Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
“My apologies, mum,” Renly responded. “Shall I fetch you some tea?”
My grandmother shooed him off with a wave of her hand. When I’d been a child, she never would have simply waved someone away. Whenever my grandfather had been absent, her eyes had always done the talking for her, and on the rare occasion when she’d used her voice to reprimand someone, her words had been spoken cooly and quietly. I hadn’t been entirely immune to her disinterest and steely silences. I suspected she would have been able to bring even the most powerful of men to their knees with her sharp tongue and cutting looks.
My grandmother also hadn’t looked anything like the ones I’d seen on TV commercials: the sweet, elderly women who held a plate of fresh-out-of-the-oven cookies for all the excited kids waiting around them.
My grandmother had been too refined to make something as unimportant as cookies, and based on her upbringing, I doubted she even knew how to cook. She employed people to do things like that for her. Mother Ashby was proper, dignified, and always presented herself with grace and class. The woman walking slowly next to me was a stranger. My grandmother wore a simple, long white cotton gown that was smudged with dirt. Her normally neatly styled hair was loosely braided and had numerous flyaway strands sticking to her damp neck.
“I’m so glad you made it home safely from that awful place,” Mother Ashby said as she leaned against me. “When your father told me you’d decided to stay in the army instead of coming home, I’d been certain I’d never see you again.”
“The army?” I asked. My grandmother knew I was a Marine and that my last tour had ended shortly before I’d been arrested.
Before my arrest, she’d praised me for my accomplishments despite the fact that she’d never wanted me to enlist in the military in the first place. It hadn’t been only because of the danger I’d be in, but she’d hoped I would learn to run the family business alongside my father and eventually take over the reins of the Ashby empire, just like all the Ashby men who’d come before me.
“Oh yes,” my grandmother said with a slight nod. She relied on my support to step up the single stair that led into the house. I suspected we were headed for the solarium. It wasn’t a large room, but it was lined with the more delicate kinds of roses and had a sweeping view of the outdoor rose gardens. Just like the garden, she’d never let me join her in the room because it had been her “quiet place.”
As we walked, my grandmother prattled on about how proud and scared she’d been while I’d been in the military, but she never once mentioned my time in prison.
Was she just waiting until we were sitting down to berate me for the cloud of shame I’d brought down upon the Ashby name? Would that be when she’d tell me how disappointed she was in me? That she no longer wanted me to be her grandson?
The whole thing made no sense. I’d shamed the Ashby name in the worst way possible but instead of refusing to see me or, worse, allowing me to witness her disappointment, she’d cried when she’d seen me in her garden. Hugs weren’t something she’d ever freely given out, not even to me when I’d been a little boy. And hadn’t Renly announced my arrival to my grandmother once the guard at the gate, Owen, had notified him I was there?
By the time we sat down in front of a small table, it had been set up with an assortment of tea, coffee, and small pastries. I automatically began pouring my grandmother some tea and preparing it the way she liked it. It was only as I moved the tea closer to her that I remembered that maids were tasked with preparing tea. There was always one at the ready to do things at my grandmother’s bidding. Ashbys didn’t serve themselves. Other people did it for them.
A quick glance around proved that we were alone.
“A warm towel for your hands, mum?” Renly said, once again appearing out of nowhere. He had a silver tray in his hands. There were two steaming washcloths on it.
“Oh yes, of course, how silly of me,” Mother Ashby remarked as Renly put the towelette in front of her. She looked at it with confusion.
“And for you, sir?” Renly asked, his tone insistent. He shifted his eyes to my grandmother and back to me. I nodded. Renly immediately used his silver tongs to place the towel on a plate in front of me. My grandmother still hadn’t reached for hers.
“I missed these,” I said, pulling my grandmother’s focus to me. I began washing my hands with the washcloth. “While I was in the army,” I added.