Chapter 16 #2
He stretched his hand and looked for signs of bruising.
He had not engaged in pugilism outside of Gentleman Jackson’s gym in years.
He would not apologize for the facer he planted on his father-in-law yesterday.
The punch was the fastest way to shut the man’s vile mouth and vitriol he spewed about his daughters, particularly Jane.
Viscount Endelton’s carriage sat outside of the carriage house.
Servants loaded trunks into the vehicle.
At least Jane had not been left alone the entire time.
Richard picked up his pace, he needed to speak with Michael before he departed.
Speaking with everyone at once would be easiest. Richard entered the side door, instructing a footman to gather everyone in the library in half an hour’s time.
The news was not so dire that he could not change into clean clothing first.
Jenson, his valet, was prepared for Richard’s return and in less than the time he allotted, Richard strode into the nearly empty library.
Only a maid dressed in gray was in the room, emptying a new crate of books.
Richard picked up the newspaper from the table.
The maid did not even turn around. Where was the housekeeper?
Wasn’t this maid taught to leave the room silently?
Richard made his footsteps as loud as he could on the plush carpet and cleared his throat.
Still, the woman pulled another book from the box.
He could hardly disclose the news he had before listening ears. “You there. Did the housekeeper not tell you that you must leave as soon as I enter the room?”
The maid turned and looked at him with wide eyes over a smudge of dust on her cheek.
“You heard me. Leave!” Richard spoke louder than he intended.
The woman covered her face and rushed from the room, and Richard was sure he heard a sob as the pitiful maid entered the corridor.
He had been harsh, but it was not as if he discharged her.
He would speak with the housekeeper later to make sure the maids understood she had continued employment and understood her role.
Michael entered the room looking back at the corridor. “What did you say to Jane to have her running from you?”
“Jane? I have not seen Jane.”
Richard’s mother came in with Philippa closely followed by a maid carrying a tea tray.
The maid wore black. Not gray.
Richard looked at the box of books. Had that been Jane? Why was she dressed like a maid, with her hair in such a severe bun and a positively ugly gray dress? The look on her face and those wide eyes.
Richard shut his own to better recall the look on the woman’s face.
The smudge not dirt, the remains of a bruise.
Hazel eyes. Those eyes were the same he glimpsed under the bridal bonnet, only terrified.
Jane didn’t look like Georgiana at all. Well, no more than Philippa and Alexandra did. Were they not twins?
He had shouted at her. A woman he swore never to treat with anything but respect.
The first thing he did after he married was to run off without explanation, the second was a command that she should leave his presence.
She who had endured so much at a man’s hand, who trusted that as his wife she would find better, had been dismissed twice.
Richard looked to the three people he trusted most in the world. “Is my wife by chance wearing a gray dress and was she, for some inexplicable reason, unpacking a box of books?”
“I left Jane here a few minutes ago.” His mother motioned to the book crate. “I hoped my delivery of novels would cheer her. Where is she?”
Where indeed. If Richard thought he could not possibly make things worse with his new bride after running off on his wedding day—He was wrong. “Was she in a gray dress?”
“Why, yes, she was. I mistook her for a maid early this morning.” Richard’s mother’s eyes narrowed. “What did you do?”
Richard bowed his head. What had he done?
Not recognized his own wife. How was that even possible for a man not to know his own bride?
The dress, the hair, the fact he had not had a single clear glimpse of her since sometime last year when she was just another Lightwood sister.
Then there was his exhaustion. He wanted nothing more than to give an explanation of how he spent the past two days, head to bed for much needed sleep, and then get to know his new bride; all in that order.
Richard looked his mother in the eye. “I told her to leave the room in a very commanding voice.”
“I must find her.” Philippa turned to leave the room, her husband stopped her by taking her hand.
“No, dear, you cannot rescue your sister this time. My cousin needs to figure out what it means to be a proper husband and correct his own mistakes.” Michael leveled a glare at Richard. “This time he has no one to blame but himself for the problems in his marriage.”
“But you are ready to leave. I wanted to —”
Michael cut Richard off. “We will not leave until Philippa can say goodbye to Jane and know she is well. We will delay while you repair enough damage to convince your wife to join us.”
With a heavy sigh, Richard walked past his cousin to the door.
His mother touched his arm, stalling him. “Do not make the mistake of believing that a five-minute apology can erase days of uncertainty and hurt. Whatever you do and say will only be the beginning of reconciliation, not the end.”
A bevy of helpful footmen directed Richard to the family wing. Every servant in the house was aware of his wife’s tearful departure from the library. At least she predictably headed to her rooms.
Only she was not there.
A startled maid dusting his wife’s sitting room claimed not to have seen her at all that day.
Nor had she seen her lady’s maid since earlier that morning when the maid had been in a huff because the new duchess had dressed herself.
The lady’s maid was below stairs, waiting to be summoned.
Richard chose not to, since the abigail likely had not seen her mistress either.
Looking in his own rooms, he found Jenson repairing damage to Richard’s coat including a blood splatter. His man had likewise not seen the new duchess, though he had heard rushing footsteps in the corridor some minutes previously.
Richard returned to the corridor. How was he to find his wife in a house with dozens upon dozens of rooms, some of which he had never visited in his life?
Or at least not since he was a child. He could demand the servants’ help, but he was sure that would only compound the problem.
He walked along the family wing, opening door after door.
His old bedroom had been cleaned and returned to the state the chamber had been in over two decades ago when he moved there from the nursery.
Rooms for brothers and sisters that were never filled in his generation sat as they always had.
Likewise, the apartment his mother normally used was empty, as she stayed in the guest wing to give them privacy for their disrupted wedding night.
The irony that his first wife came by her status as she had shared a room with him before their wedding and his wife of two days had never even slept under the same roof was not lost on him.
His disastrous first marriage had not been entirely of his making, so far everything wrong in this one was his fault.
He reached the end of the wing. Could Jane have used the servant stairs?
Hidden in some cupboard or corner? He retraced his steps.
Light danced below the door of his mother’s sewing room.
No one had used the room in years. At least not since his first marriage. Facing both south and west, the corner room was too warm other than in the mornings, or so he had been told. Cautiously, he turned the handle.
Someone had pulled the curtains back from the windows, allowing the cool November light to fill the room.
Jane sat on a cushioned bench in the south-facing window, a mess of yarn in her hands.
She raised her head. Though traces of tears remained in those hazel eyes, she was not crying.
Whether it was from the dress or the position, she looked smaller than she should, vulnerable, though not scared.
Young, so very young. Much younger than the nineteen years he knew her to be.
Guilt filled him to the point of suffocation.
How had he put her in the position of his wife without even knowing what she looked like?
If her hair was not pulled back so tight and her face not glistening from recently spent tears and her eyes not so shadowed—did she suffer from two sleepless nights as well?
Jane could be easily classified as very pretty.
Far from her father’s description of plain.
He should have punched the man again. He suspected that when she smiled, she would be much more than pretty.
Would there ever be a chance that he could bring her to smile?
Richard cleared his throat, suppressing the guilt so he could speak and stepped into the room. “I owe you so many apologies. I do not know where to begin.”