Nancy Atherton - Aunt Dimity and the Duke

Grayson stood where Kate had left him, a few yards away on the graveled path. He seemed fragile and terribly alone, unaware of the eager faces that had turned in his direction or of the quiet shuffling of feet as they moved aside to open a path between him and the lantern. The fine lines around his brown eyes had deepened, and his face had grown so pale it seemed almost translucent. Smoothing a lock of blond hair back from his forehead, he drew himself up, then stepped slowly forward, moving as if in a dream. Kate walked beside him, and together they sank onto the step beside the lantern.

“Kate,” Grayson whispered, in a voice filled with wonder. “It’s all come true. All of it.” The duke raised a trembling hand to his forehead and closed his eyes.

“Of course it has,” Kate murmured. “A brave lad saved a life last night and the lady held her lantern high to help him. Of course she did. We always knew she would. It’s in the blood, my love. Like you, the lady lets us see a world lit by the light of dreams. Come, now. Up on your feet. We’ve the Fête to prepare for, and a wedding to plan, and—Lady Nell? What are you doing?”

Nell and Peter had joined the group clustered at the base of the birdcage arbor, and Nell had crept forward until she was within arm’s reach of the lantern. The duke’s eyes opened and he watched, transfixed, as Queen Eleanor favored him with a regal nod.

“Sir Bertram says it’s time to bring the lantern to the lady,” she informed him gently, and lifted the tin lantern by its wire handle. She turned a dignified shoulder on the group and picked her way daintily up the path, heading for the chapel.

A bemused look crept over Grayson’s face as he got to his feet and offered his hand to Kate. Arm in arm they led the others in a silent procession, with Peter proudly taking up the rear. When they had all disappeared from view, Emma turned to Derek.

He was still waiting at the edge of the banquet hall, like an outcast. His eyes were red-rimmed with fatigue, his chin rough with stubble. His hands were thrust deep into the pockets of the jeans he’d worn the night before, and the same blue sweater was flecked with lint and rumpled, as though it had been slept in.

“I’ve been home,” he said. “Had a chat with Mrs. Higgins. Had a look round her room. What used to be her room.” He paused to rub his tired eyes. “I’ve spoken with the children. We’ll talk again, of course, but they ... they seem remarkably willing to let bygones be bygones.” His weary sigh seemed to come from somewhere near his soul. “You’re quite right, Emma. I don’t deserve them.”

“Derek ...” Emma walked slowly toward him. “I shouldn’t have spoken like that to you. I meant to tell you about Mrs. Higgins, but not that way.”

“Perhaps it was the only way,” said Derek. “Don’t think I’d’ve listened to anyone else.”

“But I had no right to say it to you. Do you hear me? No right at all. Before you and Peter and Nell came into my life, I had no idea what it would be like to lose someone I loved. I didn’t shed a tear when Richard left, but I swear, Derek, if I lost you I ... I don’t know what I’d do.”

“It couldn’t be worse than what I’ve done,” said Derek.

“What have you done?” Emma demanded. She stood before him, now, peering up into his guilt-shadowed eyes. “You worked hard, you hired an apparently responsible caretaker, and you raised two children to be strong and clever enough to fool you. Two children who were willing to do whatever it took to give their father time to heal. I think you should be proud of those kids and proud of yourself for raising them. And I think—” Emma’s voice broke and she looked down at the muddy toes of her wellington boots. “I think you must be pretty sick and tired of hearing what I think.”

Derek pulled his hands from his pockets and reached for Emma’s. “I wouldn’t say that,” he murmured. “Quite the contrary. In fact—” Derek looked down in horror. “Emma, darling, what have you done to your hand? My God, is it broken? Has Dr. Singh seen it? Are you in any pain? Oh, my dear—”

“It’s nothing, Derek.” Emma unceremoniously ripped the bandage from her hand and tossed it into the mud at the side of the path. “See? Just a few scrapes and bruises where I hit the wall. Nell’s the one who wrapped it up like that. She insisted on making sure that it was well protected.”

Derek subjected Emma’s hand to a close examination before tucking it into the crook of his elbow. “Left hand, eh? I think I know exactly how Nell feels.” He closed his hand gently over Emma’s bruised knuckles and began strolling toward the chapel. “You know, Emma, there’s something I’ve been meaning to discuss with you.”

Emma stepped carefully around and over the few straggling bits of debris that still littered the path. “What’s that, Derek?”

“Shall we move to Boston or shall you move to Oxford?”

A sudden dip in the gravel threatened, but Emma side-stepped it neatly. “Well ...” she said thoughtfully, “I’d like to have the wedding here—”

“You wouldn’t mind a wedding, then?” Derek stopped and turned to face her.

Emma looked up into his blue eyes. “Syd tells me you’re not the kind of man to offer anything but marriage.”

“But is it what you want?” Derek insisted.

“After the wedding,” Emma repeated firmly, walking on, “I thought we might all move to a third place.”

Derek caught up with her, his eyes shining. “A novel solution. Have a particular spot in mind?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.” Emma leaned in to Derek as he swung his arm up and put it snugly around her shoulders. “I’ve never been there, but I did promise to visit....”

Epilogue

“Derek, you darling man,” drawled Susannah, “if you don’t disarm that son of yours before the show begins, I’m really going to become quite cross.”

“Quite right,” Nanny Cole chimed in. “Boy’s become a menace to society. Jonah’s fault, of course. Don’t know what he was thinking, handing out water pistols to all the little beasts on the day of the Fête. I’ve a good mind to boycott his bloody shop.”

Having delivered their demands, the oddly matched delegation strode away across the great lawn, Susannah floating as gracefully as ever and Nanny Cole marching with her familiar bulldog gait. Derek watched them go, then popped another strawberry into Emma’s mouth.

“I know exactly what old Jonah was thinking,” he murmured lazily.

Emma hid her smile behind the broad brim of her sunhat and hoped that her fiance would keep his voice down. She wanted no more confrontations with Nanny Cole. She’d been up at dawn to put the finishing touches on the chapel garden, and now, in the long afternoon of this lovely high-summer day, she felt positively sybaritic. The ribbon on her sunhat matched the pale-blue frock Mattie had hemmed the night before, and the sapphire on her finger was as blue as Derek’s eyes. She reclined against a pile of soft cushions on a cashmere blanket in the shade of a beach umbrella, with her fingers twined in Derek’s salt-and-pepper curls, a dish of strawberries close at hand and a half-empty bottle of Dom Pérignon settling into a silver bucket filled with rapidly melting ice.

Derek lay on his back, with his head in Emma’s lap, concealing with consummate skill any urgency he might feel about ridding society of the menace his son had become. “He hit Mrs. Shuttleworth square in the shoulder as she was doling out the punch,” he commented, selecting a strawberry for himself. “Splendid shot.”