Chapter 17
“Iwill have the pearls,” Nancy decided, watching her reflection in the dressing table’s mirror. “The emerald ones make my throat look like it’s trying to declare independence from the rest of me.”
Miss Lynch, her newly appropriated maid and still visibly terrified of the household, held both necklaces in her hands as steady as a windvane in a gale. “The pearls are more refined, Your Grace.”
Nancy wrinkled her nose at the title, though it was already settling into her skin like an inconvenient rash. “It’s only dinner, Miss Lynch. I’m not being presented at Court.”
The maid said nothing, only fastened the pearls with the nimble, reverent touch of someone who had probably never handled anything so expensive in her life.
Nancy examined her dress in the glass. The red was, by all accounts, the correct shade for her hair and complexion. Her mother would have approved. Even her father, who thought all colors a waste of time unless attached to a thoroughbred, might have paused to remark on the cut.
She should have felt powerful, or at least composed.
Instead, her nerves fluttered like moths in her stomach.
Ever since the debacle of the previous night—her touch, his mouth, the look on Oscar’s face when she had done it—she’d avoided her husband as much as possible.
She busied herself with the perfect excuse: preparing to host Lord Eastmere for dinner.
Eastmere was an old friend of Scarfield’s. A rake, or so the papers claimed, but a harmless one. Nancy had met him once at a garden party and remembered only that he had a laugh that carried three counties and a taste for scandal that would mortify a Parisian.
She breathed out and squared her shoulders. “Thank you, Miss Lynch. That will be all.”
The maid bobbed a nervous curtsy and scampered out.
Nancy stared at herself in the mirror, daring her reflection to betray her. “You can do this,” she muttered, which seemed an absurd thing to say about eating soup and enduring small talk, but there it was.
She descended the stairs with the measured dignity of a woman being led to her fate, and at the bottom found Oscar waiting in the drawing room. He was, as ever, unreadable. The blue of his coat matched his mood, and he regarded her as if she were a particularly difficult puzzle.
Nancy stopped on the last step. “Do I have something on my face?”
He took her in—head to toe, in a survey that was not entirely clinical—and grinned. “Only an expression of impending doom. Is it the prospect of dinner, or the company?”
She smothered a smile. “I have endured both before. I am simply bracing myself for Eastmere’s arrival.”
Oscar crossed the room, his steps measured and deliberate. He stopped in front of her, close enough that she could see the exact shade of blue in his irises. He took her hand—her right one, the one she had unconsciously curled against her side—and pressed his lips to her knuckles.
The contact was electric. Warmth shot up her arm, then spiraled up her neck in a blush so severe she thought it might never retreat.
She yanked her hand back. “You shouldn’t do that.”
He arched a brow. “Do what?”
“Kiss me. Like that. It gives people the wrong idea.”
He watched her, a predator indulging a mouse. “We are expecting a guest. We must appear as though we truly find each other tolerable.”
Nancy caught her breath. “But you don’t find me tolerable.”
He leaned in, so close she could have counted the individual hairs of his eyebrow. “I find you intolerably distracting.”
Her heart stopped, stuttered, then doubled its pace. “You’re only saying that because you enjoy making me uncomfortable.”
Oscar’s smile was slow and devastating. “Not only.”
She managed to keep her voice steady. “I am here to greet our guest, not to be toyed with.”
“Then let us greet him together, Duchess.”
She wondered if he knew how easily he could rattle her, or if it was simply a matter of habit by now.
Before she could reply, the butler announced, “Lord Eastmere, Your Graces.”
Adrian Fairleigh swept in with the breezy confidence of a man who knew he was at least two-thirds of the entertainment for any evening. He wore a coat cut so close to his form it seemed stitched directly to his bones, and his hair was a study in studied disorder.
“Nancy, radiant as ever!” He swept a bow. “Scarfield, you look…as you always do.”
Oscar’s mouth twitched, but he said, “Lord Eastmere. Welcome.”
“Let’s drop the Lord, please,” Adrian replied, dropping himself onto the settee. “You must call me Adrian, or I shall take my custom elsewhere.”
Oscar glanced at Nancy. “Nancy, do you find the rules of peerage so malleable?”
She shrugged. “I find most rules improve with a little bending.”
Adrian beamed at her. “A woman after my own heart. I knew we would get on famously, Your Grace.”
Oscar grumbled, “I am surrounded by anarchists.”
Adrian clapped his hands. “Splendid! Shall we drink to it?”
Before anyone could answer, a footman arrived with sherry. Adrian claimed the first glass and slouched, completely at home.
Nancy took the second glass, ignoring Oscar’s warning look.
They adjourned to the dining room, which Oscar had set with enough formality to satisfy the Dowager Queen. Nancy took her seat at the far end; Oscar, naturally, at the head; Adrian between them, as the living conduit of all conversation.
Adrian immediately set about his mission: to unsettle, amuse, and generally dominate the proceedings.
“So, Nancy,” he began, “I hear from all the best sources that you have already reformed Scarfield’s household. What is your secret?”
“Repetition, mostly,” she replied, tearing a roll in half. “And the threat of violence.”
Adrian hooted. “Scarfield, you married a woman of action! How do you bear it?”
Oscar replied, “I find that silence is the most effective approach.”
Adrian leaned back, surveying Nancy. “He’s always been thus. When we were boys, Scarfield once went an entire term at Eton without speaking to another soul.”
“Impressive,” Nancy said. “Were you mute by choice, or simply unwilling to degrade yourself?”
Oscar’s eyes glinted. “I considered my peers beneath comment.”
Adrian nodded, raising his glass. “And he was right, of course. We were scoundrels.” He turned to Nancy. “What was your childhood like, Duchess? Were you always so formidable?”
“I was a terror,” Nancy replied, with practiced ease. “My mother once threatened to send me to a convent. I told her I’d convert every nun to atheism within a week.”
Adrian snorted sherry up his nose. “You see, Scarfield? This is the woman you need. Someone to keep you sharp.”
Oscar said, “She is sharper than you, at any rate.”
Nancy smiled at Adrian, then at Oscar. “Perhaps we should compare.”
Adrian, undaunted, pressed on. “Tell me, Nancy. Have you uncovered any of Scarfield’s secrets yet? They are legion, you know.”
Nancy cocked her head. “I have only begun to plumb the depths. What would you suggest I look for first?”
Adrian grinned. “His secret vices. He pretends to be a paragon, but I assure you, the real man is far more interesting than the one who stalks the halls in that coat.”
Oscar said nothing, but the muscle in his jaw shifted.
Nancy asked, “Care to reveal one?”
“Oh, I could, but then he’d never invite me back.” Adrian winked. “There are stories from Cambridge that would set your hair on end.”
Oscar shot him a look that could curdle milk. “If you repeat a single one, I will see you excommunicated from White’s.”
Adrian spread his hands. “You see? Such tyranny. Nancy, if you ever need a refuge, come find me in Mayfair. I will provide sanctuary.”
Oscar cut in, “You will do nothing of the sort.”
Nancy leaned forward, chin on hand. “What would I find if I took up sanctuary in your house, Adrian?”
“Debauchery, mostly. And a great deal of questionable company.” Adrian’s smile was a dare. “You’d enjoy yourself.”
Oscar’s eyes narrowed. “She is perfectly content here.”
Nancy said, “I have yet to see your house, Adrian. Perhaps I will judge for myself.”
Adrian whooped. “A woman of principle! I adore you, truly.”
Oscar picked up his fork with the finality of a judge about to deliver a sentence. “Enough,” he said. “Let us eat in peace for five minutes.”
Adrian grinned at Nancy. “He always says that. Never works.”
Nancy found herself enjoying the sparring more than she would have expected. The food was, as promised, excellent; the wine flowed; and Adrian’s running commentary kept the mood lively.
She nearly forgot, for a moment, that she was the new Duchess, or that there had ever been an awkward moment between her and Oscar. The air was light, the room full of laughter, and for the first time since her arrival at Scarfield Manor, Nancy felt like she belonged.
It was only when the meal drew to a close, and the footman arrived with the final course, that she caught Oscar watching her. Not in the way of a man cataloging faults, but in the way of a man memorizing the exact arrangement of light and shadow on her face.
She ignored him, but the knowledge of it made her chest feel dangerously full.
Adrian, never one to let a silence pass unmolested, said, “You must tell me, Nancy—what was it like, marrying the coldest man in England?”
Oscar set his fork down with a clink. “She is sitting right here, Adrian.”
“That’s why I’m asking!” Adrian protested. “Nancy, you may speak freely. I am your champion.”
Nancy fixed Adrian with a look. “It was like being hired to captain a ship just as it struck the iceberg. There is panic, and flailing, and eventually everyone drowns. But before that, there are the best parties.”
Adrian roared. “Scarfield, you are doomed! She’s funnier than you, too.”
Oscar only stared at her, as if seeing something he hadn’t expected.
Nancy looked down at her plate and smiled to herself.