She laughed, wiping at her eyes as relief at having such a confidante washed through her. “I think you are right. I think Shakespeare did steal a great deal, certainly from his predecessors. Possibly from the fairy tales as well. Maybe I should have paid more heed to the warnings in those stories.”
“My lady, I think your life is working out very well indeed.” Adelaide tutted. “So all the choices that you have made, no matter how odd, are good ones.”
“Oh, Adelaide,” she said, daring to take the maid’s reddened hands and squeeze them. “That is the kindest thing that anyone could have ever said, for I think I have made many foolish mistakes indeed.”
“Then I hope that I am as foolish,” Adelaide teased, squeezing her hands back.
“Don’t say it,” she countered. “Do not. We do not know if I am lucky yet, Adelaide. There’s much that lies ahead.”
She wanted to feel hope, but she did not. At least not for her marriage.
She had seen the look on the duke’s face, the resignation, the acceptance, and the fear. He did not truly wish to marry her, but nor would he cut her or his child off.
So, though she was to be a duchess, the feeling deep within her heart was not one of anticipation but of wary dread.
Chapter 17
The long coach ride to York was sheer misery.
Catherine was rather glad that she was no longer attempting to be the duke’s mistress because if she was, she did not see how he could ever see her as appealing again.
She had found herself face over a pot in the coach, casting up her accounts again and again.
It was, in one word, awful.
The duke sat by her, stroking her back gently, kindly murmuring words of encouragement as she heaved up her guts again and again. Her lady’s maid sat up top.
She was rather glad that Adelaide did not have to witness her entirely low state. But they would stop every hour.
They had to, otherwise they would never reach York in her state. She would take fresh air, they would toss out the contents of the pot, it would be rinsed, and Adelaide would thrust bread at her, insisting that she eat it.
She hated trying to chew the bread. She hated the fact that Adelaide sprinkled salt atop it, but apparently it was necessary.
The duke encouraged her to eat.
She did not want to eat.
And she was tempted to throw the crusts of bread at both of them and rail that if she ate, she would vomit more. Both insisted that if she didnoteat, she would vomit more.
She didn’t like the fact that she felt like the beginner in all of this.
But the truth was, the duke had experienced this before. She did not envy him the fact that he had, but it was rather difficult to be the one having the baby and know the least about the event. Even her maid, who clearly had never been with a young man, knew more than she.
But this was, of course, because she had witnessed her mother give birth so many times.
When the coach finally rattled onto the estate, she felt not elation but a sense of relief so great that she longed to crow.
Instead, she could not even lift her head from the duke’s lap.
In the past, no doubt, he would’ve teased her profusely about such a thing, but not now. Now, he was kind and careful. And she moaned as the coach went over a groove in the road.
“I will have to castigate the gardeners,” he said. “No more potholes. Nothing can bother my duchess,” he teased.
“I don’t want anyone to be punished,” she groaned.
“Oh, Cat,” he said gently, “I wouldn’t punish anyone. I promise you that. I’m just trying to make you laugh.”
“I can’t laugh,” she half sobbed. “I feel as if…”