The Rebel Bride by Catherine Coulter

Julien turned to Kate, who was in the process of wiping her fingers. “I hope you don’t mind Mrs. Cradshaw looking after you. It appears Eliza is enjoying a holiday.”

“Not at all.” She felt relief, truth be told. Sometimes it seemed that Eliza saw too much.

“As to the work you ordered, my lord, it was completed just last week. An excellent job the carpenters did, if you don’t mind my saying so. One would never guess that the rooms did not originally adjoin each other.”

“What work was Mannering talking about?” she asked after Mannering had bowed himself out of the room.

“I merely ordered that our bedrooms be connected by an adjoining door, that’s all.” He chose to ignore the sudden flush on her face and made an elaborate pretense of eating his chicken.

34

“The earl of March is here, my lord, and awaits your presence in the drawing room.”

Sir Oliver ceased tugging at his boot for the moment and looked up at Filber. “He is, is he?” The deep-cut lines that slashed down the corners of his mouth lifted, and to Filber’s surprise, he gave a grunt of amusement. Then he wet his hands with his spittle and ceremoniously slicked down his frizzled gray hair.

Filber quickly dropped his eyes and looked down at the toes of his black shoes. He hoped that his repugnance at Sir Oliver’s distasteful habit would go unnoticed by his master.

Sir Oliver rose, picked up a cravat from the dresser top, and carelessly knotted it about his neck. He peered at the result in the mirror, seemed satisfied with what he saw, and turned toward the door. “Let’s go, Filber. After all, we wouldn’t wish to keep my illustrious son-in-law kicking up his heels, now would we? Such a proud young man he is, so very proud. But not anymore, huh? No, no more. He’s been quite brought down by now.” He gave a cackle of mirth and thwacked the stoop-shouldered Filber on the back.

There was an air of suppressed excitement about Sir Oliver that made Filber uneasy, that and his strange words about the earl of March.

It was barely nine o’clock in the morning, a time when his master was at his most dour and disagreeable. It was strange too, he thought, that Lady Katharine hadn’t come with her husband— not that he blamed her, given how her father had always treated her, the poor little mite.

“It’s gracious of his lordship to pay us a visit, don’t you think, Filber? And such a gray, unpleasant day it is, too. Cold in winter, don’t you know.”

Filber quickened his pace in front of his master down the staircase. Now that he thought about it, the earl, though polite as always, had acted differently, rather too serious, perhaps even abstracted. Why wouldn’t the earl be proud anymore?

Filber reached the drawing room and flung open the double doors. “Sir Oliver, my lord.”

“My dear sir, how very pleasant to see you.”

A common-enough greeting, Filber mused, as Sir Oliver brushed past him into the room and firmly closed the doors behind him.

Julien turned from the window to face his father-in-law. He nodded only slightly in answer to Sir Oliver’s greeting. He didn’t move forward to take his outstretched hand.

Sir Oliver was not at all perturbed by his son-in-law’s coldness. In fact, he grinned broadly, rubbing his hands together. “So cold, isn’t it, my lord?”

He got no response, and continued, “Cut right to the chase, is that what you want to do? Very well, you’re a long time in coming, my lord. If the truth were to be told, I expected to see you much sooner. Won’t you be seated?”

Julien gave him an indifferent look, a look that took him a great deal of effort. Quite simply, he wanted to kill the miserable old man. “No, I think not,” he said. “But perhaps it would be to your advantage to be seated.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Sir Oliver flipped up the tails of his coat and eased himself down into a thread-worn chair. “Well, how very well you’re looking, my lord. What do you think of this cold weather?”