Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
She lifted her skirts and followed Mrs. Tully up the floating staircase to the upper level and then another short staircase to a floor where every hallway had an Aubusson carpet runner and fine dark walnut doors with brass furnishings.
Mrs. Tully stopped at a door and pulled it open. “Here you are, Your Grace. I hope it does not disappoint.”
I have no power here. It could be a sack of coal, and I would still say I love it.
The rooms, however, were the epitome of luxury. Her quarters consisted of her bedroom and a dressing room directly adjacent to it, which she would examine later.
Her bedroom was an opulent one with high ceilings and heavy antique furnishings. The air was still, holding the faintest scent of citrus wood polish.
A massive four-poster bed, white velvet hangings tied against the posts; it was draped with white cotton sheets and piled high with white pillows. The marble fireplace loomed, tall and cold.
Everything inside was immaculate, clean, and opulent even without the antiques decorating the fireplace mantels, sideboards, or walls. She was afraid to move the wrong way and bump against something that cost more than half the objects in her old home, and smash it to pieces.
Her old home was full of constant chatter, laughter, and the bustling activity of her family. In contrast, the calm silence at the duke’s home unsettled her.
“I adore this room,” she said honestly. “Thank you. I know you did not have much time to prepare.”
“It’s our pleasure,” Mrs. Tully replied, pleased. “Would you like luncheon to be served in your drawing room or in the breakfast room?”
“I—” she paused. “My drawing room, I think. Thank you.”
“Please, settle in,” the housekeeper curtsied. “I will be back soon.”
“Thank you,” she replied.
As the door closed, Ariadne sank to the nearest seat, and the little strength she had vanished. Hunching over, she covered her face and sucked in a breath. Her chest felt tight with the indecision to either cry or scream.
“Emily?” Cedric strode into his daughter’s room expecting to see her in the schoolroom, as it was a school day. “Are you in here, pumpkin?”
He could easily pull her away from Mrs. Grimes for an hour and explain to her the situation; he did not want Emily to suddenly happen upon Ariadne and get confused.
The door to the schoolroom was open, and he pushed it in to see Emily tipping on a stool she had stacked on a chair while balancing an open bag of Jamaican coffee beans in the crook of the door.
“Emily.” He said firmly.
She startled, but the bag—miraculously—did not overturn on her. He strode in and easily snatched the bag from the crook of the door and gave her a stern look. “What on earth were you trying to do and were you willing to break a bone doing it?”
Shoulders falling, she pouted. “I was only trying to give Mrs. Grimes a little scare. She is so dull, all the time.”
“Where did you ever get this?” he asked while tightening the bag.
“Cook leaves the pantry door open at times and I distracted her while I got another girl to get it for me,” Emily said.
Cedric felt a headache start to blossom. Not only was she breaking the rules, but she was roping another innocent soul into her crimes.
“Emily, you cannot do things like this,” he said sternly. “It is not ladylike, and it certainly is not appropriate.”
This time, she pouted. “It was harmless. It’s not like I released a den of snakes or put fireworks under her bed.”
“No, it was not harmless,” he said. “You would have wasted a week’s worth of coffee—” and I drink that for my sanity “—and it is mean-spirited to Mrs. Grimes, Emily. You do not need to become mean-spirited toward anyone. It is not what we are and how we strive to become.”
True regret dampened her face, and he knew his point had been made.
“I’m sorry, Father.”
“Promise me you will not do that again,” he said.
Emily took a seat, dropped her head, and plucked at her skirts. “I promise.”
The defeat in the child’s voice struck a chord inside him, and he knew that there would come a time when he needed to sit the girl down and ask her why she was getting into these antics—but that was for another time.
Taking a seat, he said. “I need to tell you something, and I need you to understand that nothing about this changes the things that matter,” he said.
Then, he paused; how did one gently go about explaining a horrid scandal to a little girl? “Do you know how your uncle Leander can get himself into mistakes at times?”
“Yes,” Emily nodded.
“Well, a week ago, he made a very big mistake, and he almost got an innocent young lady into a lot of trouble,” he said while ignoring the truth of how Ariadne’s mother had forced this whole kerfuffle.
“And you had to fix it?” Emily asked smartly.
“And I had to fix it,” he said. “See, Emily, young ladies like you, well, older than you are, are very scrutinized by everyone around them. If they are found in the wrong place with the wrong people, the ton can shun them.
“Your uncle made such a mistake that could have destroyed the young lady’s life, so I had to step in and force him to marry her. Unfortunately, Leander did not like that idea, and he ran away, leaving her in a very harsh situation.
“I had to step in and marry her instead to make sure she was not shunned,” he said. “Do you understand that means, Emily?”
Her brows furrowed. “I have a new mother?”
“In the eyes of the church, yes,” he replied. “But you can accept her as a mother figure if you want. I will not force you to.”
“Why not?” Emily blinked. “Isn’t she pretty?”
“She is,” Cedric admitted. “But being pretty isn’t enough for a marriage, Emily. I only married her to save her from the hate that would come from the ton.”
“Oh,” Emily shrugged. “Don’t you want to be married like my friend Ameilia and her father and mother?”
How do I explain this delicately?
“Some marriages are different than others, Emily.” He said. “Amelia’s mother and father married because they love each other. I married the lady because it was practical. Think of it as a business arrangement. The lady and I both gain from it.”
“Are you sure, father?”
“Yes.”
She came forward and hugged him tightly, “I love you.”
He embraced her back, “I love you too, but you are not going to escape the punishment of trying to scare your governess.”
“But father—”
“No,” he stopped her. “You will stay here, and when Mrs. Grimes returns, you will tell her what you almost did and promise her you will not do anything of the sort again.”
Returning to his private room, Cedric pulled his jacket off and flung it over the back of a chair. His eyes flitted to the door that connected to Ariadne’s room while he strode to his cupboard and plucked out a bottle of sherry and a glass.
He felt unduly gutted by the conversation with Emily—he had held in his grief and pain about Helena for years, and being reminded of her betrayal only rubbed salt in the smoldering sore.
After swallowing half the glass, he crossed the room again, pulled out a drawer, flicked the lid of a strongbox, and pulled out a letter. Yellowed and fragile with age, he gently opened the last thing Helena had left behind.
Every day, he wondered why he had not buried this letter with her.
Cedric.
It’s about time I reveal the truth.
I do not love you; I never loved you.
I write not with trembling hand but with a steadiness born of long-suppressed contempt. For the few years of our marriage, I have endured the cold civility of your companionship, your indifference paraded as propriety, your pride masquerading as honor.
You are not a husband to me, you have no emotion, no care, consideration or love inside you to be my husband. We are two ships in the night, passing by each other once in a lifetime, and then never again.
Know then that I will no longer submit to your hollow companionship. Another man has shown me the love and passion you do not possess, and, in his arms and bed, have I found the warmth and devotion that does not live inside you.
I shall not waste another season in your shadow, nor continue to play the dutiful spouse to a man who scarcely notices whether I breathe.
By the time you read these words, I shall be gone.
Do not trouble yourself with following me; you have already lost me, long before I chose to leave.
Consider this not a plea for forgiveness but a declaration of freedom.
May you find satisfaction in your wealth and titles, since affection and loyalty were never yours to command.
No longer yours,
Helena.
To this day, he had not found out who her lover was.
Well, this one, at least.
He reached for his drink and swallowed the last of the portion he’d poured out. Another memory of Helena’s spiteful words after he’d put off writing a speech for Quorum to take her to the fifth ball that week.
You’re a selfish bastard. You have no heart; you don’t know how to love me.
Helena was a master of manipulation by wielding her feminine wiles like a sword. He recalled how she had reeled him with her innocent glances and shy smiles, but then, turn those looks on other men, he’d thought she’d been friendly.
Young, idiotic naiveté.
When he’d finally caught on and demanded answers from her about her blatant flirtation, she’d twisted it into him being a jealous monster and that he did not love her at all. She had a devious streak; insidiously able to twist him into knots of guilt and anger.
Twenty years old was too old to be that foolish, he scolded himself as he poured out another drink.
Cold fury clawed at him while he felt control slipping from his grasp; he was angry as Leander for being so irresponsible and selfish, irritated at his late wife for being so manipulative, and now he was irked at himself for that spike of attraction to the young sacrificial lamb twenty feet away.
“It was a purely physical reaction,” he told himself, then grimaced when the words rang hollow.
He rang for Allan.
To everyone on the outside, Allan was his manservant; to him, the man who saved his life was his friend. As he entered, Allan bowed, “Your Grace?”
“Close the door,” he said, while pouring out his last drink. Both knew that instruction was a silent code for leave the formality at the door, we’re speaking frankly here.
When the walnut slab clicked in place, Allan’s tone was casual, not servile, “I thought you’d have called for me the moment you returned.”
“I would have if I hadn’t had to speak to Emily first,” Cedric said while turning and resting the back of his thighs on his bar. “I expect you are wondering how I left here with my brother and returned with a wife?”
Nodding, Allan said, “It did cross my mind, yes.”
In succinct tones, he recounted the events of the unfortunate day, not surprised when Allan did not blink an eye. He’d learned for years that there was little that shook the man, and that was a quality he truly needed.
Finishing his tale, Cedric said, “So, that is how I returned wed.”
“I assume you’re going to annul the marriage?” Allan surmised.
“Actually, no,” Cedric said. “I’ll detail the reasons another time, but for now, I need to hunt Leander down. He may be halfway to the Indies by now, but even so, we will find him.”
With one solid nod, Allan replied, “I will place runners on his friends and his mistress. His lordship will turn to one or the other if he is out to run.”
“Good man,” Cedric replied while savagely pleased that his manservant was on the same page he was. “In the meantime, I must write out this marriage agreement.”
“I will contact Bow Street in the next hour,” Allan said.
Cedric knew that any other lord would scorn him for letting his manservant handle such sensitive matters for him instead of his steward, but Cedric trusted the man who had saved his life. “Good man.”
“Should I send up some coffee?”
“Blacker than hell and twice as bitter,” he replied.
Bowing, Allan left the room, and Cedric followed, but headed in the opposite direction towards his study.
He passed down a painting-lined hallway, these ones were scenery of the wild English countryside, as opposed to the portraits of his forefathers in the library.
He passed the billiards room, music room, and library, finally arriving at a closed door.
This study was where he felt at home, the smell of lemony beeswax polish, ink, and oiled leather. He had shelves that reached from the floor to the soaring ceiling, all filled with law books, trade manuals, and old papers his father had sent down to him.
His boots sank into the soft carpet and, bypassing his massive mahogany desk, flung the long velvet drapes aside to view the gardens.
He plucked a few books from his shelves and rounded his desk, piled high with a multitude of invitations that he was inevitably going to decline, before he fished out his writing materials.
As he sat, his valet came with his coffee carafe. As he poured, he asked, “Is there anything you will need, Your Grace?”
“No, Torren,” he said as he dipped a pen in ink. “But thank you.”
As he took his seat and began to work on the marriage agreement, his mind flickered to the young lady in his joining suite. “The interim Duchess,” he snorted. “That’s not a phrase I never thought I’d say.”
Although Helen had been dead for nearly ten years, her shining blond hair and beautiful, spiteful smirk flickered through his mind’s eye. He could hear her say, once she knows you, she’ll run from you, too.
He clenched his jaw. One thing at a time.