Chapter 19
“Athing most unheard of has occurred!” Fiona read, her eyes alight with wicked delight.
“Lady Nancy Gallagher, the fire-haired spinster who has terrorized gentlemen from Mayfair to St. James, is now the Duchess of Scarfield. However did the lady manage to snare the Rake Duke of Scarfield in matrimony? Was there a scandal where she demanded marriage? Or was he desperate for a mother for his orphaned niece and nephew?”
Nancy’s jaw dropped. “You cannot be reading that aloud.”
“Oh, but I can,” Fiona chirped, passing the sheet to Hester. “It’s this week’s finest. The columnist claims you must have blackmailed him, Nancy, or perhaps bewitched him with Scottish witchcraft. Shall I read on?”
“Only if you want me to launch myself across this table and snatch your tongue out,” Nancy threatened, but she was smiling as she poured herself a bracing measure of tea.
Hester clapped her hands together, delighted. “I told you the ton was obsessed, Fi. All week I’ve had people at the door, begging for details. The rumors are better than fiction.” She leaned across the tea service, her eyes bright. “Do they know the true story?”
Nancy took a healthy gulp of tea. “If by ‘true story’ you mean the one where Scarfield trapped me in a web of cold logic and uttered precisely four words before marrying me, then yes, the public is fully informed.”
“Only four words?” Lavinia Pembroke piped up, arranging herself neatly on the settee. “Was ‘I require a wife’ the opening volley?”
Hester snorted. “No, no. Scarfield is a master of the brooding gaze. He likely just stared, and the force of it bent Nancy’s will.”
“I’d have bent it back,” Nancy said, but her mouth twitched. She was keenly aware that in this company, all attempts at dignity were doomed to collapse.
Fiona, ignoring the byplay, buttered a scone and arched her brows. “Do you think they actually believe it, though? That you staged a grand seduction and then forced the Duke’s hand with threats of exposure?”
“They can believe what they like,” Nancy replied, but the words were followed instantly by a yawn so extravagant it threatened to unhinge her jaw.
Hester pointed with the tip of her knife. “You look like you haven’t slept in a month, Nancy. Is the Duke so demanding already?”
Nancy nearly spewed her tea. “He is the opposite of demanding. I hardly see him except at breakfast and the occasional midnight strategic meeting about the children’s welfare.”
“You see him at midnight?” Fiona’s eyes widened, and she exchanged a conspiratorial grin with Hester.
Nancy’s cheeks went hot. “It’s not what you’re thinking. We had a debate last night about the merits of ancient versus modern arithmetic.”
“I’ll bet you did,” Hester muttered into her scone.
Lavinia, ever the gentle observer, said, “I think you simply don’t want to admit you’re happy, Nancy.”
“That’s nonsense.” Another yawn threatened. “I am precisely as happy as I’ve ever been.”
Hester gestured at her with a pastry. “You know, if you keep up with this chronic fatigue, people will start talking. They’ll think you’ve taken up with one of those opium dens on the West End.”
“I’d rather be a laudanum addict than admit defeat by arithmetic,” Nancy grumbled, rubbing at her forehead.
Lavinia watched her with a mild frown. “You really haven’t been sleeping, have you?”
“Of course I have. I slept like a stone last night. This morning, too.” She paused, aware that three pairs of eyes were now locked on her in silent, delighted accusation. “What?”
Fiona adopted a pose of great solemnity. “It is common, I’m told, for newlyweds to experience a… certain excitement. Perhaps the Duke is not as cold as he appears?”
Nancy’s hand slipped on her cup. “Absolutely not. There is nothing—”
“Oh, come, Nancy!” Hester cackled. “We’re all married here.”
Lavinia raised a finger. “Actually, I’m not.”
Hester’s grin widened. “Yes, but you will be soon. We can smell it on you. I expect a proposal from Lord Ellsworth by Midsummer.”
Lavinia looked mortified, but Fiona simply pressed on. “Nancy, you’re blushing.”
“I’m not.” Nancy clapped her hands over her cheeks. “My blood is simply defective.”
“Scarfield must be doing something right if he can make Lady Nancy turn the color of a ripe tomato,” Hester said, almost admiringly.
Nancy managed a glare, but it wilted under another yawn.
“If you must know, I am not sleeping because Clara and Henry have taken to launching dawn raids on my bedroom. They’re determined to see me before anyone else each morning, which means I spend most nights hiding under the covers, waiting for the siege to begin. ”
Fiona’s laughter was soft and warm. “That’s adorable. And exhausting.”
Nancy relented, “It’s not just the twins. The house is a disaster. The staff are terrified of me, and Scarfield’s idea of domestic harmony is assigning each room a color and then patrolling it like a sentry.”
Hester, who had married into one of the most eccentric houses in the country, merely nodded in sympathy. “You’ll break them in eventually. Just keep being you.”
“I intend to,” Nancy said, and this time the smile was genuine.
The afternoon rolled along, the tea growing cold as they moved to more dangerous topics—who among the ton had recently fallen from grace, which dowager was most likely to eat her own children to secure a better marriage for her daughter, and the ongoing mystery of Lord Eastmere’s entirely absent wife.
When the last crumb was gone and the servants began clearing, Nancy let her friends envelop her in farewells and promises to write.
“You will visit again?” she asked, meaning it.
Fiona took her hands, eyes shining. “We wouldn’t miss it for the world. Take care of yourself, Nancy.”
Lavinia squeezed her arm. “If you ever need a break, my family’s house is always open.”
Hester lingered a moment longer, then whispered, “He really is fond of you, you know.”
Nancy didn’t reply. She only smiled, then watched her friends depart in a flurry of laughter and matching shawls.
The house felt larger when they were gone, and for a moment, Nancy imagined it echoing with nothing but her own tired thoughts. She shook herself free of the feeling, straightened her spine, and set off for the nursery.
Chaos greeted her at the threshold. The nursemaid, Molly, stood wild-eyed at the foot of the beds, while Henry, bare-chested and indignant, barricaded himself in the far corner with a toy musket and a nightcap as a helmet.
“He refuses to put on his sleep shirt, Your Grace,” Molly reported, not taking her gaze from her quarry.
Nancy glanced at Clara, who had ensconced herself in the window seat and was staring mournfully at the rain.
“Molly, you may go,” Nancy said. “I’ll handle this.”
The relief on the girl’s face was near-comic. She curtsied and bolted, closing the door behind her with just a bit more force than was necessary.
Nancy kneeled to Henry’s level and set her hands on her knees. “Now. Will you be reasonable, or must I launch a full-scale assault?”
Henry’s eyes narrowed. “She tried to use the wrong shirt.”
“Which shirt do you want?”
“This one.” He pointed to the blue one, rumpled on the floor.
“Very well.” She held it up, and Henry, suddenly all compliance, thrust his arms through the sleeves and allowed her to button him. She finished, then straightened and turned to Clara.
“What’s the matter, darling?”
Clara’s lip trembled, and for a moment Nancy feared tears. “It’s raining.”
“I see that.” Nancy sat beside her, tucking her knees up. “Do you like the rain?”
“I like it when it’s outside,” Clara said, in a voice so small it barely existed. “I don’t like it when it keeps you in the house. I like it when you take us to the river.”
Nancy’s heart gave a queer little tug. “We’ll go again soon. When it’s dry.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.” Nancy held up her pinky, and Clara twined hers in with perfect solemnity.
She fetched the hairbrush and pulled Clara into her lap, then set to work taming the knots left by a day’s worth of rebellion.
Henry, now in pajamas, wandered back and flopped onto the bed. “You forgot the buttons, Nancy.”
“Did I?” She looked down at her handiwork. Indeed, the top button of Henry’s sleep shirt was fastened through the wrong hole, dragging the whole collar askew. “I am a disaster.”
Clara giggled, and even Henry smiled as Nancy undid and redid the buttons, slower and more carefully this time. The children watched her with matching, unblinking attention.
“Are you very tired?” Henry asked.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because you keep yawning.”
Nancy looked at the two of them, their faces so earnest and small. “Maybe a little. But it’s nothing a good story won’t cure.”
Clara perked up. “Are you going to read to us?”
“Of course I am. That’s the rule.”
She tucked them into bed, then settled on the edge, book in hand. The twins pressed in close, Henry at her right, Clara at her left, both of them still as mice.
She opened to the marked page and began to read, the rhythm of the words pulling her into their familiar, gentle current. The twins leaned against her, their breathing slowing, warm and content.
As she read, the print began to blur. Nancy blinked hard, once, then again.
She felt Henry’s hand curl around hers, small and trusting. Clara’s head drooped against her arm.
Nancy kept reading, and before long, her eyelids grew too heavy to remain open.