In this excerpt post from The Flavour of Our Deeds, Kitty has been invited not just to tea, but to stay for a few nights until her sister returns to town.
Halfway through the afternoon, the butler announced that the Marquis of Aldridge wondered if Lady Catherine was at home. The gentleman in question was standing at the butler’s shoulder, one sardonic eyebrow raised.
Kitty leapt to her feet, but remembered her manners and greeted him politely. So did Pierrot, with a sniff to his boots and a sharp yap as he sat and offered his paw. Aldridge bent and gravely shook it.
“May I offer you refreshments, my lord?”
“If it pleases you,” he said, amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes, “you may fetch your pelisse and bonnet, and have your maid pack what you might need for several nights’ stay and bring it over to Haverford House. My mother has sent me to invite you for a short stay, for the sake of appearances. She also has another young guest whom I believe you shall be pleased to see.”
Young. So not Luke, who had been at pains on several occasions to point out the decade and a bit that separated their ages. “Paul has been released?” she asked.
“Into my custody,” he confirmed. “And before you ask, Ogilvy has been moved to a private room, where he shall have every comfort and a private guard to see to his safety.”
Kitty felt as if she could breathe freely for the first time since she woke to Thomson’s invasion. “I shall be five minutes,” she said, and hurried up to her room, giving the footman in the hall a message for Millie to meet her there.
Soon, she and Aldridge were on their way in the marquis’s exquisite high-perch phaeton, behind one of the sweetest-going teams she’d ever seen. Millie would follow with her bags.
With her anxiety lifted just a little, Kitty was able to enjoy her journey, especially when the crowds of London dropped behind them, leaving farmland and estates on either side of the road. Haverford House was on the Thames, several miles upriver from the capital.
The great house was in the shape of an H, with an ornate fence barring those without business from the huge front courtyard. Not them, though. The gatekeeper heard the toot of Aldridge’s groom’s horn, and had the gates open before the team swept through without breaking pace.
Whenever Kitty came here to visit her godmother, she felt like a princess called to attend a queen.
They swung in a large arc and pulled to a stop before the flight of steps that led up to a pair of doors that Kitty, as a child, had believed to be created for and by giants. The butler was already opening one of them, and standing before it to await the entry of the marquis and his guest.
Another servant stood ready to conduct Kitty to the duchess, but Aldridge waved him off.
He picked up Pierrot, who made no objection. “I shall escort Lady Kitty myself,” he said, and, with the dog in his arms, took her up four flights of stairs to the third level of the building, through the main wing of the house to the family wing, and then along a passage to the rooms that housed the nursery and schoolroom.
“We’ve made young Paul comfortable up here, with my sisters,” he told Kitty. Sure enough, they entered a large comfortable sitting room, where Paul sat on the hearth rug with the duchess’s youngest ward, Frances Grenford. Her Grace of Haverford and her other two wards, Jessica and Matilda, watched as Paul and Frances toasted bread and cheese over the fire.
“Again?” Aldridge asked him. “Good afternoon, Mama, ladies.”
Paul returned Aldridge’s grin. “You hauled me away from the bagwig’s office before I could eat the last lot,” he complained.