Chapter 24
Postage Paid
The next morning, she woke up only to find him already up, propped up on his elbow, looking at her. He was looking at her, perplexed and then again satisfied and less tense than the night before.
“Good morning,” Prim said softly.
He didn’t speak. He simply traced the line of her jaw with a single finger, going down till it reached what Prim was there.
She replayed again the moment he sucked possessively last night so he could admire his creation the next morning.
The love bite on her skin, that should now be a popping purple.
“That looks good on you,” Leo said, his voice hoarse.
He leaned and smoothed the spot with a soft kiss. Prim closed her eyes in satisfaction, his touch warming her more than the sun filtering in through the window. She was going to let him mark her body everywhere if that made him feel this peaceful.
She looked up into his blue eyes that shone like sapphires that morning and cupped his face with her hands. He turned slowly and kissed her palm. He then leaned in and placed a soft peck on her lips. Prim had never felt happier.
At the breakfast table, they didn't talk at first. The exchanged glances were filled with meaning. Leo’s possessiveness was sated, and Prim felt full to the brim with her newfound emotions.
“You seem extra excited this morning,” Leo said.
“It is to match the exceptional quality of the marmalade,” Prim replied, her eyes dancing as she took a deliberate bite.
“And here I was crediting the last night’s ambience,” Leo teased.
“No,” Prim blushed, “it is definitely the marmalade.”
“I see.” Leo smiled over his cup of coffee. “Perhaps I should increase the cook’s wages if we are to maintain this level of excitement.”
“I am afraid he will receive that as encouragement to provide more preserves of this caliber.”
“I do not see the problem.”
“We wouldn’t want to exhaust him.”
Leo set his cup down and looked at her in the elegant breakfast room, all draped in velvet and wrapped in intricate wallpaper with a look at lack all pretense of courtesy.
“Oh, I assure you, Prim,” he said, his voice low and husky, “he can handle us quite fine.”
Prim smiled and raised her eyebrow at her teasing husband. He smirked back at her, and she was happy to see his soul more settled than it was the night before.
“We should add more wood to the fireplace,” Leo said. “You have tightly tied your shawl around you. It must be chilly.”
Prim had indeed used the shawl to cover a very distinct love bite on her neck that was so eye-popping it wouldn't be missed even by blind people.
“There is a draft in the room,” she played along.
“Or perhaps you are coming down with something,” he continued. “A localized inflammation, perhaps?”
“Leo…” She warned.
He leaned in very seriously. His look devoured her the same way he did last night, and like those moments, her body caught fire with just one look.
“Wear our shawl, a coat if you like,” Leo roared. “But you will feel it, and I will know it is there.”
Leo was ready to pounce on her and create love bites that no shawl would ever hide, when I glanced at the door.
The staff was instructed to knock before entering if the doors were closed to spare them from indecent sights.
But right now, the door to the breakfast room was wide open.
And to prove Prim’s prudence, a maid walked in with the latest edition of sheets on a silver tray.
“Thank you,” Prim said and took the sheets. “I am sure there would be something interesting to be said about our first public appearance. Care to make some guesses?”
Leo’s look darkened, perhaps what ailed him last night to make him so… possessed coming back.
“I am betting the term Unholy Duo will be mentioned…mm… twice with some form of ironically-wrapped decent attached.”
Leo relaxed his shoulders and chuckled, shaking his head.
“How about 'the Lady Mildenhall was a vision in blue' right before they remind everyone of how ‘the traces of recent scandals seemingly not affecting her lovely disposition’?”
“I am sure no one would call my disposition ‘lovely’ on purpose.”
“That is true. You have many moods, but what is generally considered lovely is not one of them.”
“I beg your pardon?” Prim pretended to be offended as she went through the edition.
She read the usual about the tea party before the Deveraux ball, and she turned the page to win her spoils from the wager with Leo, when she caught her name indeed. She read. Her heart dropped. Her skin went pale, her fingers crumpling the paper.
“Prim?” Leo read her body correctly. “What is it? What did they say?”
Prim looked up at him with a tense look on her face. Leo mimicked her, the coffee cup abandoned to protect it from being hurled to the wall.
“There is an expose,” Prim muttered. “About us. A letter. To my father.”
“Nonsense,” Leo growled. “I have no correspondence with your father that would be anything scandalous.”
“Well, you were calling me ‘my rose,’ and we haven’t even met when all this started, so I am not expecting accuracy and the truth from this.”
“Give me!” Leo took the sheet from her trembling hands and read.
Prim knew exactly what was being revealed to him.
A letter that Leo had written to her father was exposed in all its fake detail.
In this, it was alluded that Leo in previous correspondence had promised her that he would help her family financially, especially to help the twins have a better future.
And in this letter, Leo was presented to withdraw such promises with malignant language, indifferent to the family’s struggles.
It even had a note that painted Prim as a powerless wife, in name only, with no real power in the Mildenhall Estate.
“This…” Leo was shaking with anger. “This is outrageous. ‘I do not see how your difficult position is, or ever could be, any concern of the Mildenhall estate’ after I seemingly confess that I promised financial aid, which I have promised to your family and have every intention to fulfill.”
“I know, Leo. This is all a lie. And it doesn’t let me unscathed. ‘When it says, ‘your daughter graces my table and fulfills the public obligations of her title’ it paints me like an aimless figurehead, a decorative wife.”
Leo’s fist came down on the polished mahogany table with a crack that made the china jump. His coffee cup overturned, soiling the fine linen.
“So, I am a cruel man without honor, and you are worth the same as a vase at the corner of my halls. This has gone out of line! I will take care of it, now!”
Without a second word, he storms out of the room, and soon after, Prim hears the unmistakable slamming of his study door. And Prim was left with the sheets in her hand and a dread in her soul.
She felt weary and tired and just needed a moment of quiet. It’s been a while since something kept constantly happening, the hours of peace were rare and usually in his arms.
And because the reality has a morbid sense of humor, she hears commotion at the entrance. And before she has time to recover, to put her thoughts in order, her parents barge into the breakfast room.
“Prim!”
The first one to enter her sanctuary was her mother.
“Have you read this?” Her mother waved the sheets at her daughter like a war banner.
“I have. I am sure you-”
“This is preposterous!” her father rushed in, his face red with indignation. “We are not beggars, but His Grace has promised us assistance.”]
“Father, these sheets always-”
“Is this how you permit him to treat us, your own family?” Her mother lamented.
“He gave us his word, but I guess that matters little to him. he is an all-powerful Duke.”
Prim looked at her parents in disbelief. They stormed in here not to offer a united front against the lies. Instead, they came in here to accuse Leo and her. Once more, they chose to be blind to who she truly was and who Leo was. They believed the lies people told instead of their own daughter.
“On the way out, I saw Lady Bexley, and she looked at me as if I were a stray dog.”
“Mothe,r you need to listen to me,” Prim said.
But her mother already collapsed on the sofa, holding her head.
“Everyone will look at us like a laughingstock. Our reputation ruined.”
“How can we go to the Remington ball today? We can’t possibly show our faces. Not after this.”
Prim couldn’t believe the way her parents thought. This letter made her look like a foolish wife and Leo, their son-in-law, as a dishonorable rake. The fact that they couldn’t show their faces in the balls affected Camilla and Myrtle more, but they didn’t even mention the twins in their worry.
“Mother, Father,” she tried one last time to talk reason. “You know better than the sheets lie to sell even more.”
“What we know,” her father raised his finger, “is that you allowed the Duke to treat us like this.”
“Excuse me?” Prim couldn’t believe her own ears.
“You cannot even control your husband,” her mother continued.
“How can you allow him to disregard us that way?” It was her father’s turn.
Prim took a step back under this assault by her own parents. It would be more than enough to have the sheet spreading lies but to have her own parents talk to her like that. She thought that now that she was married to a Duke, they would finally be happy.
“I can’t believe that my own daughter,” her mother rose with determination, “would marry a man that would allow us to flounder while you live in such luxury.”
“I will not allow anyone talk to my wife this way.”
The room went instantly cold, and everyone stood absolutely still. There was an angry predator on the prowl, and the instincts of everyone in the room were to avoid angering him more. Leo stepped into the breakfast room, his face a mask of rage.
“Your Grace,” Prim’s father muttered.
“Perhaps you should start addressing your daughter the same way, so you willbe reminded of her station.”
“We were merely talking to our daughter. After this edition, we are found in a dire situation.”
Something inside Prim snapped. She was right. She was not just their daughter anymore. She was a Duchess of her own accord.
“Your dire situation?” Prim hissed and stepped forward. “You read some lies in the papers, and your first thought is to come into my house to accuse me?”
Bitterness rose in Prim, years of swallowed words and stifled ambitions, a lifetime of being told to be smaller, quieter, less for the sake of their standing. It boiled over, a cauldron of grievance.
“You read this, and you do not come to comfort me, you don’t ask or even care how this makes me feel. How dire my situation is!”
“Prim, we didn’t think…” her mother muttered.
“Of course, you didn’t,” Prim said, her head shaking. “You never do! When I was dragged in the mud, all you thought about was how it would affect you and how Lady Bexley look at you. You thought of how it embarrassed you, not how it affected me, or Camilla, or Myrtle.”
Her parents huddled together at her justified attack. She took another step forward, and her parents, for the first time, seemed to see not their well-behaved daughter, but a woman wearing a crown of justified anger.
“For years,” Prim continued, “I made myself smaller. I smiled when I wanted to argue. I agreed when I wanted to challenge. I dimmed my own light because you told me that it would frighten away the kind of man you deemed suitable.”
“We never wanted to do that,” her father defended, his look straying to the Duke standing like a sentinel behind Prim.
“And yet you did it nonetheless!” Prim finally said after all these years.
“I was declared the diamond of the season, and instead of being happy and helping me, you reduced me to a pawn in your schemes. You let the girls be defenseless in their debut season, worrying about your image and convenience.”
They both looked away in shame, perhaps realizing for the first time what their actions truly meant. Prim was shaking with unchecked nerves, the adrenaline of her effort running through her.
“And now you come into my home to accuse my husband of being dishonest,” she added. “I will not allow it.”
She felt Leo move behind her and place his hand on the small of her back, an open sign of support and a united front. The heat of his body made her heart settle a little.
“We will handle this,” Leo said firmly. “As for the promised funds, those will be allocated shortly.”
“Of course, Your Grace,” her father said, looking at both of them.
“We will leave you to it. You must be having a lot to… handle,” her mother mumbled.
Prim didn’t know what her parents thought that they would accomplice by coming to her this glorious morning, but walking out shamed wouldn’t even be on the list. She watched as they left the room ina quiet hurry.
The moment the door closed, Prim collapsed on her armchair, the sheets scattered on the floor.
Leo moved and brought her a small glass of brandy.
“Drink.”
“I think it’s too early in the morning for that.”
“In emergency situations it is warranted.”
“Well, if it’s the law,” Prim took one sip.
She was shaking, trembling, the aftershock of what she had done hit her hard.
She had taken her family’s dynamics and took a swing at them with a hammer.
It was devastating and created a new reality, unknown and uncharted.
At the same time, it was liberating, the shackles of her patience and restraint broken.
“Well,” Leo said, nursing his own glass, “I believe I was vindicated on the lack of lovely disposition.”
“You are not helping.”
“I believe Duchess with a tongue sharp enough to flay a man at twenty paces has a certain ring to it.”
“Leo.”
“Oh, oh,” he smiled. “I must appease my Duchess to avoid a scolding like that. I am rather attached to my skin.”
She chuckled, and she took another sip. He leaned, one hand on the back of her armchair, his eyes filled with pride.
“You were magnificent.”
“I scolded my parents!”
“Magnificently.”
She looked up at him. While her parents didn’t even pause to think of her, he got furious on her behalf. When they came to accuse, he fought for her. He protected and cared about her reputation, her feelings. Prim raised her arm and caressed his face.
“Something tells me,” he leaned even closer, “I got away with the scolding.”
“Not yet,” she teased.
“I can be very persuasive.”
His lips took hers in a soft kiss, and she responded, tying her arms around his neck. Whatever the future will bring, she felt that she could deal with it if they were together.