Page 38 of Christmas at Castle Dunrannoch
Rye splashed his face and hands clean, drank the coffee, and reclined alongside his father. With the curtains open, silvered light illuminated the foot of the bed—a bright thread leading into the night.
Rye lay awake, holding his father’s hand, listening to the ragged draw of his breath.
At last, the body that had become so frail lay still and calm.
Rory Dalreagh slipped beyond pain, following that moonlit path.
Chapter Three
Arrington House, Eaton Square, Belgravia
Afternoon, 12th December, 1905
Tilly,Ursula’s maid, entered her mistress’s bedchamber. As had become her recent habit, Ursula was seated at the window with a book, but appearing to concentrate neither on the view nor the text in her lap.
Pushing the door closed behind her, Tilly gave a slight cough and bobbed a curtsey as Ursula looked her way. “His Lordship wishes to see you in the library, miss.”
With a sigh, Ursula set aside the novel she’d begun several days ago without reaching further than the twentieth page. It was impossible to keep her mind on anything for more than a few minutes.
Just over three months had passed since her father’s funeral. Time was needed—as everyone had been telling her, in the most sympathetic of tones. She wasn’t the first to lose the person she loved most. At this very moment, there were probably thousands of young women in London bereaved of their parents and having to face a new sort of future. One simply kept one’s chin high and soldiered through.
Such platitudes were supposed to make her feel better. But, of course, they didn’t.
On that last morning, she’d kissed her papa goodbye, reminding him that she’d be along around noon to help inspect the new shipment of leather. Though he’d remained reluctant to allow Ursula to spend full days at the factory, he’d begun to take more seriously her desire to learn about the business. Little by little, she’d persuaded him to share the finer points of how Fairbury and Berridge was run, and to allow her to become involved.
She’d been tying her hat when the messenger had knocked boldly at the front entrance, breathing hard from his caper across Victoria Bridge. She’d pushed him into her carriage and they’d set off through the slug of traffic, Ursula all the while trying to extricate more information from Mr. Berridge’s lad.
By the time they’d arrived, it was too late. The doctor was packing up his bag. A quick end, he’d assured her—a single seizure to the heart. A moment of brief pain. Nothing more.
Shaking out her crêpe skirts, Ursula stood. An audience with her uncle, Viscount Arrington, was never pleasurable, but she appreciated the need to be courteous to his requests.
She’d been grateful at the time, when he’d made the necessary arrangements and instructed Ursula to stay with the family in Eaton Square. He’d been adamant that the Pimlico house, purchased for being close to the Battersea workshops, was unsuitable—and most especially for a young lady alone.
The change of surroundings had been welcome, since every room in the home she’d shared with her father brought her to tears.
Now though, she was itching to do something, to go somewhere, to escape this terrible feeling of everything being wrong.
Her days contained a cycle of nothingness in which the afternoon ride through Hyde Park had become the highlight—crushed between Aunt Phillippa and Lucy, with Amelia, Harriet and Eustace seated opposite.
Other days, there was just Eustace and herself, with Aunt Phillippa as chaperone, which was just plain awkward.
Yesterday, she’d mentioned visiting Fairbury and Berridge, to see how they were managing without her father, but Uncle Cedric had brushed away the idea, suggesting that she accompany her cousins on a shopping trip to Burlington Arcade.
So, she’d written him a note, making clear her wish to return to the Pimlico house and resume her regular habits.
She was suffocating at Arrington House, as if part of her had died alongside her father, and the part that remained was desperate to draw breath.
“Your father indulgedyou far too freely.”
From behind his writing desk, Uncle Cedric fixed Ursula with an imperious eye. “Here you are, not far off your twenty-fifth birthday and you still haven’t formalized things with Eustace.”
Ursula shifted in her seat and gave an inward sigh. At seventeen, Eustace had proposed that she marry him if she didn’t find anyone else she wanted. They only saw each other at family gatherings and she’d hoped, by now, that he’d realized it was just a childish notion. There was nothing of substance behind it. They were fond of one another, but nothing more.
Eustace, at the instigation of his father—she had no doubt—had proposed an engagement three times since she’d turned twenty, and she’d refused a proper answer on each occasion. There was no question of love—nor of him having a broken heart. In the intervening years, each time she’d evaded him, he’d seemed almost relieved.
In fairness, it wasn’t just Eustace she wasn’t keen on. There wasn’t anyone she wanted to settle down with (or settle for)—and there had been plenty of gentlemen from which to choose.
During the season in which Aunt Phillippa had presented her at court, at least three young men had paid calls. Even Mr. Berridge’s son had made an earnest offer—with a speech on the wisdom of uniting their two houses, as if they were characters in a Shakespearean play.
