Page 63 of Kathryn

Once the last plate had been cleared, the dowager glanced at Katie and gave her an encouraging look, reminding her that she was the mistress of Briarly. At least for now.

Katie stood. “We shall retire to the drawing room and leave you gentlemen to your port.”

“I hope you will join us afterward?” the dowager piped up.

Dulverton frowned. “I will work in the library, and I am sure Mr. Sessions has better ways to spend his evening.”

The steward’s face reddened at his employer’s rudeness.

Undaunted, the dowager smiled cheerily at her son. “Then we shall join you in the library, my dear.”

Dulverton’s lips tightened and for one moment Katie thought he might actually forbid them to invade his sanctum. But even he was not so obnoxious. “As you wish, madam.”

The moment the door shut behind them the duchess turned to one of the footmen. “Will you please tell Dove that I want my needlework brought to the library.”

“Of course, Your Grace.”

“Oh—and tell her to fetch Her Grace’s basket as well.”

Katie opened her mouth to tell him not to bother, but the man was halfway up the stairs.

“Won’t it be lovely to have somebody to chat with while we are so virtuously employed?” Betje asked, taking her arm, and guiding her toward the library.

Needlework.

Katie forced a smile. “Yes, it will be lovely.”

An hour later…

“Oh, Katie! How clever and quick you are at this,” Betje twittered happily. “Why, it looks beautiful now that you have put it to rights. I’m afraid I have never been much of a hand when it comes to such delicate work. Indeed, it seems a terrible shame that—” The dowager broke off and pulled her lips between her teeth before saying, “No, no. I couldn’t ask that of you.”

Katie bit back a groan. “Would you like me to finish it for you, Betje?”

The older woman clapped her hands. “Oh, would you?”

“It would be my pleasure,” she lied, unable to resist sliding a look beneath her lashes from the chirping, chattering dowager to her dour, glowering son.

Earlier Dulverton had marched into the library as if he were entering a gladiatorial ring, offering Katie and Betje the most minimal of greetings before striding resolutely to his desk.

When the dowager had suggested the three of them play a game of widow whist, he had given his mother a look of horror and tonelessly, but firmly, rejected her offer before settling down at his desk.

For the most part he ignored them, but from time to time he would glance up at his mother’s louder expostulations or laughter and regard her with a furrowed brow, looking both perplexed and irritated.

Exactly the sort of look he was giving the dowager right now.

“—and there is one of my gowns,” the dowager happily chattered, blissfully unaware she was the focus of her son’s scowl, “that is the most delightful shade of pink. Not pink pink, you understand, but more of a rose pink. Although not a common sort of rose, but one that is less of a pinkish-red and more of a… well, a pinkish pink perhaps. Quite my favorite shade of—”

Katie caught her lower lip to keep from laughing at Dulverton’s revolted expression as his mother rabbited on. The woman could talk, but as she rarely required a response Katie found her company quite soothing.

Obviously, her son did not feel the same way.

Katie set down her tambour to root through the dowager’s hideously untidy needlework bag, searching for more periwinkle blue floss to finish the hydrangea she had mostly unpicked. Never in her life had she seen needlework as poor as the dowager’s. Not even her sister Hy—who’d viewed needlework as a worse punishment than being stretched on the rack—had produced such dreadful work. How could a woman Betje’s age be so very bad at it? And why would she persist in a hobby when the result was so atrocious?

Now that Katie had volunteered to finish the work, she would have to unpick the rest of the flowers, and also the vase itself. Indeed, she’d have to start afresh. As she untangled a ball of thread, she reflected that this was the first time she had picked up a needle since last October when she had reluctantly agreed to embroider several handkerchiefs Phoebe had begged her to make for Needham for Christmas.

“Your monograms are even lovelier than Stacia’s,” Phoebe had said. “But please never tell her I said so.”

Katie did not think her work was nicer than Andrew’s wife’s exquisite illuminated letters, but she was a good deal faster.