A Rogue of Her Own (Windham Brides #4)(82)
Haverford was every inch the duke at his leisure. His Sunday attire was pristine, beautifully tailored, and adorned with his signature touches of lace and luxury. Despite his rank, he was merely commiserating with a neighbor and in-law over a turn of bad luck.
A cat leaped into Haverford’s lap, inspiring the duke to swear affectionately and set his drink aside. Purring rumbled forth as His Grace scolded the cat and scratched its chin.
I must get my wife a kitten.
That thought—which brought Charlotte to mind—was followed closely by another: I owe Haverford an apology.
“I was an ass,” Sherbourne said, before caution got the better of him. “As a creditor, I was an ass, Haverford. I am sorry for it. I should have shown you how to restructure your notes when you came into the title, should have written off the old duke’s obligation.”
Radnor apparently found the view out the corner window fascinating.
“The old duke should not have been such a profligate spendthrift,” Haverford said, “and by failing to accelerate delinquent notes, you essentially did restructure them. What do you suppose the ladies are gossiping about?”
“Feminine mysteries,” Radnor said, turning from the window. “Names for babies. Glenys is honestly considering Galahad if it’s a boy.”
The expectant fathers fretted about odd names that might befall their offspring. When a child was saddled with six or eight names from birth, much nonsense could creep onto the list.
Sherbourne sipped his drink and missed his wife. Charlotte would know if Haverford had accepted Sherbourne’s apology, rejected it, or simply been embarrassed by it. Sherbourne didn’t particularly care. He’d tendered the apology that honor demanded, and that was what mattered.
Charlotte would be proud of him—which also mattered—and that might give him the courage to rub her feet.
Chapter Eighteen
“Does Mr. Sherbourne know what you’re about?”
Miss MacPherson’s tone was polite but firm, such as a senior servant used on a child found outside the nursery at an odd hour. She’d come upon Charlotte making a Monday morning call at the Caerdenwal household, and had accepted a ride back to the village.
“Mr. Sherbourne is too busy with the colliery to be bothered with my social schedule,” Charlotte replied. “He has his charitable undertakings, and I have mine.”
“He’s putting the steeple to rights,” Miss MacPherson said, retying her bonnet ribbons. “Papa will be very wroth if Mr. Sherbourne withdraws his support from that project.”
Old anger stirred, startling in its intensity. “Do you mean that putting a pretty steeple on the church is more important than seeing Maureen Caerdenwal’s baby thrive?”
“I mean that we can’t have masonry plummeting from the heavens onto parishioner’s heads, Mrs. Sherbourne.”
For about a quarter mile, the only sound was the hoofbeats of the gelding in the traces, and the crunch of the gig’s wheels on the lane. The fine weather had held, perhaps the last of the year. Along the tree lines, each breeze sent more leaves twirling down to join the carpet below. The undergrowth was dying back with brilliant reds and yellows among the somber browns.
The day was beautiful, and Charlotte made up her mind to take her husband a picnic lunch once she’d delivered her passenger.
“You doubtless surprised the Caerdenwals with your generosity,” Miss MacPherson said. “I hadn’t thought to collect fabric for them.”
Infants needed clothing, and even scraps could be stitched together into quilts and dresses. “Winter approaches and the child must be kept warm.”
Charlotte had barely set both feet over the cottage threshold, staying only long enough to introduce herself and leave a basket and a bundle. Maureen had been terrified into near speechlessness, while her mother had accepted Charlotte’s offerings with quiet dignity. Poverty had been evident, in the household’s painful tidiness, threadbare carpets, and empty quarter shelves in the front room.
No cut work, no framed embroidery, no charmingly amateurish sketch of the baby, no embroidery half-finished in a work basket.
But for the half-dozen plump hens in the yard, Charlotte might have started crying. Griffin had kept his word, and in the coming cold weather, his generosity might be all that kept the child healthy.
“You ought to tell Mr. Sherbourne where you’ve been,” Miss MacPherson said as she climbed down from the gig outside the vicarage. “I’ve no business presuming to give you advice about your marriage, but Mr. Sherbourne isn’t the greedy brute some people would believe him to be.”
“Miss MacPherson, you insult my husband even as you defend him.” And yet, Charlotte was just as outspoken as Miss MacPherson when the need arose.
The vicar’s daughter was also right—about honesty between spouses being essential. Anybody who thought Sherbourne a greedy brute was an idiot.
“I insult my papa’s congregation,” Miss MacPherson said, shaking out her skirts. “The parish enjoys having Mr. Sherbourne to gossip about, but he’s the closest thing this valley has to a banker, and he doesn’t cheat anybody. Now he’s building us a colliery, and that’s something Haverford would have prevented to his dying day but for Mr. Sherbourne’s persistence.”
She really was quite fierce, quite admirable. “Now you insult my brother-in-law?”