Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Alice’s head spun as she attempted to sit on the chair. Her leg almost gave way underneath her, stealing what little grace the alcohol hadn’t already stolen.
The ball had come to an end, and although the Duke had been beside her most of the time since dinner, he had not quite successfully prevented her from having anything else to drink, so she found herself still rather inebriated.
She hadn’t needed to spread rumors that she had been manhandled into this union, or even that she had forced the Duke into it—both rumors abounded.
All she needed to do was prove herself a wife below his station in life.
Her leg already made that easy enough; her behavior was yet another way of proving it.
Convenient.
Her thoughts blurred as he came to bend down over her.
So tall. So handsome. Really, she did not know how it was fair that such a man—such a man—could be so physically prepossessing.
She had expected him to be cruel and distant.
Instead, he so often seemed to be encased in ice.
But sometimes, like now, he seemed hot-blooded.
A man she could reach out and take hold of. One she wanted. She wanted to crack the walls around him, to break him apart and taste him. To shatter the defenses surrounding him.
She wanted to know what his hands would feel like on her body…
No.
She stopped. Blinked. Frowned up at his blurry face and dark eyes. She didn’t want him—couldn’t want him! She was supposed to hate him. To make him break for revenge’s sake and nothing else.
She wanted to make him hurt.
The world would not stop spinning long enough for her to articulate any of those thoughts.
“Alice…” his voice resounded as he touched her arm.
She remembered again what it had been like to kiss him. How confusing, to loathe someone with every inch of your heart, yet for your body to want them so utterly. To be consumed like that.
“Your Grace,” she replied, her tongue thick, not obeying her commands.
The Duke eased his hands under her and lifted her upright. Clumsily, she attempted to grab her stick, but it clattered to the floor. The Duke sighed, then swung her into his arms.
“She is tired,” he told someone who stared after them and marched out of the room with her curled up against his chest. Her stick lay behind her, and although it was her house—of a fashion—she felt oddly bereft without it.
Without so much as a single word, he carried her through the house, up the staircase, and to her bedchamber. His gaze flicked to the chest of drawers she had instructed to be pulled over their adjoining door, but to her relief, he didn’t mention it.
“So,” he said, placing her gently on the bed, the harshness of his tone at odds with his actions. “Are you satisfied with how the night went, my drunken one?”
She licked her lips, hating the way her brain caught on ‘my’. “I hope they all hate you.”
“No doubt you do. No doubt that is the true reason behind your inebriation tonight.”
“It is one reason, certainly.” Something in her chest tightened, hopeless and cold, as though there was nothing of joy left in life for her. “They will never accept me, Your Grace. I am not Duchess material.”
He kneeled by her side, tilting her face up to his. She froze at the contact, but didn’t look away. “And according to many of the ton, I am not Duke material. Yet here I am, and here you are. As Duke and Duchess. And do you know what I did? All night, I defended you.”
She scoffed, but the world felt unsteady, and she rested one hand on his shoulder to support herself. “Should I be grateful?”
“Not grateful, just—” He looked away, running a hand through his hair. “I am trying, Alice. Can’t you see that?”
She scoffed. “By hiring a physician to cure the injury you caused?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Is there truly no way for you to forgive me? Not now, I know, but in time?”
She frowned at his face, trying to parse his emotions. This was the man she hated—she could never forget it. But he seemed almost… frustrated by her response to the night…
“I said I would destroy you,” she whispered, her fuzzy memory offering her that detail, at least. “I told you.”
“And if destroying me means destroying yourself?”
“What do I have left?”
“The entire rest of your life,” he pressed, that frustration burning in his voice now, holding her chin tightly.
She still didn’t attempt to pull away. If anything, having him this close was helping to keep her steady.
She’d never imbibed so much before, and she hadn’t known how unstable it would make her feel.
As though nothing—not the world around her, not her emotions—could be relied upon to be where she expected it.
“…So?”
Finally, he released her, moving back, and she almost fell on her face. The anger in his voice burned stronger now.
“If you were anyone but you, and if I were not aware of the debt you hold in my name, I would not let your behavior as it has been thus far pass.
I know how you must feel, and I am trying to be understanding—I am trying even to give you the freedom to hurt me if you so desire it, but why do so at your own expense?
“It is not in my nature to allow such disrespect. And yet here I am doing precisely that, letting you make a fool of me, a fool of you.” He dropped his hands and looked at her. “Is this to be the rest of our lives?”
He was standing now, towering over her, and some distant part of her wondered if she had somehow succeeded in bringing about his misery—not by her actions as such, but by his guilt. By feeling as though he could never speak out against her, even if she did him wrong.
How deep did his guilt run?
Nausea consumed her, and she pressed a hand to her mouth suddenly. “I think I am going to heave,” she breathed shakily.
His eyes flashed, and for one moment, she thought he would leave her to the consequences of her actions. In his position, she would—and she would have hoped that he would never come through the other side of it. She would have wished every bad thing on him.
Instead, he looked at her with that lingering ire in his face, before stooping and finding a chamber pot.
Clean, to her relief, as he held it under her face and she expelled the contents of her stomach against the porcelain.
She thought she felt his hand on her hair, an odd tenderness she couldn’t account for, but when she leaned back, the world returning a little to its proper place, he merely retreated to the door.
“I will bid you a good night, wife,” he stated coldly when he reached the doorway. “Next time, may I suggest not going as far out of your way to make a fool of us both. You will find your life with me will be far from pleasant if you do, and there is nothing I can do to save you from that fate.”
She blinked, her eyes damp with tears that had surged along with her nausea. Acid burned her throat.
“Would you?” she whispered, searching his face for some sign of a lie.
Where was it, the proof that he was a monster? She needed that proof, wanted to cling to it, but she could find no signs of it in the man that stood before her.
“Would I what?” he asked.
“Would you save me from misery if you could?”
He tilted his head, as though searching for an answer, although she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it.
“Of course,” he said at last, his voice low. “From the moment—for five years, that has always been my calling, even if I hadn’t known it at the time.” He inclined his head, then he was gone.
By the time Jenny arrived to put Alice in bed, she had fallen asleep on the covers.
The next day, Alice woke with a terrible headache and nausea that persisted even after she ate some dried toast and consented to a bath.
So this was the consequence of over-imbibing... Odd that any gentlemen chose to do it at all, really.
She spent the morning in the drawing room, reclining on the sofa and pretending to read, when the butler announced the Dowager Countess of Rutland. Alice just had enough time to sit up and process that she had a visitor when the dowager swept in with authority.
She was a woman in her fifties, hair pinned up in soft gray locks on the top of her head. Although there were lines around her eyes, she was a beautiful woman, and there was an immediate resemblance between her and the Duke.
Alice had studied the Duke’s family tree, and she knew that this woman was the Duke’s aunt. They hadn’t met at the wedding, but as soon as the dowager took a seat, Alice understood why.
“There you are! I wish I had not been north, or I would have done you the honor of calling on you before now. Being the mistress of a great estate is all very well and good, until one’s husband leaves it to you in sole ownership, and you suddenly find yourself in need of doing every little thing to it. ”
Alice grabbed her stick, hauling herself to her feet, and held out her hand, wishing her head didn’t pound quite so much. “You were in the north?”
“Northumberland.” The older lady chimed, nodding her head like a peacock.
“A week’s journey, and Frederick did not so much as have the consideration to inform me he was marrying before the moment, or you may be sure I would have traveled down sooner.
His wife! Let me look at you.” She stepped back, her gaze sweeping over Alice’s body.
Although Alice had acted out at the ball, determined to make the ton believe the worst about her and her suitability as a Duchess, she didn’t want this self-possessed woman—mistress of her own estates—to think the same. She clutched at her skirts with sweaty palms.
“You find me a little… unwell today,” she said with a trying smile.