Chapter 8
Asher likely should have kept his distance, but instead, he sat right beside her, hoping that he could help remove that stunned look from her face.
Lady Evelyn still stared straight ahead, in likely shock.
“Lady Evelyn, is all well?”
Sometimes the best thing to do was ask.
“We’ve been discovered. I heard someone call out your name as we entered the carriage.”
He shrugged. “So be it. It was bound to come out.”
“I suppose I do not like being the name on everyone’s lips.”
“It will all be silenced soon, now that there is no longer any scandal.”
“Besides our hasty marriage.”
“Besides that,” he agreed. “But what does it matter now?”
She turned to look at him, her eyes far away, the tension almost suffocating.
“Your grace, I would like to thank you for… what you have done. For ensuring that my family is not entirely ruined.”
Asher stiffened. “I only regret that it was necessary.”
She flinched, and he realized that his words had been an unintended blow against her.
“I did not mean it like that. I am happy to be married to you. That is, I—”
She shook her head. “It’s fine.”
“I do not want you to feel that you are not welcome or that I would have wished this marriage away. My home is now yours, Lady Ev—your grace.”
“You might as well call me Evelyn. Otherwise, it will become rather tiresome when we spend more time together. Although I suppose…” She lifted her eyes to him, and he was caught once again by their depths.
He had become lost in them in the church, when some emotion that he couldn’t quite name had passed between them.
A shared connection that neither one of them would ever be alone again, he supposed.
“We will be spending time together,” he confirmed.
“While I am often in Parliament and dealing with my estates, I do try to spend meals with my mother and sister, and we will be required to attend many events together. I would also prefer that you accompany me to the countryside when we reside there in the summer. Run the household and all that. It would help if we were somewhat acquainted with one another.”
She raised her eyebrows, and he wasn’t sure if that meant she agreed with his reasoning or not, but he forged on.
“Please call me Asher,” he said, earning another look up from beneath her lashes. “We will have much to discover about what our lives will look like,” he continued. “I have some idea, but I would appreciate your input.”
“Mine?” she said, somewhat surprised.
“Whom else’s would I consider?”
“I suppose I assumed that you would tell me what was expected,” she said slowly.
“Would you fall into line with whatever I asked?”
“No,” she said bluntly, and he couldn’t help but laugh at that, breaking some of the awkwardness between them.
“When I met you before, you were different from the way you have been since we decided to marry,” he said. “Where did that woman go?”
He had actually rather enjoyed her.
“What do you mean?”
“You were more forthright and had no issue in telling me what you thought of me and my… ways.”
“I suppose I wasn’t sure how to act around you any longer, now that you were going to be my husband,” she said.
“We have much to learn about one another,” Asher returned. “But one thing I can tell you is that I am fair, and I will never ask you to do anything that feels uncomfortable.”
Evelyn bit her lip. “How would you feel about me continuing to solve the puzzles at the British Institution every morning?”
“I would feel slighted, I suppose,” he said, and her mouth dropped open before he grinned, “Only because that would mean that you’re beating me to the answer every day.”
Her eyes widened. “You are going to try to solve them as well?”
His brow furrowed. “Why would you think I would only try?”
“Well, judging from what I witnessed the last time…”
By the time the carriage pulled to a stop in front of Ravenscar House, they were both laughing, the tension eased, at least until the carriage came to a stop and suddenly this small bubble where they were completely alone burst all over again.
“Why are all of the staff lined up in front of the door?” Evelyn asked.
“To greet the new lady of the house.”
“Would that not be your mother?”
He fixed her with a look, realizing that she hadn’t quite considered what all of this would mean.
“Not anymore.”
When the carriage door opened, he took a step down before reaching a hand up to help her.
“Welcome to Ravenscar House.”
Evelyn had tried to imagine what marriage would be like as she lay in bed the previous couple of nights, but she hadn’t imagined this.
That there would be a staff of people, waiting and ready to answer to her.
At her father’s townhouse, she had been the lady of the house, of course, but it was just the two of them with a few maids and footmen. Their housekeeper and butler had been with them for so long that they looked after almost everything.
Here, an entire staff was staring at her as though they expected her to make some kind of speech before telling them each exactly what they should be doing.
“This is Mrs. Jenkins,” Asher said, as the first woman curtsied to her. “She is our housekeeper. Mrs. Jenkins, please introduce the rest of the staff to her grace.”
Her grace. Evelyn swallowed hard as she looked to Asher for guidance, but he seemed preoccupied now that they had arrived, like he had done his duty and would now leave her be.
“I shall see you shortly for the wedding breakfast,” he said, before he was in the house, with Evelyn staring after him, open-mouthed, while the staff scrutinized her.
She nearly chased after him in her overwhelm, but then relief fell over her when a slightly familiar figure emerged from the house.
“Lady Thalia,” Evelyn said, relieved, if somewhat curious as to how her new sister-in-law had arrived before her. “How are you?”
“Welcome to Ravenscar, your grace,” Lady Thalia said.
“Oh, please call me, Evelyn,” she said softly. “I’m not sure if I will ever become used to that title.”
This was her home now. This was her family now. Would it ever start feeling like her reality?
“In that case, I will be Thalia,” she said with a shy smile. “I hope you will soon feel at home here.”
The wedding breakfast was to begin shortly in the Ravenscar House entrance hall.
Such an event was usually held at the bride’s family’s home, but the duke had insisted that it would be far easier for his family to host and Evelyn hadn’t felt like arguing, for she was not much of a hostess — not that she shared that with the duke, for she was sure that hosting was one of the primary skills required of a duchess.
Perhaps she should have told him.
She hadn’t seen her new mother-in-law since the church, as she was led to her room where she was supposed to settle.
It was, however, difficult when it was an extremely large bedchamber that was beautiful, lavish, imposing, and entirely not hers.
She stared at the bedclothes and ornate decorations she would never have chosen for herself, imagining instead lighter draperies.
A writing desk by the window. Shelves instead of gilt ornament.
Perhaps she would not change it all at once, but she would love to make space for herself.
Soon enough, however, she was back downstairs to the life that had now been chosen for her, where their few guests had already arrived.
The duchess – make that the dowager duchess now – floated effortlessly between Lord Julian and Verity, who had arrived with her mother since she was no longer accompanying Evelyn.
The duke’s mother seemed practically born to take on the role.
Unlike Evelyn, who currently felt like an unwanted guest and not the bride of the party.
She hardly belonged in such a setting, let alone in the role of duchess. She belonged in her learned societies with her father, her nose in a book, her feet in the British Museum while she solved puzzles.
“What are you doing?”
She didn’t have to turn around to know how close he was standing behind her, for she could feel the puff of breath on her neck, the low timbre of his voice in her ear.
When she turned, he was looking at her as though she was the puzzle, and she wondered if he would ever look at her the way she had seen some husbands look at their wives — with affection, at the very least.
“I am observing how well your mother hosts,” she said, telling the truth. “It comes very naturally to her.”
“Years of practice,” Asher said. “You’ll get there.”
Evelyn bit her lip. That was not exactly her life’s goal, but she supposed she didn’t have much choice now. Before she could say anything in response, though, he had already moved on.
Her father finally arrived, but rather than paying his daughter, the bride, any attention, Evelyn was astonished when he couldn’t tear his gaze away from Asher’s mother, as though she transfixed him.
Evelyn had to say his name a couple of times to capture his attention, and as much as she wanted to ask him what his connection to the dowager duchess was, she never had the chance, for the setting was too intimate, all the guests too close.
Evelyn was, of course, seated next to her new husband, although she found it difficult to eat any of the food at the breakfast that had been set so formally before them.
Thank goodness for Lord Julian, who regaled the table with his stories, and for Verity, who watched and listened with such obvious disdain that Evelyn found it difficult not to break out into laughter.
At one point, Evelyn asked her husband to pass her sugar for her tea, and when he set it in her hand, their fingers touched, causing her to gasp as she had to clench her fist so no one could see them shake.
It shouldn’t be anything. Just two people, now married, sitting side by side as a husband helped his wife with her tea.
But when his skin had touched hers, it seemed almost to burn her with its spark, and Evelyn stiffened, as did Asher, both quickly looking away from one another as she tried to pretend that she was unaffected.
“Are you all right?” Verity asked, leaning against her on her other side, and Evelyn gave a quick nod.
“Of course.”
Verity lowered her voice to a whisper. “Evelyn, if you’re not happy with this…”
Evelyn gave her a wry smile. “It doesn’t much matter anymore, now does it?”
“Well, just know I’m here for you, for whatever you need.”
Evelyn patted her hand, appreciating the sentiment, even if there was nothing Verity could ever do to make this better.
By the time the guests left, Evelyn had nearly given up trying to maintain the calm in which she’d always prided herself.
Needing to be alone, she made for the stairs, but Asher’s voice stopped her.
“I’ll accompany you.”
Was he coming up the stairs with her?
Evelyn looked at him in alarm, especially when it seemed that he immediately understood her concern.
“I thought we should discuss the practical arrangements of our marriage,” he explained, silent until they reached the top of the stairs. “Have you seen your bedroom?”
“I have, when I arrived,” she said, silently adding, when you left me completely alone.
“It is attached to mine through the dressing room,” he said, pointing from the door of her room to his as they stood in the corridor. “Should you ever need anything, please knock.”
Knock. Not walk into her husband’s room uninvited, of course.
“Your schedule is yours,” he continued, as he stayed within the corridor, rocking back and forth from his heels to his toes, his hands clasped behind his back.
“If there are any events that I require you to attend, I will be sure to tell you. The household is yours to run as you wish. My mother can provide you with any advice that you need.”
His mother. Not him. The mother, who had been rather cold to her and had barely spoken to her since their wedding had been announced.
“Your mother is free to continue running the household, if she wishes to,” Evelyn said. “I would not be bothered in the least.”
Asher looked at her as though she had grown a second head.
“That is your job now.”
“I know, but I—”
“My mother prefers everything to be as expected,” he said. “She was raised to be the wife of a duke, and she has lived her life accordingly.”
Just as Evelyn thought, and so opposite to her own upbringing.
She only nodded, even though she was internally unsettled.
When Asher finally left, she looked in the mirror of her vanity, finding a married woman who felt like a stranger staring back at her.
She thought of Asher, who had steadied her at the altar, had spoken to her like a friend in the carriage, had given her reason to believe that perhaps they could at least be companionable.
Then she remembered all that had occurred since arriving here, how cold he had become, slipping back into that role of ducal authority so easily.
If only she’d had more time to learn what she was signing up for.
But that dream had passed.
She would have to forge a life that worked for her.
Or else she would completely lose herself.
Which was one thing she refused to allow.
Of that, she was certain.