Page 127 of A Duchess to Fight For
Chapter 34
Percy read his correspondence for the day after he ate dinner. He put down the letters and began to pace. He felt he was in the wrong place. He should be in London.
It was time to run. He would never sleep if he went to bed now. The letters would keep him up. He wanted to be there. He wanted to experience what his friends were experiencing. He wanted Louisa.
Percy now knew the property well. The only problem he might have if he ran at this time of night was hitting in an irregular patch or twisting his ankle on a rut in the ground.
But that didn’t stop him. He went out the front door and down the well-worn drive that led to Gordon Castle. Then he ran on the packed earth that was the road.
He liked this path. There were no bushes or trees in the way. He had tripped over a tree root more than once. It was two miles to town. Perfect. A four-mile run.
When he got home, he began to work on the honeymoon. He had gone on the Grand Tour after university, so he remembered what he did and didn’t want to do.
He and Louisa would take a boat from Dover to Calais. He thought they would go to Paris, Rome, and Marsala, Sicily.
The boat ride to Calais was only a couple of hours, but the carriage ride to Paris would be two and a half days. He figured they would spend about ten days there before moving on.
There was a quaint hotel in Paris Percy was fond of. He hoped it hadn’t lost its appeal since he last stayed there. They would walk around and have late dinners in the small cafés near the hotel. He thought Louisa would enjoy that.
Percy knew the ambassador to France. He thought they might dine at the embassy a few times.
The carriage trip to Nantes and the boat ride to Rome would be the worst part of the trip, but worth it once they got there. He planned to take her to the Coliseum, the Sistine Chapel, the Museums and the Pantheon, but he thought she might enjoy most the small squares with shops and outdoor cafés that served very strong coffee.
And there was a gelato shop around the corner from the Pantheon that Percy knew Louisa would like.
Percy didn’t know the ambassador to Italy, but he would be received at Percy’s request.
Percy remembered the carriage ride from the dock to the beautiful countryside and charming towns in Sicily. He remembered passing towns with the main square of shops, a church, and a meetinghouse surrounded by small cottages built from blonde coloured brick and topped with a slate roof.
The air was clean and smelled of the sea. A gentle breeze circulated keeping the air fresh. The sun shone brightly without a cloud in sight. During his previous trip, the villa had looked directly at the ocean with a beach between. Tall green vegetation grew around the villas for privacy. Percy laughed to himself. He hoped they would need plenty of privacy.
Percy remembered the colour of the water was nothing like he had ever seen. In England, the water matched the sky. A dark grey soup that stirred whitecaps but no colour.
In Marsala, the ocean was calm. More like a gentle lake than an ocean. The colour started as a light aquamarine blue that slowly brightened to a turquoise colour popular with hats worn on the streets of London in the summers. A bright blue as far as the eye could see followed. It too matched the sky.
Then they would take the cruel boat ride from Rome to Dover. Every moment on that boat would remind them that the honeymoon was over.
*****
Hobart wrote Percy a short letter to tell him Barton left London for Hamilton. It seemed since it came out that he was driving up the price of a horse through deception, his peers had abandoned him. Both he and Frederick believed Barton was no longer a threat to Louisa.
Frederick wrote about the wedding and how it was making his house unliveable. The women had become incapable of talking about anything else. He also wrote about his concern for his investment. It was going terribly wrong. As soon as the wedding was over, he needed to go to Manchester. Probably the next morning.
Percy also received a letter from Cecil letting him know he would wed a week before Percy and Louisa. He and Emma hoped he could come home a few days earlier than he planned so he could attend the wedding.
He also told Percy that he would be in Paris for a few weeks on his honeymoon with Emma and would love to get together if he planned to go there. Their honeymoons might overlap for a few days. Percy loved that idea and thought Louisa would too.
*****
Percy sat down with Winters to go over the progress of the castle’s renovation.
“I plan to leave three or four days earlier to go back to London. We should probably go over what’s been done and what needs to be done. Then I’ll know how much money to leave you and how long I can expect it to take. I won’t be able to return for at least six months. Let’s see if it can be done by then.”
Winters shook his head. “There is no way the project will be done in six months, Your Grace. I estimate ten to twelve months. I still recommend you return in six months to look at the progress. Hopefully, you’ll see a substantial difference by then.”
Percy and Winters went down the list they developed before they started the project. They crossed off completed projects and put a star next to the projects they were working on now.
Then they estimated when they could do each remaining project and how long each one would take.
