Page 61 of Kathryn

“Yes?” Betje prodded. “Please, Katie—tell me the truth. I know this conversation is appallingly blunt, but I fear what will happen if we spare both our blushes.”

“I’m not sure your son wants any other sort of marriage. Based on our first few days as man and wife, I’m not sure he even believes any other union is possible.”

“Oh, he does, Katie! I am sure he does,” Betje said, her eyes almost feverish with something that looked like hope.

“What makes you say that?” Katie asked.

“He might not look like me, but he is at least half mine. There is no reason for him to be like Boon—” She broke off, her eyes sliding away from Katie for a moment. Something that looked like shame flickered across her pretty face. “I love Gerrit and I want him to be happy. He won’t be happy if he continues on this way. I want to help you fight for Gerrit—and for your marriage.”

Katie felt almost scorched by the emotion rolling off the other woman. What made Betje believe such a travesty of a marriage could be saved? Especially since she had not managed to save her own to Gerrit’s father?

Doing something is better than doing nothing.

Katie met the other woman’s desperate, pleading gaze. “What would you have me do?”

Chapter Sixteen

Gerrit handed the reins to his groom and strode toward the house, his mind still back at the dig. It had been months since he’d had a chance to immerse himself in his work, but that did not mean the project came to a halt in his absence. Gerrit was fortunate to have a man like James Jessop to oversee matters whenever his ducal duties took him to London or one of his other estates.

“Ah, there you are, Gerrit.” His mother stood standing on the landing, as if she had been waiting for him.

“Did you need something, Your Grace?” he asked, unable to entirely keep his irritation from his voice. He was tired and dirty and wanted a bath.

“I wish to speak to you.”

Gerrit made a get on with it gesture.

“Not here in the corridor,” she said, for once not dithering but giving him a direct look that he did not like. “In the library.”

He wanted to tell her he did not have time but could see by her determined expression that would only postpone the inevitable.

Neither of them spoke until Gerrit was seated behind his desk and his mother perched on a chair across from him. All the furniture in the library had been built for Gerrit’s father—who had been only an inch shorter than Gerrit’s own six feet and three inches—and so only the toes of her slippers grazed the floor.

“I know you did not want me to come to Briarly, but I refuse to be a stranger to my own daughter-in-law. Especially as I fear that she will soon be banished to Spenwood to live with me.”

He blinked at this frontal assault. “I beg your pardon?”

“You will do as your father did. As you did with Christina.”

He flinched at the sound of his dead wife’s name. “I fail to see what concern any of—”

“It is my concern because I am your mother and you are my son. You are my only child. I care about your happiness and—”

“If you care so much about my happiness then why did you come to Briarly and immediately disrupt—”

“Did you learn nothing at all from your first marriage?” she demanded, talking over him in an overly loud voice.

Her words were like kerosine on a bonfire. “Have a care, madam,” Gerrit said coldly. “For you know not of what you speak.”

“I know exactly what I am talking about because Boon told me what advice he would give you regarding your marriage. He told me how you could never love a woman and should not even try. I begged him not to doom your marriage as he had done to ours, but he refused and because of that, Christina ran and—”

Gerrit slammed his hand down on the desk, the loud thwack making his mother jump. “You know not of what you speak.”

“Then tell me why a man with your obvious intelligence would behave the same—”

“I scarcely needed to employ my father’s advice with Christina given that she was already pregnant when she came to our marriage bed.”

His mother’s eyes bulged. “Wh-what?”