Chapter 11 #2
If someone had told him a month ago, if someone had sat across from him and told him that within thirty days he would be a married man with a child waiting for him at his estate and a wife sitting beside him in a carriage on the way to begin a life he had never once envisioned for himself, he would have said something sufficiently cutting to end the conversation and then left the room.
He would not even have dignified it with a proper argument. It would have been beneath argument.
Yet...
He was a married man. The words sat in his mind with an odd quality... not with the catastrophe he had always imagined them to be. He found, turning them over, that he was not contesting it.
That surprised him slightly.
“Are you warm enough?” he questioned, attempting to make conversation again.
“Yes, Your Grace,” Emily said. Pleasantly. Toward the window.
Theodore massaged his forehead. He couldn't tell if she was angry or merely overwhelmed by the finality of the ring on her finger.
A flicker of doubt crossed his mind. Perhaps he should have handled that night in the library differently.
If he had been more discreet, if they had scattered to opposite ends of the room, she wouldn't have been forced into this.
He shook his head, warding the thought away.
It had been the right thing to do. A woman had been compromised in his company, and he had stood in a library and announced their engagement before witnesses, and that was simply what a man of his standing did.
It was not complicated. He had not complicated it in his mind, and he did not intend to start now.
“Theodore,” he said again.
This time, Emily glanced at him, curious.
“We are married, Emily,” he said. “You may call me Theodore.”
She only nodded in response and turned to the window again.
The carriage slowed to a halt before the sweeping stone steps of the manor, the gravel crunching beneath the wheels like a final punctuation mark on the day. As the door was pulled open from both sides, Theodore stepped out, making his way to the other side to walk in with Emily.
As he moved, his eyes caught a small figure just outside the entrance. He paused for a moment, realizing it was Frederick waiting on the steps with Peggy beside him, her hand on his shoulder. He was wearing a dark coat that was slightly too large.
As soon as Emily stepped out, the boy launched himself down the steps.
He crossed the distance between them at a speed that suggested he had been holding it in for some time, and Emily caught him with ease, her arms coming around him before he had fully arrived.
“Hello, Frederick,” she said. “You arrived this morning? How do you like the manor? Is it better than Hatcher House?”
The boy said nothing. He simply held on.
Theodore stopped behind her and stood on the gravel drive of his estate, watching Emily hold a child who had buried his face in her shoulder and was gripping the back of her wedding gown with both fists. He felt something warm and entirely unexpected move through him.
Theodore stepped forward, his presence suddenly feeling far too large for the intimate scene. He cleared his throat, offering a small, practiced smile. “Frederick,” he began. “I don't believe we were properly introduced in the rush of the week. I am —”
The boy stiffened. He pulled back from Emily just enough to peer at Theodore, his eyes wide with a raw, unmistakable fear. He shrank into Emily’s side, clutching her hand as if Theodore were a predator.
“Frederick,” Emily said gently. “This is His Grace, the Duke of Carrowell. He is...” she paused for the briefest moment. “...he is my husband.”
Theodore had heard his name said in every possible way a name could be said. He had never once given the sound of his own name any particular thought.
But no one had said his name out loud with the word ‘husband’ accompanying it. It had landed somewhere in his chest and caused immediate flutters. It was new, unexpected, and strangely... intimidating.
Then Frederick turned his face further into Emily's shoulder, and the moment passed.
Theodore crouched down to the boy's level, which put him at the bottom of the steps, looking up at a child who was resolutely not looking at him.
“Hello,” Theodore said. He kept his voice even. “I have heard a great deal about you.”
Frederick pressed further into Emily's neck.
Theodore straightened.
“Perhaps, he is tired,” Emily noted. “My apologies, Your Grace. I’ll speak with him. We should probably retire for the evening.”
Emily was already moving, her hand on the back of Frederick's head, murmuring something too low to hear, turning toward the house with the boy still held against her side.
Peggy fell into step beside them, saying something about tea and whether the boy had eaten, and the three of them moved through the entrance doors as though the rest of the world — which at this particular moment meant Theodore — had simply ceased to require attention.
The doors did not close in his face. They simply did not wait for him. He stood on the steps for a moment, the cool evening air beginning to bite through his coat.
Theodore found himself wanting her to turn back, to catch his eye, to offer him even a fraction of the soft, unburdened look she gave the child. He needed to know why she had stopped looking directly at him… why she had changed, gone quiet.
Marriage was what she wanted… was it not?
His butler appeared at his elbow. “Welcome home, Your Grace. Shall I have tea prepared in the —”
“Yes,” Theodore said. “Do that.”
He handed his hat to the butler and walked toward the stairs, his movements uncharacteristically heavy. The adrenaline that had sustained him through the week had finally evaporated, leaving a dull, bone-deep exhaustion in its wake.
Perhaps, he reasoned as he gripped the polished banister, he simply needed a good sleep to stop the incessant worrying. It was entirely unlike him to overanalyze a woman’s silence or a child’s fear, and the sheer effort of trying to reconcile his old life with this new reality had drained him.
Sleep sounded like a great idea, a temporary sanctuary. He would close his eyes, let the silence of the estate settle around him, and hope that by morning, the world would feel like it belonged to him again.