods? Ben liked him, as well. Not enough to cease playing pranks on him, of course. But Montford’s amused response to them made him seem all the more attractive.
Thomas, she reminded herself. He had given her permission to use the name.
Then she remembered why she should not. A duke arriving at Christmas to marry her daughter was something straight out of a fairy tale. But in those stories, peers never appeared on the doorstep ready to set their titles aside so that they might be a father to young boys and rescue matrons from their lonely widowhood. Generva had never been fair, could hardly be called young and had not been a maiden for quite some time.
She must not forget, even for an instant, that her story had ended, unhappily, when John had died. In whatever plot continued, she was a minor character at best. Even the Duke of Montford was but a player in a single, short scene. She would force Gwen to meet with him this very day. If the girl did not want him, she must say so to his face. Then they might get him out of this house and on the road back to London. If not, she would be as foolish as her own daughter by Twelfth Night, weeping and mooning over a man she could not have.
* * *
‘Holly and his merry men, they dance and they sing.’ It was mid-afternoon before Montford’s voice rang out in the front hall. Generva could feel the blast of air that had entered with him all the way to the back of the house.
‘Ivy and her maidens, they weep and they wring.’ She answered with the next line of the song almost before she could help herself. How annoyingly appropriate for the state of the house lately. She straightened her skirts and went to meet him. ‘Close the door,’ she called. ‘You are letting in a draught.’ Then she bit her tongue. Had she forgotten so quickly her plan to treat him as an honoured guest and not a member of the family who could be scolded and ordered about?
Her words did not seem to bother him. As she entered the hall, he was dragging the door shut with his foot, since his hands were too busy to do the task. He was carrying the plants he sang about, and pine boughs and mistletoe, as well. Ben was a step ahead of him, carrying a wooden cage with a small, unhappy bird hopping about inside.
‘Have you cut down the whole forest and brought it into my house?’ She had decorated