Chapter Four
Cassie peered into the breakfast room the following morning, disappointed to find only Tull, the footman. Poor man. She hoped she had not kept him waiting for long. She filled her plate, sat down, adjusted her chair, and glanced uncertainly around the room.
Apart from the times when she’d been ill, she’d never taken breakfast alone.
What was the etiquette?
She sliced her meat and then placed a small piece against her tongue. Yesterday, Harbury’s chewing had roused her ire. Today, her own felt unnaturally loud. She forced herself to swallow. Where was her husband?
And why did she care so much?
Ugh.
Her gaze settled on Tull’s distorted figure in the bowed butler’s mirror—a mirror specially fashioned so a table attendant could see everyone present and attend to their needs without being asked.
What a waste of Tull’s time. So silly to keep him standing there when he was unneeded.
Harbury had dismissed him yesterday. Could she not do the same?
She glanced over her shoulder. “You may go.”
He hesitated, his gaze moving uncertainly from the mirror to her own. Yesterday, he’d left immediately. Was he questioning her authority?
She felt her face heat. “I wish to dine alone.”
Her words came out more sharply than she’d intended.
The boy blanched and then quickly left the room. She slumped as far as her half-stays would allow and then dropped her head back against the chair.
How long would it take to become comfortable in her own skin, let alone her own home?
Would Harbury Hall ever feel like home?
Sighing deeply, she finished her breakfast.
She missed the sounds of her sisters’ chatter. She missed mornings at Willowhurst—at least the mornings when her father had not been present and she, her mother and sisters could prattle on about everything and nothing—neighbors, the weather, tomorrow’s adventures, last night’s dreams.
She set down her fork.
Even if her sisters had been present, she could never reveal the dream she’d had last night.
Not even to Eliza.
In her dream, Harbury had come to her room. Unlike their wedding night, he hadn’t looked discomfited and uneasy, as if he couldn’t bear to see her in the bed instead of his beloved Vivianne. Instead, he’d been decisive and intentional from the moment the door between their chambers clicked open.
Harbury, she’d whispered with sizzling anticipation as he strode across the room.
He arrived at the side of her bed and then fell to his knees, murmuring a heart-rending apology ending with I want you so badly, I simply couldn’t keep away.
She lifted the coverlet. He climbed inside, his body radiating so much heat, the cool, slightly damp room transformed into warmth and comfort. Though his masculine presence was still as much at odds with everything she understood, in her dream, she did not fear him.
First, his lips touched her forehead, just as they had the prior afternoon—an impulsive, intimate gesture.
A gesture that shifted her awareness. She no longer perceived the overwhelming contrast between them as strange and uncomfortable, but suddenly understood her softness was the perfect answer to his inordinate strength.
Next, he kissed her properly. Passionately. And then, instead of sweeping his hand over her unspeakable, private place to “check,” he’d not only asked permission, but waited for her to say yes. Yes, to caressing her slowly, intimately until she burned.
But her dream-self felt no embarrassment, only desire. She’d welcomed his weight against her body, his flexed muscles between her limp but trembling thighs. When he entered her, instead of pain, there had been fullness…satisfaction.
In the present, she sighed a little and then smiled.
Surely, such pleasure must be possible beyond fantasy.
Or had her dream-mind conjured impossibilities? She wished she had a better understanding. An understanding that Harbury, like other men of his age and station, most certainly possessed.
A very-real clank abruptly jerked her out of her reverie.
Her eyes flew open, meeting Mrs. Pratt’s gaze, which flitted quickly away.
“Apologies, Your Grace. The fork slipped.”
Mrs. Pratt hadn’t spoken in tones of disapproval, and yet her discomfort was plainly etched on her face. Cassie placed a hand against her burning cheek. Had the housekeeper been able to read Cassie’s thoughts?
Taradiddle and bilgewater.
“I don’t recall requesting the table be cleared.” She was fairly certain the housekeeper would never have intruded on her husband in such a fashion.
“You dismissed the footman. I assumed you wished me to clear the table.”
I am still seated. She held the housekeeper’s gaze.
Mrs. Pratt slowly set down the cup she’d just picked up. Then, with quiet dignity she folded her hands in front of her apron. Once at her full height, she fixed her gaze on something—or nothing—just beyond Cassie’s shoulder.
“I await your instruction,” she said in a voice so low Cassie barely heard.
Cassie shunted aside the urge to fill the uncomfortable silence by explaining why she’d sent away the footman, or by apologizing, or by ordering the frustrating woman to take everything away. Presently. She wanted to shove words—any words—into the vast ravine that was her ignorance.
She’d grown up with servants on a small estate, but she’d little idea how to manage a house so large that daily life required a veritable army of people in constant motion. She’d no idea at all how to be a proper duchess.
To hide her discomfort, she lifted her napkin and tapped her mouth.
Then again, if she stopped believing there was a right way, a proper way, might she forge her own path? Perhaps Mrs. Pratt wasn’t as antagonistic as she was in want of clear direction.
“I have business I wish to discuss with my husband.” Her voice was calmer than before. Lower. More certain. The same tone, in fact, Harbury had praised yesterday. “Where might I find him?”
“His Grace has been in his study since before the sun rose.”
In other words, estate administration had an early morning allure greater than her own.
“Of course.” She inclined her head.
“He is speaking with the steward, now. He doesn’t like to be disturbed when he is with the steward.”
“Thank you for letting me know. I will take your concern into consideration.”
Mrs. Pratt smiled faintly, as if relieved.
Cassie rose from her chair. “You may clear the table, now.”
“Very good,” the housekeeper replied, with a less awkward curtsey.
Believing she’d made some progress, Cassie broke into a determined pace and headed toward Harbury’s study. However, as she approached the closed door, some trepidation returned. Should she interrupt after having been expressly warned he would be displeased?
She leaned forward, straining to hear, but could not make out a single word. Blast! If she hovered about the study entry too long, someone was going to come along and bear witness to her shame.
She compressed her lips, exhaled roughly and scowled. She’d confront him another time.
She turned on her heel and headed toward the library.
She told herself she was taking the circuitous route to the long hall because she wanted to familiarize herself with the hall’s layout and not because she didn’t want to run into Mrs. Pratt yet again.
By the time she entered the library, she knew she’d been lying.
She’d reduced herself to lurking.
Worse still, as she slowly walked along the shelves, she realized her library project was neither as useful nor as necessary as she’d thought the day before. Then, she’d focused her efforts on the end of the library closest to the entry hall, assuming the whole library was equally disorganized.
On this end—she ran her gaze over the gilded print on the leather spines as she moved—the organization made sense. Atlases preceded travelogues; travelogues, History; History, Biography. Biography, philosophy. So why had the opposite end been so haphazard?
Plays, poetry, drama, agricultural instruction, etiquette guides, and dictionaries had all been jumbled together. She placed her hands on her hips and frowned.
Nothing made sense in this house, especially the house’s master.
Yesterday, she’d believed they had made some sort of progress. Now, she wondered if the “progress” she’d perceived had been nothing more than a reversal. When they’d been “courting,” he’d been polite, even gentlemanly, too.
Last night, he’d called them allies. This morning, he excluded her from his meeting with “their” steward. But perhaps, as before, he’d never truly meant to include her in his life.
Well.
She would insist on being included. Her first impulse had been the right impulse.
Whether or not she ruffled feathers, she was finished trying to figure out how everyone else expected her to act. Indecision and uncertainty were getting her nowhere. She had to confront the chaos at the source and on her own terms.
She headed back toward her husband’s study.
She’d be disturbing the duke, whether the disturbance pleased him or not.
*
“…So, you see, Your Grace, crop yields are up.”
Harbury frowned, squinting down at the ledger’s columns of numbers…some neat, some in a hand he hardly recognized as Anderson’s. Though he struggled to discern several more recent entries, everything appeared to be in order.
He’d no reason to question his steward’s assertion.
So why did Anderson’s ‘Your Grace’ grate on his nerves?
Was he annoyed because the man had always called his father Harbury? Or had the anonymous letter planted insidious seeds of suspicion?
He placed his finger on the column, following a line, first horizontally, then vertically. “Prices, however, are down.”
“Yes,” Anderson replied, his voice flat. “Only to be expected. Years of war falsely inflated them. With the resumption of trade with France—”
“I understand,” he interrupted testily, “the implications of trade. I may not be as well-versed in the minutiae of agricultural economics as my father was, but I assure you, I understand the relationship between supply and price.”
“Just so.”