Page 10 of Goodbye, Earl (Ladies’ Revenge Club #4)

S ometime later, Claire found herself on the floor of the dower house, surrounded by puppies.

The quartet of tiny dogs bounded around her, giving tiny leaps and tugging on the hem of her skirt.

Occasionally one would attempt to scale its way into her lap and then tumble right off like a little rolling potato.

From across the room, Abra watched, her dark brown eyes occasionally meeting Claire’s with a look that said better you than me.

The dog kicked herself onto her side, stretching out her little legs like stiff twigs in front of her, letting her swollen teats rest without any fear of being put to use for a time.

Tommy absently touched the dog’s side, scratching at it with one hand while she fussed at her sketch with the other.

Claire didn’t remember deciding to come here.

She only recalled turning from the orchard as Freddy, Patricia, and Oliver had departed breakfast in the direction of Crooked Nook, and knowing that she must go in the opposite direction.

She did not often visit the dower house, truth be told, and her relationship with Tommy was best described as cordial. Necessary.

They had never bonded.

Tommy, however, had not asked any questions. She had simply led her into the sitting room and returned to her spot on the settee, where she was evidently sketching some ferns next to a cup of cooling tea.

Tommy was often taciturn like that. Claire didn’t really understand it, but she did, in this moment, find it comforting somehow.

In fact, she understood very little about her grandmother-in-law.

Tommy was self-possessed to the point of coming across somewhat masculine.

Her hair was stark white, often poorly combed, and always stuffed into something that must have started as a neat bun, but had begun to unravel the instant it was left to its own devices.

She had nut-brown skin from spending so much time in the sun, a thing Claire had thought all English girls of breeding were raised to abjectly fear from a young age.

She carried a cane but never seemed particularly dependent on it.

She called it her walking stick. Perhaps that was all it was.

Just now, the stick was leaning against the arm of the settee, its brass rings gleaming against the smooth wood.

Even her name was odd, Claire had always thought. What sort of woman wanted to be called Tommy rather than Lady Bentley? What sort of woman insisted upon it?

“Her maiden name was Thomas,” Patricia Hightower had said, by way of explanation after Claire’s first introduction to the woman. “Her husband and friends always just called her Tommy.”

“Not her first name?” Claire had asked, perplexed.

“Does she seem like a woman who would answer to Judith?” Patricia had returned with amusement, then she’d shuddered and added, “or Judy?”

No, Claire thought as she gazed at Tommy. No, she did not.

With a jolt, she looked back at the dog. Abra , she realized. The Biblical Judith’s maid. The one who had … who … wait a moment.

“Tommy,” said Claire, drawing the other woman’s attention. Her eyes were blue, but not the same hue as Patricia, Freddy, and Oliver. They were dark, a fierce cobalt. They were like Silas’s eyes. “Tommy, did you name your dog after the slaying of Holofernes, in the Bible?”

Tommy gave a dry chuckle, setting her pencil to the side and regarding Claire on her floor. She wore her husband’s old pinky ring on her second finger, the dull ruby catching the light as she moved her hands. “I did. She is Abra the Fourth, actually.”

“But that’s ghastly!” said Claire. “She’s such a gentle dog!”

“Ah, well, perhaps,” said Tommy with a fond rub of Abra’s ears, “but she’s not been provoked, has she?”

“I suppose not,” Claire allowed. “I only just remembered that your given name is Judith. It is clever, of course, just a bit … dark?”

“Dark? Never,” Tommy returned with a sniff. “Holofernes was the villain, my dear.”

“That’s true,” Claire said, though she couldn’t quite banish her frown. “He was.”

“He was,” agreed Tommy, those dark eyes flashing, almost opaque in her engagement.

“And it is not as though you, yourself, have been above punishing a wayward man. After all, that’s how you ended up here, lady of the manor.

Perhaps you are just as fierce as Abra’s namesake and mine own, hm? Ever considered that?”

“Me? I’ve never beheaded a man!” Claire squeaked, startling all four of the puppies from their attempts to scale her knees and making them bunch up like pill bugs, scattering to all four corners of the compass rose.

“Not yet,” Tommy corrected with another dry chuckle. “But you’ve struck your blows in your own way, haven’t you? You and that razor-sharp little chit that married Silas. I saw those gossip sheets, Claire. I know your sword has edges.”

“My sword ,” Claire repeated, aghast. “Can you imagine ?”

“You holding a sword, my dear?” Tommy asked, fussing with some loose hair over her ear, twining the silver strands over her sun-spotted fingers. “Of course I can.”

“You cannot,” Claire returned petulantly before she could stop herself.

This time she got a full-bodied laugh from the other woman. Tommy laughed like a man too, unabashed, at a natural pitch, without covering her mouth. She was utterly unconcerned with the trappings of her femininity.

Claire could only stare.

“You know, girl,” said Tommy, “this might be the only sincere conversation we’ve ever had. I like you much better unguarded.”

Claire scoffed. “You are alone in that, I assure you.”

Tommy only smiled, a gold filling at the back of her mouth catching the light. “Oh, Lady Bentley,” she said with a shake of her head, “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

Wedding chaos was a mercy.

For the remainder of the day and the one following it, Claire found herself caught and tossed about in the riptide of nuptial logistics, dramatics, and aesthetics.

“Orange blossoms?” Patricia had said with a sigh. “Really? I think we’re well past that, Raul.”

“We are not necessarily,” he had replied, kissing his bride-to-be’s hand. “I intend to test the matter.”

“Raul!” she’d gasped, blushing furiously.

Claire did not drop the pincushion. She considered this a feat on its own.

In addition to retaining her grip on it, she committed to feigning deafness from across the room, where she was knelt by a stool, helping the tailor pin a tiny, royal blue sash on her son.

No matter how much they took in, it was always just a little bit too long.

“What test?” Oliver asked, frowning. “I don’t want a test.”

“Papa Raul is teasing me,” Patricia answered from across the room, evidently not as shy about the subject as Claire was. “He thinks we ought to have a baby. What do you think, Ollie, dearest?”

“That is what happens,” Oliver said with an uncertain flick of his eyes from one adult to the next, “after a wedding. Isn’t it?”

“It is,” Raul confirmed with a smirk, much to Patricia’s annoyance.

“I am almost fifty years old!” she protested, which only spread the deafness bug from Claire to Raul himself.

“There was a woman back in Kildare,” Ember said lazily from the sofa by the window, “who kept having babies until she was near sixty.”

“That isn’t helping, dear.” Patricia sighed, looking around for her fan, which she used to wave her groom out of the room with the sheer force of gentle, summoned wind.

“I wasn’t trying to help,” Ember had returned pleasantly, winning her a glare from Dot and a half-hearted swat on the arm from Millie.

“I’m going, I’m going,” Raul had said with a chuckle. “Shall I take the boy with me?”

“Yes!” said Oliver.

“Not yet!” said Claire.

“Go!” said Patricia.

After which, another hour or so passed in a flurry of flowers and place settings and the pronunciation of words like travesseiros, until finally, the bride took her leave to begin her private preparations and Claire was able to collapse on the chair opposite her compatriots.

“Remind me to thank Joe,” Ember had said with a little raise of her brows, “for the simplicity of our own vows.”

“It isn’t so bad,” Dot had protested. “I had a wedding with quite a lot of flowers and fluff myself, didn’t I?”

“Yours had the good sense to be in London,” Ember reminded her. “Millie’s too.”

Then, as though they had all just realized that she, too, was married, the three of them turned in tandem to stare at Claire.

She made a face rather than acknowledge it.

“Well, but you eloped, didn’t you?” Ember continued as though Claire had not only participated in the conversation, but welcomed further comment. “What did that look like?”

“It looked like a couple of idiots on the bow of a ship,” Claire snapped, “making decisions they hadn’t thought through.”

“A ship!” Millie repeated, her dark eyes widening. “You never told me that. You wed on the Channel? Not in Paris?”

“On a ship,” Claire repeated, hating how vividly it rose into her mind, how easily she could smell the foggy steam and the low mist on the air, how quickly she could recall the endless spray of stars above them, haloed by a crescent moon. “At night.”

“At night!” Ember put in, clearly delighted.

Claire winced. She hadn’t meant to say at night . Why had she? And why could she taste sea salt on her lips now?

She could see Freddy for a moment. The Freddy of many years ago, with shorter hair and a smoother brow. She could see the way he looked at her as the water boomed under the hull of the ship, as spray erupted from the sides. She could feel the warmth of his hands in her own.

She quickly averted her eyes, blinking away the emotion that was threatening to rise in them.

Dot, ever the savior, cleared her throat, her pale green eyes watching Claire with a steady gentleness that Claire thought she absolutely did not deserve at all, in this context.

“I’ve never been to an evening wedding before,” Dot said. “The fact that instead of a wedding breakfast, we will be celebrating Lady Bentley and Dom Raul with a midnight banquet is very romantic, is it not?”

And mercifully, that did distract them, pulling them into speculations and debate over one way beyond the other.

“None of you has ever been to a proper Catholic wedding,” Ember said with a sniff, “and it shows.”

“You didn’t have a proper Catholic wedding,” Millie pointed out.

“Aye, well, I’m a terrible Catholic, aren’t I? Besides, Joe is a Quaker. Possibly also a terrible one, and that style of wedding sounded like being put in a punishment corner when I was in school. We’re both lapsed, and at the time we were both a bit impatient, so we opted for the London way.”

“Here’s to the London way,” Millie agreed. “But tell us more about the Quaker weddings.”

“Well, from what I gather,” Ember said, leaning forward like they’d be overheard, “everyone just gathers in a barn and stares at each other in total silence until the couple feels married. It can go on for hours!”

There was a pause.

“That can’t be true,” Claire said. “No vicar?”

“No! Just people staring at each other,” Ember insisted.

“For an indeterminate amount of time?” Millie pressed.

“Yes!”

Another pause as they all considered it, with a broad variance of expressions on their faces.

“Oh,” said Dot after a moment. “Well, I think that sounds nice, actually. Lovely.”

“Maybe for you,” Ember said with a frown. “I don’t do silent.”

“She doesn’t,” Millie had agreed with a quirk of her lips. “Her husband performs all the silence for her.”

“Ah, he does,” Ember had agreed with a wistful sigh. “Bless him. Do you think Dom Raul is chatty or silent when he’s alone with Lady Bentley? I can imagine it either way.”

“Perhaps you should stop imagining that,” Dot had said flatly, winning giggles from the other women.

But then, of course, it was impossible not to imagine it, especially with a man as handsome as Dom Raul.

So they all did, in exactly the style of a Quaker wedding.