Chapter 6
“The chair was moved.”
Maribel continued arranging Oliver’s wooden soldiers along the windowsill, each figure placed with careful precision according to the battle formation he had described to her that morning. She did not turn toward the voice that came from the doorway.
“The light falls better here,” she said. “Oliver can see his illustrations without straining.”
“Mrs. Allen arranged the nursery according to specifications I approved before the boy’s arrival.
” Thaddeus’s boots sounded against the floorboards—two steps into the room, then a halt.
Measuring his territory, she supposed. Much like the soldiers in Oliver’s battle.
It was what this manor had felt like since she had first stepped foot here—and it hadn’t changed after the wedding.
“Changes to the household are to be discussed with me before implementation.”
“I moved a chair, Your Grace. Not the walls.”
Oliver had gone very still beside her, his small fingers frozen around the cavalry officer he’d been positioning. Maribel placed her hand over his—a gentle pressure meant to reassure—and finally turned to face her husband.
She was quickly starting to recognize the way Thaddeus held himself when displeased: shoulders drawn back, jaw set at an angle that might have been carved from marble.
She supposed that she was learning it so quickly because she was most often responsible for it.
He stood framed in the doorway now, immaculate in his dark coat and precisely tied cravat, every inch the Duke whose household ran according to his exact specifications.
“The nursery,” he continued, “is part of this household. As such—”
“As the duchess, I believe it falls under my purview as Oliver’s primary caretaker. Which is, if I am not mistaken, the role you assigned me.” She met his gaze without flinching. “Or have the terms of our arrangement changed?”
A frown formed between his brows. She could see his face paling to a deathly colour.
“The terms remain as stated. However—”
“Then I fail to see the difficulty.” Maribel turned back to the soldiers, dismissing him as thoroughly as if she had shut a door in his face. “Oliver, shall we position the infantry next? I believe you said they guard the left flank.”
The silence stretched. She felt Thaddeus’s gaze boring into her back, felt the weight of all the things he wanted to say pressing against the carefully maintained walls of his composure.
His footsteps retreated. The door closed with pointed precision—not slammed, because the Duke of Blackwood would never do anything so undignified as slam a door, but pulled shut with enough force to communicate his displeasure.
Oliver let out a breath. “He’s angry.”
“He’s adjusting.” Maribel smoothed the hair from his forehead. “As we all are. Now—the infantry?”
The boy’s hands remained unsteady as he reached for the next soldier, and Maribel’s heart twisted with familiar fury. Four years old, and already learning to gauge adult moods, to make himself small when tension thickened the air. What kind of household taught a child such vigilance?
This one, she thought grimly. This cold, silent monument to control.
But she kept her voice light as she guided Oliver through the positioning of his troops, and by the time the battle formation was complete, the tightness had eased from his small shoulders.
As her days as a duchess dragged on, Maribel rather quickly learned to navigate the rhythm by which the household operated—though this was learnt through observation rather than instruction.
Breakfast at eight, served in the morning room with its east-facing windows and pale yellow wallpaper.
Thaddeus presided over the meal with his correspondence spread before him, offering monosyllabic responses to any attempt at conversation.
Maribel stopped attempting by the start of the second week, directing her attention instead to Oliver and the careful negotiation of getting porridge into a child more interested in watching the gardeners through the window.
Luncheon at one, taken in the smaller dining room.
Thaddeus rarely appeared, sending word through the butler that estate business required his attention.
Maribel suspected avoidance rather than industry, but she could not bring herself to question his absence.
Besides, she could not deny that the meals passed more comfortably without his watchful silence.
She would rather not explore the discomfort that stirred within her whenever that icy gaze locked in on her.
Dinner was served promptly at seven, in the formal dining room with its crystal chandeliers and mahogany table large enough to seat thirty.
Here, propriety demanded they sit together—husband and wife at either end of that vast expanse, making stilted conversation across the silver and porcelain whilst footmen moved soundlessly along the walls.
“The weather has turned cold,” she might offer.
“Indeed,” he would reply.
“Oliver enjoyed his lessons with the tutor today.”
“I am pleased to hear it.”
And so the minutes would crawl past, each exchange more hollow than the last, until Maribel could escape to her chambers and the blessed relief of solitude.
Between these fixed points, she carved out her own territory.
The nursery became her domain—she rearranged it piece by piece, each small change a quiet act of rebellion against the rigid order Thaddeus prized.
The library, too, she claimed, spending hours among its shelves whilst Oliver napped, pulling down volumes that looked as though they had not been touched in years.
It was during one such exploration that she found herself in an unfamiliar corridor.
She had been following the sound of birdsong—unusual, for the house seemed to swallow sound rather than carry it—and had taken a wrong turn somewhere past the portrait gallery.
The passage stretched before her, narrower than those in the main wing, its wallpaper faded to a colour that might once have been blue.
At its end stood a pair of double doors.
Maribel approached slowly, her footsteps muffled by a carpet worn thin with age. The doors themselves drew her attention: carved oak panels depicting roses and trailing ivy, craftsmanship that spoke of commission rather than convenience. Beautiful work, made more striking by neglect.
She tried the handle. Locked.
“Your Grace?”
It took a precious few seconds and one repetition before Maribel turned. She was not yet quite used to her new title. Mrs. Allen stood at the corridor’s entrance, her ring of keys glinting at her waist, her expression showing none of the curiosity that was heard in her tone.
“I seem to have wandered off course,” Maribel said. “These doors—where do they lead?”
The housekeeper’s hands twisted together at her apron. “The east wing, Your Grace.”
“And the east wing contains?”
An uncomfortable pause followed the question. Mrs. Allen glanced toward the locked doors, and something crossed her weathered face—old grief, perhaps, or the particular discomfort of servants asked to explain their master’s eccentricities.
“His Grace prefers it closed, Your Grace. It was the late Duchess’s domain—her bedchamber, her sitting room…” Another pause followed, this one heavier than the first. “He hasn’t opened it in years.”
Maribel looked back at the carved roses. His mother’s rooms, sealed away like a tomb. Much like her garden left to ruin.
“I see,” she said quietly. “Thank you, Mrs. Allen.”
The housekeeper made to turn, and the words escaped her lips before she could stop it.
“Mrs. Allen… If you don’t mind me asking, how long ago did the Duchess pass?”
Mrs. Allen shifted. Then sighed.
“Eight years ago, I believe Your Grace.”
She did not push further. But as she followed the housekeeper back toward the inhabited portions of the house, her mind kept returning to those doors. To the dust in their carvings, the tarnish on their handles, the years of silence they represented.
Eight years since the Duchess had died, and still her son could not bear to enter the rooms she had loved.
What kind of grief demanded such absolute avoidance? What kind of man built walls so high against his own heart?
The question troubled her more than she allowed herself to let on. Perhaps, she thought, it was because she had come to think of Thaddeus as cold and unfeeling.
Yet, any man who could grieve with such depth could not possibly be devoid of all feeling, could he?
“Might we go outside?”
Oliver’s voice and the tug of his hand on her sleeve pulled her from the sudden confusion of her thoughts.
“Please?” He turned to look at her, and the hope in his eyes reminded her so much of Margaret that her heart twisted. “Just for a little while? I’ve been inside for ages and ages.”
The schedule—that sacred document Thaddeus consulted like scripture—decreed afternoon rest. Oliver was meant to be napping, or at least lying quietly in his bed whilst adults moved about their business undisturbed.
But the boy had not rested well in days. Maribel had heard him crying out in his sleep, had felt the tremors that ran through his small body when she held him afterward. Rest would not come to a child wound tight with anxiety and loneliness.
Fresh air might.
“Fetch your coat,” she said at last. “The warm one, with the brass buttons.”
His face transformed. She watched the hope kindle into joy, watched him scramble from the room with an energy he had not displayed in days, and felt her resolve harden into something diamond-bright.
Let Thaddeus object. Let him send his servants with their polite summons and pointed reminders of schedules and propriety.
She was the duchess now, and Oliver was as much in her care as in his.
Besides, she was Oliver’s aunt, his mother’s sister, the only family he had left in this world, and she would not keep him caged for the comfort of a man who feared disorder more than he loved the child in his care.