Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Ihave gathered some very interesting information today, My L — Your Grace,” Peggy announced, settling herself gently into the chair by the window. “About the Duke.”
Emily did not look up from the ledger in her lap. She turned a page, noted something, turned another page, and thought that if she sat very still, the day might agree to be over.
She let out a long, weary sigh as the weight of the last twenty-four hours finally settled into her bones.
She was tired in a way that went beyond the body.
She was exhausted, her feet aching from hours of navigating the sprawling, labyrinthine corridors of Carrowell.
Since the moment they arrived a day ago, she had been a whirlwind of movement, driven by a restless need to understand the terrain of her new life.
She turned another page.
“Did you know there are thirty-two guest chambers in the west wing alone?” Emily said without looking up.
Peggy blinked. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace?”
“That doesn't even account for the three separate ballrooms or the music gallery in the wing.
I spent three hours just trying to map the path from the morning room to the library without ending up in the kitchens.
It is a city unto itself, Peggy. I feel as though I could walk for a week and still find a corner of this estate that hasn't seen the light of day in a decade.”
She rubbed her temples. “I have been going around with Mrs. Holt since this morning. She has been telling me everything, and I have been writing it all down because I knew I would not remember otherwise.” She looked at the page.
“Fourteen bedrooms in the family wing alone. Another twelve in the guest wing. Four state rooms on the principal floor. A ballroom. A library. A music room. A billiard room. A chapel.” She paused. “There is a chapel, Peggy.”
“Yes, there is, Your Grace,” Peggy said.
“In the east wing.” Emily turned the page.
“Three drawing rooms. Two dining rooms. A morning room. A study. A conservatory. A picture gallery that takes approximately eight minutes to walk through at a reasonable pace.” She set the list down.
“Don’t even get me started on the gardens.
Six distinct sections. A kitchen garden, a rose garden, a topiary garden, a cutting garden, a walled garden for the hothouse flowers, and something Mrs. Holt called the wilderness garden, which is apparently a large area where they have made a decision not to intervene and have called it a design choice. ”
Peggy pressed her lips together.
“Do not,” Emily said.
“I was not going to say anything, Your Grace.”
“There is also a home farm, four tenant cottages, a coach house, a stable block that houses sixteen horses, and an indoor staff of fifty-three.” Emily picked up her tea.
“You have been busy,” Peggy said.
“I have been overwhelmed,” Emily said, which was more honest than she had intended, and she said it into her teacup so the full weight of it was somewhat absorbed by the china.
“You are doing wonderfully, Your Grace,” she said, simply and directly, because Peggy had never been the sort of person who dressed things up when the plain version would do more good.
Emily looked at her over the rim of her cup. “I haven’t done anything yet, Peggy.”
“I know it’s a different scale, Your Grace, but you are competent. I cannot think of a better duchess.” Peggy said.
“It is an entirely different scale.” Emily set her cup down.
“I know I wanted to marry a man of influence and power, but I did not think about what that would actually mean in practice. Standing in a house with over eighty rooms and a staff of fifty, and realizing that all of it is now my responsibility to manage.” She shook her head slightly.
“Mrs. Holt went through the weekly household budget with me this afternoon. The quarterly accounts. The arrangement with the home farm. The standing orders with the butcher, the wine merchant, and the linen supplier.” She paused, then tried to speak again, but only a sigh came out.
“Perhaps I might cheer you up with some information I gathered about the Duke,” Peggy said, her eyes dancing with a familiar, mischievous light.
Emily closed the ledger, set it on the side table, and looked at Peggy with a smile. She could use a little distraction. The guilt that had been a dull throb in the back of her mind for weeks was now a sharp, insistent ache.
They had been at Carrowell for five days, and she had not sat across a table from Theodore for a single meal.
She had seen him in passing, twice in the corridor and once at the foot of the stairs, and they had exchanged the kind of brief, polite acknowledgments that people exchanged when they were both pretending to be busier than they were.
She had been busy. She was genuinely, thoroughly busy.
But she was also aware, in the part of herself she was not currently examining, that busy had become a convenient thing to be.
They were supposed to be on their honeymoon.
That thought arrived with the particular discomfort of something she had pushed to the edges of her mind.
She had never considered them actually honeymooning.
But it was expected. She had never allowed herself to think about it properly, not the word or the implication of it, because thinking about it properly would have required thinking about Theodore, and thinking about Theodore in that context required a kind of honesty she could not possibly bring herself to feel. It was too vulnerable.
She was still not entirely ready for it.
What she kept returning to instead. At different times... different moments of each day. While she was between staff introductions or helping Frederick adjust to a house ten times the size of anything he had ever known... she thought about it, thought about Theodore and what he was doing.
What was in this for him?
She had asked herself this before, in the library at the masquerade, and he had told her plainly that he had his own reasons.
She had accepted that and not looked into it further.
But his reasons had been about Julia, about dismantling a plan he had not wanted, and that plan had been dismantled in a way neither of them had anticipated.
Now here they were, two people who had stumbled into a marriage through a curtain and a scandal and a declaration made in front of witnesses.
Yet, she was the one who had walked away from it with everything she had come into the season for.
Frederick was safe. She was a duchess. She had the name, the standing, and the protection she had needed. She had all of it.
Theodore had a wife he had not chosen, a ward he had not planned for, and a honeymoon that was currently being spent learning about the price of grain and the opinions of a head gardener.
She could not give him back the choice. That was done.
What she could do was this. She could learn every room in this house, every name in this household, and every account in the ledger.
She could meet all members of staff and remember all of them.
She could correspond with the estate manager and manage the household.
She could be, if nothing else, a duchess worth having.
It was a small thing to offer in exchange for a life.
“What about the duke?” Emily asked, turning her attention to Peggy.
“Did you know that his father, the late duke, was considered one of the most severe men in the county?” Peggy said, lowering her voice.
Emily tilted her head sideways. “Really?”
“I spent the better part of this afternoon in the kitchen and the servants' hall and I will tell you, Your Grace, that not one person in this house had a kind word to say about the late duke. Not one.” She folded her hands in her lap.
“I hear he was cold. Exacting. Everything done to a precise standard and heaven help whoever fell short of it.”
Emily said nothing. She was thinking about Theodore at the Pembourne's dinner table, making everyone laugh before the soup had been cleared.
About Theodore walking into a ballroom as though the whole evening had been arranged for his personal entertainment.
.. Theodore was leaning against a reading table in a library with his coat undone and his hair slightly out of order, and that particular ease about him, the ease of a man who had never once in his life been afraid of taking up space.
“That...” she said slowly. “...is very difficult to imagine.”
“Is it not,” Peggy agreed, with the satisfied expression of someone whose information had landed exactly where intended.
“I heard that the housekeeper, Mrs. Holt, has been here since His Grace was a boy. Apparently, the late duke ran this house the way a general runs a regiment. Schedules. Rules. Standards for every conceivable thing. His Grace was held to all of it. His studies, his conduct, his posture at the dining table. Nothing was ever done well enough.” She paused and scanned the room.
“The late duke was very strict. People were wary of him; they couldn’t even look him in the eye. ”
“Well, His Grace is definitely everything his father was not,” Emily said. “But I wonder what changed if he was raised so... rigidly. How can someone with such an upbringing be so good at making jokes and brightening up a room with his mere presence?”
“Everyone in this house loves him, Your Grace. Every single one of the staff. So I heard. You can feel it when they speak about him. It is not the loyalty of people who are afraid of losing their positions. It is something else entirely.”
Emily looked at the window for a long moment.