Chapter 24
“These arrived for you this morning, Your Grace,” the butler said, holding out a missive and a wrapped item like evidence in a criminal trial.
Nancy eyed the package for an address or crest, but the paper was blank. Even the ribbon tying the bundle looked as though it had simply wandered off a plain haberdashery. “No sender?” she asked.
“None, Your Grace. The runner departed before I could make an inquiry.” He inclined his head. “It was left at the doorstep.”
“Thank you, Wilks.” Nancy took the package and studied its weight, which was more than that of a letter and less than a dictionary.
She peeled off the wrapper, half expecting a dead fish or a bag of pig’s blood—her previous correspondence from unknown sources had rarely been so delicately presented.
Inside, a book bound in deep blue calfskin, title stamped in faded gold: Poems of Wordsworth.
Tucked between the endpapers was a single rose—withered, but not wholly dead, pressed so flat it looked like a botanist’s warning.
Nancy suppressed a groan. The letter, folded in quarters, bore no wax or watermark.
She pried it open. The handwriting was neat, almost professional, slanted just enough to suggest the writer wished to be seen as mysterious.
Her stomach clenched as she read.
My Duchess,
No star that burns upon the vault of night,
No pearl submerged in Orkney’s icy seas,
Could rival the kindling of your wit—
Nor outshine the embers of your hair,
Luminous in the gloom of Scarfield’s halls.
With every word you speak, I am remade,
A moth drawn to the ruin of your flame.
If there be sin in loving so,
Let me be condemned,
So long as you are my sentence.
Yours,
A worshipper in darkness
Nancy closed her eyes and pressed the bridge of her nose. “Good God,” she muttered, and threw the letter onto her desk.
Of all the ways to begin a day, being compared to a celestial object or a doomed lamp was not the one she would have chosen. She checked the envelope again for clues—none. She sniffed the rose, on the off-chance it was laced with arsenic, but it smelled only faintly of old paper.
She opened the book. Nothing inscribed. No pressed leaf with a clue, no margin notes. Only the flower, flattened to misery between pages 37 and 38. Wordsworth, she thought, had never been her taste—too much mooning, not enough grit.
She set the book aside and glared at the letter. “A moth drawn to the ruin of my flame,” she repeated, aloud, with a shudder. “Insufferable.”
There was a noise at the door—a soft knock, followed by the gentle slide of shoes on carpet. Nancy stashed the letter under a blotter and greeted the interruption with as much civility as she could summon.
“Your Grace?” It was the under-maid, eyes downcast, tray in hand. “Your breakfast.”
“Thank you, Mary.” She accepted the tea and toast, resisting the urge to interrogate the girl about mysterious deliveries. Mary’s hands shook, just a little, as she set the tray. “Is everything quite all right this morning?”
“Oh yes, Your Grace.” Mary bobbed a curtsy, her face a study in repressed panic. “Everything is most agreeable.”
Nancy watched her scuttle away. Something was afoot in the house, and it had nothing to do with Wordsworth.
She sipped the tea, steeled her nerves, and was about to leave her office when a sound in the hallway caught her ear—a low, urgent whisper. She recognized the rhythm at once: the language of gossip.
Nancy inched closer, standing just behind the door frame.
“I tell you, she’s not slept a full night since the wedding,” came a voice—one of the senior maids, whose name Nancy had never quite caught. “She roams the halls like a ghost.”
A second voice, higher: “And the Duke’s always in his study, even after midnight. Never goes near her rooms. If you ask me, the marriage is all for show.”
“It’s not for show, it’s for the children. Didn’t you hear what Mrs. Tullock said? She took in the twins so the old Duke’s line wouldn’t be shamed.”
“Then why does she keep getting letters? And flowers?” A gasp sounded, then followed by a hiss. “I saw Wilks with a package this morning. He said it was from Town.”
“Well. Maybe she’s got a lover, then.” The first maid giggled, a sound like glass breaking. “Wouldn’t be the first time a duchess—”
A clatter interrupted the scene—Nancy’s own heel, betraying her on the threshold. She made a show of clearing her throat.
The effect was instantaneous: the maids leapt apart, faces draining to the color of spent tea leaves. The senior one gripped a feather duster like a bayonet, and the junior began polishing an already immaculate side table.
“Your Grace!” they sang, in perfect, terrified chorus.
“Is there a new fashion in cleaning I should know about?” Nancy asked, arms folded.
They shook their heads in unison.
“Well, then. I believe the drawing room needs attention,” she said, and swept past them.
The hallway was thick with guilt. Nancy let it hang there and made her way to the morning room. If the household wanted a scandal, she could at least provide an entertaining one.
But the fun was dampened by a new discomfort—a cold knot of dread that wound itself tighter with every step.
If even the staff believed the marriage a farce, what did that mean for the rest of Society?
What did it mean for her, and for Oscar, who could not even bother to eat his dinner in the same room as his wife?
A second delivery awaited her in the morning room: Wilks, again, materialized at her elbow. “A caller for you, Your Grace. Lady Lavinia Pembroke.”
Nancy blinked. “Lavinia?”
“Yes, Your Grace. She is in the receiving room.”
She considered refusing the visit, but curiosity won out. “Show her in.”
Lavinia entered with the cautious confidence of a girl who had learned to move through life by walking just to the left of disaster. She wore a dress of faded lilac, and her gloves had been mended, but she stood with the upright bearing of a general.
“Lavinia!” Nancy moved to greet her. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I was passing through Town, and thought I’d call. If it’s a bad time—” Lavinia’s eyes darted to the tray, the letters, the staff still visible through the hall window—“I can come another day.”
“Not at all,” Nancy said, waving her to the sofa. “You rescue me from my own thoughts. They’ve been threatening mutiny since dawn.”
Lavinia sat, perched on the edge of the cushion. “Is everything well, Nancy?”
“Perfectly,” she lied, and poured tea. “Unless you count unsolicited flowers and the disintegration of household discipline.”
Lavinia smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “You seem out of sorts.”
“I am never in sorts,” Nancy replied, buttering a roll with surgical care. “But today, I suppose, is more than usually peculiar.”
Lavinia studied her a moment, then asked: “Is the Duke here?”
Nancy considered the question, trying to read the shape of it. “He’s in the city on business. Why?”
“I only wondered.” Lavinia blushed and took a rapid sip of tea. “It’s just—well, people say things, you know.”
Nancy arched a brow. “People have always said things. It is their chief occupation.”
“Yes, but—” Lavinia hesitated, then pressed on. “I saw the announcement about the governess. People are saying you’ve been overwhelmed.”
“People are half-right,” Nancy said, with a rueful smile. “Miss Mercer is a marvel. She had the twins cataloguing earthworms by noon yesterday. I suspect they may unionize against us by Easter.”
Lavinia laughed, visibly relieved. “I’m glad you’re happy. I worried it might be…difficult.”
Nancy set her cup down, suddenly tired. “Marriage is always difficult. Even a pretend one.” The words slipped out before she could catch them.
Lavinia’s eyes widened. “Pretend?”
Nancy waved it away. “That was a joke. The Duke and I are perfectly united in our mutual distaste for convention.”
“Then…you are happy?” Lavinia pressed.
“As much as anyone can be, living among the detritus of other people’s expectations.” She offered Lavinia a piece of shortbread. “Why all the questions?”
Lavinia fiddled with her glove. “I suppose I just—never mind. You always seemed so certain, and now you look…”
“Haunted?” Nancy supplied.
“Maybe a little.”
Nancy snorted. “I’ll try to appear less spectral, for your sake.”
They lapsed into an uneasy quiet, punctuated only by the sound of spoons against china. Nancy found herself staring at the pressed rose, now perched atop the book on the sideboard.
Lavinia followed her gaze. “Is that from the Duke?”
Nancy shook her head. “No idea who sent it. Some wretch with too much time and not enough sense.”
“Oh.” Lavinia was quiet for a moment, then: “You know, sometimes it’s nice to be adored. Even anonymously.”
“Not if the adoration arrives in verse,” Nancy said. “That’s how revolutions begin.”
Lavinia stifled a laugh. “You are impossible.”
“So I’ve been told.” Nancy softened, touched her friend’s hand. “Are you well, Lavinia?”
A shadow crossed her face. “Oh, yes. Only…my father is ill again. I worry about him.”
Nancy squeezed her hand. “If you ever need refuge, you know where to find me.”
Lavinia smiled, but the smile was watery. “Thank you, Nancy.”
They finished tea with few words, and soon Lavinia excused herself. Nancy watched her leave, then walked to the window, staring out at the bleak, cloud-pocked sky.
Something was shifting beneath the surface—she could feel it in the way the house breathed, in the half-glances from the staff, in the questions from friends who never used to ask.
She thought of Oscar, the way he always stood a little too far away, the way he’d touched her hand in the hallway and then pulled back, as if burned.
This is what you wanted, Nancy. An arrangement, not romance with fairy tale happenings.
So why did the pressed rose on her table feel like a warning? And why, for the first time in her life, did she wish someone would write a poem for her and mean it?