Garret left his office immediately, hurried through the meandering corridors, raced down the grand stairs, and cut across the foyer whereupon he went to the stables.
Quickly, he took his stallion and rode out. He would not wait another moment.
The small church attached to his own house would make do for the ceremony. After all, chapels of that kind were meant for the private affairs of his family. And he was suddenly glad at the forethought of his ancestors and how they had prepared for moments just like this as well as their own private worship. He’d be marriedwithinn twenty-four hours. And it couldn’t come soon enough… or so he kept repeating.
Lily’s blue eyes sparkled, and her cheeks were a beautiful cherry red in the brisk Yorkshire air. “I cannot believe you are to be a duchess! Six months ago, we could not afford coal or wood for our fires. We were collecting it ourselves from the woods!”
A bell-like laugh danced from her lips. “Can you imagine? It seems now like some great lark. Like a story out of one of the novels that we purchased when we had coin or from our vast library.”
Catherine could not laugh. She wished she could.
The truth was she still didn’t feel herself, but she was glad that Lily was taking this all in stride, and she was also fortunate that the contents of their library and the books that they had read over the last few years had prepared Lily for such an adventurous series of events.
Novels had exploded on the scene in the last century, and now there was an astonishing array of books written which explored the adventures of young ladies and gentlemen who took life into their own hands, and who often had the most terrifying and wondrous things befall them.
The truth of it was that, at present, she would’ve made a very good subject for one of those novels. Her life had been quite strange. Lily’s, on the other hand, had been more staid. She was adjacent to the adventures of a sister who had nearly lost herself to ruin.
But now, like one of the characters in those novels made so popular these days, Catherine had found marriage to an incredibly important man. A happy ending by any novel or reader’s standards.
It astonished her how similar her life was to some of those novels now. She imagined readers sighing with relief over her end.
Except, was her end to be happy?
She was to be a duchess. She would have money settled upon her. He was taking care of her sister.
Her husband was just and liberal. There was not a hint of violence about him. Yes, her ending was very happy indeed.
Love need not apply, and they were friends.
Surely that would be enough, but she had felt a distance from him here over the last days. He had retreated to his myriad of rooms, to the work that he needed to do, and since he had not been here in such a long time, he had been touring the estate. She wished she could have gone with him, but the truth was that she was not up to riding about in a cart or on a horse yet.
Most of the day, she still felt positively miserable.
She forced herself to go out with Lily on these walks because she knew that it would be good for her and the child slowly growing inside her. It was so strange how there was so little evidence from the outward eye that she was pregnant, but she felt it. She felt strange, exhausted, ill, and swollen. The strangest things had occurred to her sense of smell. She smelled the oddest things that no one else did. Eggs made her want to die, and the kippers, dear Lord, that came to the breakfast table made it impossible for her to be on the ground floor at breakfast time at all.
Toast was sent up to her room with good, sweet tea, and she was drinking beef broth by the pot load. Cook did insist it was the best thing for a new baby, as well as butter and bread and salt.
It was very strange, but apparently given how ill she was so often, it was necessary.
She didn’t argue.
They all seemed to know what they were about, and she trusted the ladies who had born several children far more than she did some of the London doctors who had no idea about her body at all.
Those fellows seemed to treat pregnancy as if it was some great sort of strange mystery, rather than something that happened every day to women all over the land. She’d already told one of the doctors to hie off when he had suggested he would use a newfangled set of forceps to deliver her child in the most scientific manner.
She’d taken one look at Adelaide’s face and known it was a poor decision. Adelaide had told her there had been a child over in the next village who had had forceps applied and a most horrific accident had occurred. The doctor had been drinking wine too.
She would no doubt have a trusted physician, and she wanted to have Adelaide’s mother present.
Adelaide’s mother had protested and said that there was a grandmother in the village who was the woman who delivered most of the babies around and would be a far better choice.
Catherine felt a marriage of both old ways and new seemed to be practical. Dr. Hughes, a young and affable fellow, had agreed with her, much to Catherine’s astonishment.
He liked the new inventions but said that many of those inventions were strictly for men’s curiosity and that they weren’t helpful at all.
And he’d been adamant that giving birth on her back was not essential. He had warned her that Louis XIV had created the phenomenon.
She had stared at this young doctor as if he was completely mad.