Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
“What will you be doing while we visit Hyde Park?” Isabella asked as she exited the carriage alone.
Isabella was still having trouble deciding if everything she had experienced in Oscar’s study was a dream by the time they pulled up outside Wickleby House, her former home in London.
Having planned to return to the city for a few days, both for Oscar’s business and for Isabella to spend more time with her sisters, Isabella was quite ready to switch off and relax.
If her parents refused to bring her sisters to her, then she would go to them.
Oscar gazed back at her from where he leaned forward to watch her leave. Ever since the day in the study, he looked at her longer, not averting his gaze half as much.
“I will be meeting Edmund at a nearby gentleman’s club to discuss some business prospects,” he told her, smiling knowingly. “Though undoubtedly he will spend more time showering me with questions about you.”
“And how will you answer?”
He smirked deeper. “That you are the greatest bane of my life. Now, go spend time with your sisters. I am certain they miss you.”
To her own credit, she did not take offense at his words; on the contrary, she felt quite delighted by them. To be a bane was to matter, and she mattered enough to get under his skin. How much more could she ask for? He affected her; it was a comfort to know she affected him.
Still, the urge to ask about their time in the study—to know if it was ever something that would happen again, if it was a moment of weakness on his part, or if she pleased him in how she had acted and sounded and reacted—was strong, but she bit it back. It was not the place to do so.
Yet Oscar didn’t look away from her, and she ignored the fluttering in her stomach at that intense, pinning attention.
Did he think the same thing as she did? Had thoughts of that night in the study kept him awake at night, as it had her?
“Then I shall see you back at the townhouse later,” she said.
“And while we are here, I shall see you to the modiste. There is a ball we are due to attend in several days. I want you properly equipped.”
“I have plenty of dresses,” she pointed out.
“And you shall have infinitely more,” he promised, eyeing her keenly. She flushed at that and stepped back, nodding her farewell.
With that, she turned back to her parents’ townhouse, where the door had already opened, revealing her sisters.
Before either could get a glimpse of her husband, Oscar ordered the carriage to pull away.
So, Isabella opened her arms as Sibyl launched herself down the path, embracing her tightly.
“Izzie! Heavens, it feels like years since I’ve seen you,” she sighed.
“The house is ever so quiet without you and Hermia,” Alicia said, joining Sibyl and offering a brief embrace. “I didn’t think I would miss either of you bickering, but I find myself listening out for it. Nevertheless, I do make up for it by—”
“Arguing with her tutor, as always,” Sibyl cut in, teasing her.
Isabella laughed at the two of them, linking her arms through theirs to situate herself in the middle before her mother or father emerged and caused any unrest.
Today was about the sisters, not the parents.
Together, they wandered toward Hyde Park, but Alicia barely waited until they were beyond the house’s gate before she began peppering Isabella with questions.
“How is it being a duchess? And do answer us properly, unlike another sister of ours.”
Isabella smirked. “It is most wonderful, honestly,” she answered, knowing from experience when they used to question Hermia that Alicia wouldn’t give up easily. “I have actually been redecorating the castle—”
“Castle?” Sibyl cried, stopping in her excitement. “Oh, I have heard rumors, but I did not truly think it would be a proper castle! Is it beautiful?”
“Do not be foolish,” Alicia said. “It is dark, gloomy, and drafty, I would assume. You know, to match the master within.”
Isabella bit her tongue, for it was still gloomier than she wanted it to be, but she didn’t want them to speak of her husband as the rest of the ton did. “Well, it is less dark now since I’ve taken over.”
“Excellent,” Alicia answered firmly. “You are taking your true power as the Duchess. I like to hear such things. Too many women bend to the whims of their husbands. I do not dare think Hermia changed anything about Charles’s house at first, but you—you have swept in and… changed what, exactly?”
“The music room,” Isabella told her. “It is possibly my favorite redecoration. I have redone my own chamber to match my bedroom at our house, and I wished to redo the drawing room, but Os—His Grace—has asked me to leave it alone.”
“Really?” Sibyl asked. “Why?”
“He… values certain of the… original charms of the castle,” she answered, noncommittal, not wanting to reveal too much about her husband’s vulnerabilities and how he needed his shadows for protection.
“So, I will honor those, but for other rooms that are not as frequently used, I have been given relatively free rein.”
“Relatively?” Alicia questioned, shaking her head.
They rounded onto one of the entrances to Hyde Park and set down one of the main paths. Isabella’s eyes cut around, thinking of running into Lord Stanton the previous time she was there.
“You are the mistress of the house. You ought to have full free rein,” her youngest sister added.
“It is still a shared home, Alicia.”
“As long as it is a home,” Sibyl piped up. “That is most important. A home is a feeling, you know. Do you see Rochdale Castle as your home?”
The question caught her in a way she did not expect.
Did she see it as such? Now that she thought of it, Isabella was not entirely certain anywhere had ever felt like home.
Not with the way her parents had been, absent and dismissive unless she could perform to their benefit.
Wickleby Hall had been tainted with too much bitterness and accusation, so that was neither use to her in terms of home.
“I…” She hesitated. “I sleep there, after all.”
It was a terrible answer, and one that would not satiate her sisters’ curiosities.
Still, she pushed on. “Hermia would have had a rather different marriage by now. No doubt she would have been commanding her entire household with enough grace to woo a ballroom of guests at once.”
“Oh, I am certain you are doing the same,” Sibyl giggled.
Isabella thought of little Thomas, the boy who had not surfaced since Oscar had scolded him. She really ought to seek him out again.
“Ah, I am doing my best.” She smiled. “Although Morris is taking to me most well. That is His Grace’s dog.”
“The Duke of Rochdale owns a dog?” Alicia asked, laughing. “I do not know why, but such a notion amuses me, given what the ton calls him.”
“Every dashing hero needs a canine friend,” Sibyl countered. “All my books say so.”
Isabella smiled down at the pathway they traversed, thinking of Oscar as her hero. In a way, he certainly had been, even if he was rough around the edges and more rugged than gentle-worded.
“What sort of dog is he?” Sibyl asked, her eyes lighting up at the prospect of a dog to befriend.
She had always been a friend to animals, yet their parents had never let them get a pet, not even a caged dove, despite Hermia’s endless begging for one ahead of her debut.
It could be a gift! Isabella recalled her older sister pleading. A debut gift. Please, I will take such good care of it.
Still, there had been no pets allowed on any Wickleby estate, and now Sibyl looked so hopeful at the prospect of meeting one.
“He is a very well-mannered bloodhound,” she told her sister. “And an excellent guard dog.”
“And from whom are you being guarded, exactly?” Alicia frowned, turning to meet Isabella’s gaze with questions she didn’t ask in front of their more idealistic sister.
“Nobody,” she said quickly, but thought of Morris barking wildly at Oscar’s raised voice, and the evidence of his night terrors. “But he…”
He guards his master well and knows of his tempers, she thought, but decided to say differently.
“He is protective of anything he thinks is amiss. Sibyl, you may come to meet him if you like. He can be a little shy at first around newcomers, but he took to me well enough, and with your temperament for hounds, I am certain he will warm up to you in no time.”
“Oh, could I?” Her eyes sparkled so brightly.
“Absolutely.”
“I did not think your husband would be the sort of man to welcome visitors,” Alicia noted wisely. “Given his… reclusive reputation.”
“Isabella is his wife, Alicia! Of course, he would allow her to have visitors, such as her family. After all, Mama and Papa did not stop raving about visiting Rochdale Castle.”
“They did?” Isabella asked, surprised.
After how their visit had ended, she hadn’t expected them to mention it at all, although she imagined their narrative was not quite the truth.
“Indeed. Mama spoke of how the Duke treated her with the utmost regard, and how you so frequently expressed your delight in her company, assuring her of how greatly you had missed her. They, of course, remarked upon the counsel they had given you to comport yourself as a duchess ought, offering the guidance they deemed proper.”
Where Isabella had been angry that day in the drawing room, she now found only loose amusement at the falsity of the visit. “I see. I must not have been in the same room as her.”
At that, her sisters laughed, linking one another tighter as they continued to walk through Hyde Park.
Once they found a bench that overlooked a small lake, Alicia walked off to inspect a low-hanging tree that she was certain had some engraving on it that she was interested in and wanted to use for her studies.
Sibyl turned to Isabella, a small furrow between her brows.
“Sister, are you happy?”