James merely gave him a slight wry smile. He had a feeling that all of this flattery was leading to something.
“You look different,” Arthur said suddenly.
“Perhaps I’m fatter. The food here is good, and the hospitality is unparalleled.”
“Noooo . . . don’t think that’s it.” He fixed his father with a startlingly good approximation of his own patented penetrating look. He had his mother’s blue eyes. “On dit says you’ve been accepting dinner invitations.” Now he was fishing.
“Yes,” the duke said curtly.
“Galworthy?”
“Yes. Why?”
“The last time I saw him at White’s, he mentioned he’d invited you to dinner.”
“He did. I accepted. I went.”
Arthur studied him, and apparently realized the futility of continued questions along those lines.
He lowered his teacup to its saucer. He took a breath.
“Well, then. As I mentioned earlier, I’m not really here to interrogate you about opera dancers.” He said it lightly.
“She’s a singer.”
Arthur’s eyes flared in surprise.
Too late, James realized how sharply he’d spoken. Hearing Mariana reduced to two words, one of them wrong, both of them disdainful, had slid into him like a shiv. Somewhere out of reach of his control.
His son cleared his throat. “Opera singer, then. I’ve found a potential buyer for the farm,” he said quietly.
He waited for his father to say something.
James did not.
“I think you’d like him,” he pressed on. “Name of Elkhorn. He was born on a farm in Germany, raised in England. Fought for England, made a good bit of money and inherited some, and he’d like to retire to the country. Knows sheep and cattle. He’ll be here four days from Friday. It’s Cathryn’s birthday that Sunday and I thought . . . I just thought . . . will you come out to talk to him?”
Valkirk sighed.
“We’d be . . . we’d be honored by your visit, just the same. And do you remember that day we went fishing on the Ouse, when I was ten years old?” His son still sounded tentative. Almost wistful.
His son shouldn’t need to feel “honored” to get a visit from his father.
Nor feel so cautious about issuing the invitation. Or have so few memories of his father that they both knew precisely which day they’d gone fishing on the Ouse. By rights he would have had dozens of memories of fishing on the Ouse with his father.
And this was it, James realized suddenly, with a bludgeoning guilt. This was his son’s challenge in the world; the thing that had tested him and shaped his character, for better or worse. He had a father who was more knowable as a book than as a man. Who belonged more to England than to his family. He had so seldom been present. So often away on campaign. A son who had lost his mother five years ago, and had only him now.
He wanted to say yes.
And yet . . . it meant he’d be away in Sussex on the Night of the Nightingale.
And he imagined Mariana standing in front of the staff of The Grand Palace on the Thames. Perhaps some of the local drunks who spent good portions of their days propped against buildings, who could be lured in by the promise of lemon seed cakes and ratafia to fill seats. He wanted her to be able to look out and see someone who understood that her beauty and greatness was due to far, far more than her voice.
He had four more days with her. Only four more days.
Perhaps his son’s appearance was a sign, and a reminder of his duty, and a mercy. The end of their affair demarcated by life’s demands, their goodbyes swift. They would go their separate ways.
“You’re determined to sell it?” Less a question than an affirmation.
He could not deny he was disappointed.
His son stared into his tea. “I understand the farm is important to you, sir. It’s less that I want to sell it, than I would like to build my wife the home of her dreams . . . and I want to design that home myself, and to do it with my own resources. She wants the wing with the dormers and turrets, and I refuse to trouble you for money, sir.” He said this firmly. “I know how fortunate I’ve been and how fortunate my children will be.”
“You’re interested in architecture?” James said sharply. It was the first he’d heard of it.
“I’m passionate about it.”
“Well, that’s quite a fine thing.”
Arthur’s face blazed with pride. “Thank you. I’ve been studying it, to tell you the truth. And . . . I’d hoped you’d give some consideration to my reasons for wanting to sell it. And shouldn’t the land and livestock go to someone who has the will and knowledge to make it prosper? And I know . . . I think Cathryn would like to have you. Show you off a bit around town.” His son’s smile was crooked. A little diffident.
James hesitated.
“Yes. Of course I’ll come. I’d be happy to.”
Arthur’s face went brilliant with pleasure, which he quickly tamped. Probably from force of habit.
Guilt jabbed James in the solar plexus. It was just that easy to make his son happy, and it was a joy to do it. How many of those happy expressions had he missed when he was on campaign? Traveling on business for the crown? When parliament was in session?
“Well, I’ll leave you to your work.” Arthur stood at once. He was used to leaving his father to his work, too.
James also stood. “It was good to see you. Truly. Even if you scolded me,” James said.
They shook hands, and James added a back pat that almost but not quite turned into a hug. “I would hope this goes without saying, but please do not disclose my location to anyone, and that includes Cathryn.”
“I wouldn’t dare compromise your safety or your reputation, sir.”
And with that little offhand reference to the dangerous Miss Wylde again, he was gone.
Chapter Fifteen
The serious business of fashioning the little tissue paper roses which, they decided, would be strung on thread and festooned across the backs of chairs, and stuffed into urns that would occupy either end of the refreshments table and along the walls of the room, continued in the sitting room that night. The resident gentlemen of the house—Captain Hardy, Lord Bolt, and Mr. Delacorte—were at present building said refreshments table from lumber left over from the stage. The table would be draped with a tablecloth elevated to elegance by more garlands. The duke was out tonight.
All twenty of the questionable handkerchiefs had been embroidered with TGPOTT, the initials of The Grand Palace on the Thames, and the fishnets—dyed in indigo in vats in the new Triton Group warehouse—had been fetched back home. The ladies had spent the afternoon painstakingly affixing to them their stars of various sizes at different lengths.
And then Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt and Mr. Delacorte had gallantly scaled ladders for the heavy work of suspending and draping them from the ceiling while the ladies stood below, supervising, criticizing, critiquing, bickering, pondering, and instructing.
Within two hours, the goodwill of Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt was as full of holes as the fishing nets.
“I think,” Captain Hardy said carefully, when he’d descended, “we need to make hiring footmen a priority.”