Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
The soiree began without a hitch, their guests assembling in the drawing room and the vicar’s daughter entertaining them on the pianoforte as the group talked and laughed. Lydia looked at the assembled crowd, deliberately looking past the duke. All the friends she had made over the past year, gone.
“Why so morose?” Eliza asked, slipping her arm through Lydia’s. “The duke is exceedingly handsome.”
“Eliza,” Marie chided from Lydia’s other side. “It is not proper to say such things.”
“Oh, fud. What is the necessity of propriety? Besides, it is not the duke I’m interested in. I have no desire to tangle with married men.”
“No,” Lydia countered, “you prefer untitled, very single men. Such as Mr. Godwin.”
“I have told you, he ceased courting me some time ago.” Eliza touched her curls, as though she knew Mr. Godwin was watching her. “We most definitely do not get along now.”
“Their version of flirtation,” Marie added, laughing.
“How could it be love? We haven’t so much as kissed.” Eliza bit her lip, looking wicked. “Yet.”
“You are outrageous,” Lydia giggled. “But if you are going to kiss, please choose a different night. With the duke glowering over there, I don’t want anything to happen tonight that he would disapprove.” She heaved a sigh. “Although I fancy that is impossible.”
“Nonsense,” Marie said robustly. “He must like you. The problem is, he hasn’t gotten to know you yet.”
Lydia cast another covert glance across the drawing room, to where he was engaged in serious conversation with Mr. Godwin.
Although at least Mr. Godwin seemed to be laughing and teasing him.
As Lydia watched, the duke tossed a glass of wine back with impatient motions, her bandage still around his hands. They still appeared to shake.
At first, she had thought it was shock, but now it seemed more persistent, and she frowned, trying to work out what was affecting him enough to make him tremble.
“The key issue here is that I have no wish to like him,” she murmured, almost absently, watching the way he frowned. His frowns seemed rather easier to come by than any other expression. “I think nothing good of him.”
“Lower your voice, at least,” Marie whispered, taking Lydia’s arm and leading her away. “He is still respected in these parts. And you are still his wife.”
“For now,” Lydia amended.
Eliza followed them both. “Then you will merely have to convince him to keep you.”
“As though it would be that easy.” Lydia scoffed. “He wants nothing to do with me.”
“When I first married Marcus,” Marie began with a soft smile that seemed to illuminate her face, “he didn’t like me so very much, either.
He was my parents’ choice for me, and I confess, I thought he was dull and dreary and everything a husband ought not to be.
But once we spent some time together, we came to understand one another better, and now we could not be happier. ”
Her cheeks flushed, and her eyes sparkled as she thought about her husband, even though they had arrived in the same carriage, and he was talking to other gentlemen on the other side of the room. “He is thinking of taking me to Italy.”
Lydia smiled, her heart solemnly happy for her friend even as she grieved her own circumstance. The difference between the two men was that Marcus had been prepared to know his wife. He had worked on the marriage, and they had fallen wholly in love.
The duke had abandoned her.
For a year straight, not so much as writing to see how she was faring. If he kept in contact with the servants to check on her, she knew nothing about it. His behavior had made it perfectly clear that he wanted nothing at all to do with her. Not as a wife, not as a lady, not as a friend.
“You must write to me,” Lydia smiled softly, squeezing Marie’s arm, determined not to let her bitterness mar this final night together with her friend.
“Are you certain the duke will take you away tomorrow?” Eliza asked her. “Please tell me you can delay in some way. I shall sorely miss you.”
“I will miss you both, too. I hadn’t thought—” She shook her head, her throat tightening as once again she remembered all the things she would lose—and miss—when she left.
“I am so glad you discovered I was here all those months ago and rekindled our friendship. This would have been a lonely year without you both.”
“And we are glad we found you again,” Eliza hugged her sideways.
Marie pressed a glass of wine into Lydia’s hand. “What you must do, therefore, is convince the duke to let you stay.”
“And how might I do that?” Lydia asked, curling a brow. “He wished to carry me off tonight, need I remind you.”
Eliza held up a hand. “But the soiree made it impossible for you to do so.”
“Precisely,” Marie put in, her eyes lighting again, although this time with the beginnings of a plan. “Surely he cannot expect you to default on social engagements merely because of his impatience!”
“Drag your feet,” Eliza added succinctly. “There must be ways. Tell your maid to unpack because you must look at a particular gown. Or—did you not say you could choose which property of his you can live in? Ask to see them all again.”
Lydia massaged her forehead. “If I do such things, he will see straight through me.”
“Then you will have to make him fall in love with you,” Marie declared.
Lydia dropped her hand and gaped at her friend. “Are you out of your mind?”
“It worked perfectly well for my marriage,” Marie shrugged. “And if he loves you, he will want to keep you here as his wife.”
“But,” Lydia cut in, “I have no desire to make him love me. And I hardly think I could ever come to love him.”
“Nuance.” Marie waved a dismissive hand. “Who said anything about loving him in return?”
Eliza gasped and clapped in delight. “Yes! You must find excuses to be close with him! Remind him how fortunate he is to have such a beautiful wife, and he will be sure to fall madly in love with you.”
Lydia glanced from one friend to the other. “Surely you are not both serious…”
“As the grave,” Eliza replied. “More so.”
Marie nodded sagely, and when the music from the pianoforte turned into a jig, she pushed at Lydia’s back. “Quick, dance with the duke.”
“What if he doesn’t want to dance with me?!”
“If you ask him, he will not refuse. He is far too polite for that.” Marie nudged her again. “Go, quickly!”
Alexander turned as his wife approached, an expression of reluctance on her face he could hardly place.
In truth, he had been aware of her the entire evening, although he had attempted to ignore that awareness.
It was natural, he told himself, to be paying covert attention to one’s wife.
Especially when said wife was giggling with her friends—giggling, he could only assume, about him.
A year ago, when he had encountered her shortly after watching her father pass into whatever lay beyond, he had not been especially struck by her beauty. He had been thinking of anything but her physical appearance.
This morning, when he had seen her again in her bedchamber, he had been shocked to discover she had bloomed like a shy night flower, auburn curls tumbling beside her face and her lush figure flatteringly draped in material he had been hard-pressed to ignore.
Now, dressed in a gown that shimmered in the candlelight and frequently caught against the rounded curve of her hip, he had to confess he had entirely misjudged her.
He had presumed her to be a shy, retiring, plain lady.
Instead, when he glanced into her hazel eyes, he suspected she had a secret temper to match her hair.
And now she was approaching him.
He ended his conversation with Godwin, who watched him with open and blatant amusement, as his wife came to stand before him, curtsying slightly.
“Husband,” she said, and although her voice was musical, he thought he detected a little resentment there.
Understandably.
“I told you to call me Alexander,” he answered.
She glanced down, her soft lashes casting half-moons on her cheeks. “Perhaps in time I will,” she murmured. “But we are not yet acquainted enough for that, Your Grace.”
He bit back his frustration. They would never be acquainted enough for that, but he hardly saw the point in bringing that up here. “Very well, Your Grace,” he replied in kind.
She glanced up then, that same resentment sharp in her eyes. “Dance with me,” she said.
A set was indeed forming at the center of the room. And as he looked down into her face, blazing with determination, he knew he couldn’t refuse her, even if he wanted to.
“It would be my pleasure,” he tried for a smile, offering her his hand.
She took it, her gloved fingers light in his as he led her to the end of the set. The company watched on, avidly. Many of these people had been around long enough to remember—
He needed to stop thinking of Helena.
But his mind placed her instead of Lydia opposite him, pearls in her dark hair and a mischievous smile on her mouth.
She had always matched him there—as a boy, he had been daring, bold, teasing, and she had kept pace with him.
Was it any surprise that he had loved her as deeply as a boy approaching manhood could?
He blinked, and Lydia came back into focus, her features softer than Helena’s, but looking at him with far less affection. Something about her seemed familiar, and he frowned.
She arched a brow. “Is standing up with me so disagreeable?”
“Not at all,” he replied. “I merely thought I recognized you from somewhere.”
That brow arched even higher. So much for the sweet, timid girl he had offered marriage to; she had been replaced by a harpy. Yet, for a perverse reason he could not understand, his blood stirred at the sight.
“From where?” she asked.
“I don’t suppose you were in London any time this past year?”
Her laugh was hard. “Of course not, Your Grace. I remained here, as you ordained, building a life for myself.”
The dance began, and he stepped forward, taking her hand and walking slowly around her. Her eyes were fixed on him, an odd mix of green and brown, like shifting forest leaves.
“We both knew the score when I left you here.”
“When you offered me marriage,” she muttered in that same bitter little voice, “you did not express that you would be abandoning me for a year solid.”
“I made you no promises of a marriage based on affection.”
“How could you, given we were near strangers?”
Near strangers? He frowned, but she gave him no space to recoup.
“But I had not expected you to walk away from me on the doorstep of this house.”
Guilt thrashed in his chest. He had known at the time that walking away from her there—here—had been a mistake.
But knowing he had married a woman who wasn’t Helena had made all his internal organs burn, like drinking acid.
It had felt like a betrayal of the highest order, and if he had remained another minute with Lydia, she would have seen it.
His regret.
His heartache.
Neither were emotions he allowed others to witness.
“I apologize if I misled you as to my intentions,” he spoke gently. “Your father asked me to provide you with a home and security, and for my hand in marriage.”
“If you had no intention of marrying me in truth, you ought not to have accepted.”
As though he could have denied a dying man—denied a man whose death had been caused by Alexander himself. Knowing that, as he sat in the man’s room, had prompted him to agree to all of his terms unconditionally.
“Have you been unhappy this past year?” he asked.
She raised her chin in defiance. Heavens, but she was beautiful. How had he not seen it before? Her soft lips pressed tight together.
“I have not,” she answered. “But now you are expecting me to leave the place I have made my home.”
Without thinking, he reached out his bruised hand, and she took it, her eyes widening as she encountered his bandage.
“I am sorry about that,” she breathed, touching him so gently that she caused him almost no pain at all.
“It’s all right.”
She glanced to one side, seeing her two friends beaming at her. In response, her face softened, and she smiled. Alexander watched the way her brows relaxed, the way tension left the corners of her eyes. In defiance, she had been striking, but in affection, she looked gentle and lovely.
The smile hit him unexpectedly in the chest. For so many years, his life had been empty; aside from Samuel Godwin, no one had been especially pleased to see him. He was a duke, bearing a duke’s responsibilities and all a duke’s sycophants, but very few people bore him genuine affection.
Lydia would not be the one to offer him that, he reminded himself. Tomorrow, they would leave, and that would be the end of everything.
Still, as an olive branch, he asked, “Are you enjoying this evening?”
She looked back at him, the warmth in her eyes fading into cool indifference at the sight of him. “Oh yes,” she replied. “It has been perfectly illuminating.”
Alexander was under no illusions about what that could mean.
The dance ended, and he bowed over her hand, brushing her gloved fingers with his mouth. They tensed in his hand, and when he glanced up at her, she was regarding him with an odd expression on her face.
“Careful,” she murmured, tugging her hand free. “Or people will wonder at our annulment.”
Without giving him time to respond to her words, she turned on her heel and stalked back to where her friends were waiting for her.
He rubbed his forehead, wishing he could take the edge off this constant aching in his limbs. Just a few drops—
No.
Nausea clawed at his insides as he strode toward the refreshment table and threw back yet another glass of wine, praying that it would dull the cravings at least a little. Knowing that there was likely laudanum somewhere in this house was a physical pain he must fight.
The sooner he left, the better, no matter what his little hellcat of a wife had planned.