“I can do anything I want.”
His feet ate up the carpet with long strides, barely pausing when he reached his grandmother’s door, which was conveniently ajar for easy entry.
“What,” he snapped, when he’d made his way to the side of her bed, “do you think you’re doing?”
But his grandmother looked . . .
Wrong.
Her eyes lacked their usual hardness, and truth be told, she didn’t look quite enough like a witch to resemble the Augusta Cavendish he knew and didn’t quite love.
“Good heavens,” he said despite himself, “are you all right?”
“Where is Miss Eversleigh?” his grandmother asked, her eyes darting frantically about the room.
“I’m right here,” Grace said, skidding across the room to the other side of her bed.
“Did you get it? Where is the painting? I want to see my son.”
“Ma’am, it’s late,” Grace tried to explain. She edged forward, then looked at the dowager intently as she said it again: “Ma’am.”
“You may instruct a footman to procure it for you in the morning,” Thomas said, wondering why he thought that something unspoken had just passed between the two women. He was fairly certain his grandmother did not take Grace into her confidence, and he knew that Grace did not return the gesture. He cleared his
throat. “I will not have Miss Eversleigh undertaking such manual labor, and certainly not in the middle of the night.”
“I need the painting, Thomas,” the dowager said, but it was not her usual brittle snap. There was a catch in her voice, a weakness that was unnerving. And then she said, “Please.”
He closed his eyes. His grandmother never said please.
“Tomorrow,” he said, recomposing himself. “First thing if you wish it.”
“But—”
“No,” he interrupted. “I am sorry you were accosted this evening, and I shall certainly do whatever is necessary— within reason—to facilitate your comfort and health, but this does not include whimsical and ill-timed demands. Do you understand me?”
Her lips pursed, and he saw a flash of her usual, haughty self in her eyes. For some reason, he found this reassuring. It wasn’t that he viewed her usual, haughty self with much fondness, but the world was a more balanced place when everyone behaved as expected.
She stared at him angrily.
He stared back. “Grace,” he said sharply, without turning around, “go to bed.”
There was a long beat of silence, and then he heard Grace depart.
“You have no right to order her about that way,” his grandmother hissed.
“No, you have no right.”
“She is my companion.”
“Not your slave.”
His grandmother’s hands shook. “You don’t understand. You could never understand.”
“For which I am eternally grateful,” he retorted.
Good Lord, the day he understood her was the day he ceased to like himself altogether. He’d spent a lifetime trying to please this woman, or if not that, then half a life trying to please her and the next half trying to avoid her. She had never liked him. Thomas could recall his childhood well enough to know that much. It did not bother him now; he’d long since realized she did not like anyone.
But apparently she once had. If his father’s resent-ful ramblings were any indication, Augusta Cavendish had adored her middle son, John. She had always bemoaned the fact that he had not been born the heir, and when Thomas’s father had unexpectedly inherited, she had made it abundantly clear that he was a weak substitute. John would have been a better duke, and if not him, then Charles, who, as the eldest, had been groomed for the spot. When he had perished, Reginald, born third, had been left alone with a bitter mother and a wife he did not like or respect. He had always felt that he had been forced to marry beneath him because no one thought he’d inherit, and he saw no reason not to make this opinion clear and loud.
For all that Reginald Cavendish and his mother appeared to detest one another, they were in truth remarkably alike. Neither one of them liked anyone, and certainly not Thomas, ducal heir or not.
“It’s a pity we can’t choose our families,” Thomas murmured.
His grandmother looked at him sharply. He had not spoken loudly enough for her to make out his words, but his tone would have been clear enough to interpret.
“Leave me alone,” she said.
“What happened to you this evening?” Because this made no sense. Yes, perhaps she’d been accosted by highwaymen, and perhaps she’d even had a gun pointed at her chest. But Augusta Cavendish was no frail flower.
She’d be spitting nails when they laid her in her grave, of that he had no doubt.
Her lips parted and a vengeful gleam sparked in her eyes, but in the end she held her tongue. Her back straightened and her jaw tightened, and finally she said, “Leave.”
He shrugged. If she did not wish to allow him to play the dutiful grandson, then he considered himself ab-solved of the responsibility. “I heard they did not get your emeralds,” he said, heading for the door.
“Of course not,” she snapped.
He smiled. Mostly because she could not see it. “It was not well done of you,” he said, turning to face her when he reached the door. “Foisting them upon Miss Eversleigh.”
She scoffed at that, not dignifying his comment with a reply. He hadn’t expected her to; Augusta Cavendish would never have valued her companion over her emeralds.
“Sleep well, dear grandmother,” Thomas called out, stepping into the corridor. Then he popped his head back into the doorway, just far enough to deliver a parting shot. “Or if you can’t manage that, be silent about it. I’d ask for invisibility, but you keep insisting you’re not a witch.”