Chapter 4 #3
Before she could even fully process the fact that she was now a duchess, she was being led out of the chapel and toward the waiting carriage.
The carriage door stood open, and Euphemia sat inside, watching her sisters hurry to her side to say their goodbyes.
Seraphina reached her first. “I told you so,” she said, her arms crossed tightly over her chest as she glared at the carriage.
“I told you we should have never come to London. Now look at what has happened. You are getting married to a man you do not even know, let alone love, and for what? To satisfy the gossip sheets? You should have listened to your eldest sister. I’ve always said love was a secondary consideration, and now you are proving me entirely right in the most dramatic way possible. ”
“Oh, do hush, Seraphina,” Leonora interrupted, nudging her aside with an elbow.
She leaned over the carriage frame. “Love is entirely irrelevant now. Euphemia is a duchess, which means she has strict structural duties to perform.” Leonora opened a small book she had produced from somewhere on her.
“As a duchess, you will be expected to oversee a household of no fewer than fifty staff. The housekeeper manages the female servants and reports directly to you. Do not underestimate her. If she decides you are not worth her loyalty, the entire household will know it within a week, and the cook will put too much salt in everything indefinitely.”
“Where did you get that book?” Euphemia asked.
“The circulating library. I thought it might be useful.” She turned a page.
“You should also familiarize yourself with the estate accounts as soon as possible. Dukes are notoriously uninterested in domestic management and if you do not take it in hand immediately someone else will and that someone will not have your interests at heart—”
“We should never have come to London,” Seraphina stressed and crossed her arms. “I want that noted. I said it before we left and I am saying it now and I want it on the record.”
“The record of what?” said Euphemia.
“Of everything. Of this entire catastrophe.”
“You are also expected...” said Leonora, still reading. “...to manage the social correspondence of the household. Invitations, acceptances, regrets. A duchess does not decline without good reason and should not accept without strategy.”
“She is facing a lifetime of cold dinners with a terrifying recluse, Leonora.”
“He is not a recluse, Sera,” Leonora argued.
Euphemia sat inside the carriage, simply listening to the two of them go back and forth.
It was exhausting, funny, and deeply comforting all at once.
Even as a newly minted Duchess, she was still just the sister trapped between two entirely different sisters.
Her sisters. Her impossible, beloved, entirely maddening sisters.
When the argument finally hit a brief lull, Euphemia offered a soft, watery smile and reached out to press their hands. “I am going to miss you both so much.”
Seraphina’s composure, which had been held together with considerable effort, cracked at the edges. She stepped forward and put her arms around Euphemia and held on.
Leonora closed her book and joined them.
“We will miss you more,” Seraphina said, into her hair.
“We will visit,” Leonora said. “Frequently. Without warning.”
“So frequently...” Seraphina said, pulling back just enough to look at her, eyes bright. “...that the Duke will personally write to us begging us to stay away.”
“A formal letter,” Leonora said. “With the ducal seal.”
“He will develop a nervous condition.”
“He will invent prior engagements that do not exist.”
“He will consider moving to the continent.”
Euphemia laughed, and it came out slightly broken. “You are going to terrorize the man.”
“We are going to visit our sister,” Leonora said. “Whatever he calls it is entirely his own concern.”
“We are the Byron sisters,” Seraphina said quietly, and the teasing had gone from her voice entirely. “We are entirely inseparable. Not even a powerful man like the Duke of Greymoor can separate us from each other.”
The footman stepped forward, politely indicating that it was time to depart, just as Nathaniel got into the carriage.
There were final embraces. Final words. Seraphina’s hand pressing hers briefly, warmly, saying the thing that did not need saying because they all already knew it.
As the vehicle jolted forward and the wheels began to turn against the gravel, Euphemia watched her sisters’ wave from the chapel steps until they turned into small blurs in the distance.
A sudden wave of emotion caught her off guard, and she felt hot tears welling up in her eyes. She wasn’t entirely sure what the tears were for. If they came from the sadness of leaving her family, the sheer fear of the unknown, or the exhaustion of the past week.
But she refused to let them fall. Sucking in a sharp breath, she stared fixedly out the window at the passing London scenery. She kept her chin up and resolutely refused to look toward the other side of the carriage, entirely convinced that her new husband was still sitting there, peering at her.