The Heir - Catherine Coulter [20]
“Perhaps you will, in time,” Lady Ann said, her voice just a bit sharp, but there was amusement there as well. “Come, Arabella. You have far more need of this than do Mrs. Tucker’s feet. Drink your medicine. Do it now or you will have to deal with both Paul and me.”
Arabella, still stunned by her mother’s unlikely behavior, downed the entire glass without pause. Lady Ann could scarce restrain a chuckle. Had she been so weak then? Had she but to be firm and Arabella would obey her? “I will send Gracie to you now, my love. Just ring if there is anything you need.” Lady Ann bent swiftly over her daughter and kissed her lightly on the cheek. She said softly, “Forgive me for not telling you of Justin’s existence. I have grown more and more concerned about your not knowing, yet it was a promise I made to your father. I did try to get him to change his mind, but he never changed his mind about anything, once he’d made it up, you know that.”
“Didn’t he? About anything, Mama? Surely Papa wasn’t that certain of himself all the time, was he?” Then she sighed in the face of her mother’s silence. Perhaps he had been. She had always prayed that she would have her father’s strength of will. But look at where his strength of will had brought her. She had two months to marry a man who looked like her, who looked like her brother and her father as well, was more arrogant and cold than her father at his most displeased, and she hated him.
What to do?
“Good night, little Bella.” Dr. Branyon smiled and patted her cheek. His hand was firm and strong. She remembered his hands from her earliest years.
She was asleep before they were out of her bedchamber, their heads close together, their talk too quiet for her to hear.
Dr. Branyon couldn’t prevent his chuckle. “I now believe I have seen everything,” he said, grinning down at Lady Ann. “You telling Arabella what to do? By all that’s holy, that was Arabella obeying? It boggles the mind. Perhaps you have become a witch. If I look about closely will I find a black cat who is your familiar?”
She remained silent, and he knew she was thinking. He knew that look, he knew her every look. “You have stolen the indomitable will from your daughter. Never before have I observed you having the last word. It pleased me, Ann.”
Lady Ann sighed. “You are right. I was a Milquetoast, wasn’t I?”
“Well, no, not that, exactly. It’s just that the earl and Arabella—they seemed somehow to smother you with their vitality, their boundless energy. And both of them autocrats, no denying that. I could never quite feel Lady Ann’s personality in Evesham Abbey.”
“They are terribly alike. Sometimes, Paul, I wonder what I did all those years, what I thought.” She frowned a moment and gazed almost unwillingly down at the huge Deverill family ring on her third finger. Somehow it did not seem to weigh so heavily as usual on her hand. She drew a deep breath and looked up with absolute trust into a face whose every expression she had memorized long ago. “Many times I have felt that I am the child and Arabella, the fond, yet dominating mother. I have felt sometimes very out of place with her, as if she regarded me with a sort of affectionate condescension. You know, of course, how the earl felt.” She found, surprisingly, that she spoke without bitterness.
Dr. Branyon fought down the familiar surge of anger that had gnawed at his belly so many times during the past years. “Yes, I know.” She didn’t see his jaw tighten or his eyes darken, but he knew that even if she had, it wouldn’t have surprised or dismayed her.
Lady Ann stopped in the middle of the entrance hall and looked dispassionately about her. There were grand Renaissance screens, with two archways divided by fluted pilasters and enriched with elaborate paneling of splendid craftsmanship. All the trappings of war were displayed on and about the walls—hand breastplates and morions, buff leather