Chapter 4 #2
The butler bowed ponderously to her. “Welcome to Winchester Manor, Your Grace.”
“…Gregson.” She could at least recall his name. How frightfully embarrassing that he had seen her first arrive in the late duchess’s wedding gown. “It’s an honor to be here.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” The way his nostrils flared suggested he was less than pleased to welcome her as mistress, but he was far too disciplined to allow any of his resentment to show; instead going down the line and introducing all the servants.
Their names slid through her mind like water through a sieve, but that was to be expected, surely.
Beside her, Nicholas walked with his hands tucked neatly behind his back.
A lady ordinarily arrived with her own lady’s maid in tow.
Isadora had none, so the head housemaid had simply become hers until another could be engaged.
The arrangement had been made before she’d even crossed the threshold.
It was faintly alarming how smoothly Winchester Manor absorbed a person, and Gregson appeared to stand at the center of it all.
After the growingly awkward round of introductions, Isadora let herself be ushered into the dining room, where enough food waited to feed a royal progress.
“My goodness,” Isadora said impulsively. “What a spread! You must employ an excellent cook, Your Grace.”
“Dubois is a French chef from London,” Gregson said with a slight sniff. “We employ only the best for His Grace. But I shall convey your compliments.”
“Please do,” Isadora said, and smiled at him. A little of the starch went out of the man.
“That’s enough, Gregson,” Nicholas said, and the butler bowed himself out of the room.
Fortunately for Isadora’s frayed nerves, she had only a few seconds alone with the duke before the first of their guests arrived. Notably, a small girl with long blonde hair braided flawlessly behind her, and a lilac dress that flowed around her legs as she ran up to Isadora.
“You look so pretty! Your hair is like Mrs. Hobbes’s marmalade. That’s a compliment, by the by—it’s very good marmalade.”
Oh, she was lovely. Fair-haired in a house full of dark portraits, chin up, not a trace of shyness anywhere on her.
“Thank you.” Isadora sank down to her level, skirts pooling on the parquet. “I love yours, too.”
She nodded gravely. “Papa says I have it from Mother because he doesn’t have such fair hair. But I don’t remember her at all,” she said, shrugging. “I hope you like our home. It is quite lovely to have another lady about the house. Oh! How do you like Papa’s cravat?”
Isadora glanced across the room. Nicholas had gone suspiciously still over his champagne.
His ivory cravat was… Well, it was ever so slightly crooked, and tied in a relatively simple style, Isadora would not have thought necessarily the best choice for a wedding.
And yet, that simple mark in his otherwise pristine appearance lent him a boyishness that made him feel less out of reach.
“I like it, I think,” she said slowly. “It’s rather… charming.”
“Yes, I agree. I did it myself, you know.” Without waiting for praise—if indeed that had ever been her intention with the divulsion—she took Isadora’s hand. “I’m Sophia.”
“And I’m Isadora.”
“What shall I call you?”
“Whatever you would like,” Isadora said. “My sisters would call me Izzie when I was growing up, but ever since we’ve been separated, everyone has called me by my full name.”
Sophia tilted her head as she considered. “Then I shall call you Isadora to begin with, too,” she decided. “Come, meet my aunts. I think you will like them.”
Isadora spared a quick smile at the duke, whose expression briefly showed something that appeared like longing before all feeling was wiped from his eyes, and he retreated back behind his metaphorical mask.
While he began greeting the arriving guests, Sophia introduced her to her aunts, holding court by the long windows.
Both of whom were, of course, just as charming as Sophia had promised.
Marie Skeffington, twenty and fizzing like something uncorked, kissed her cheek before Isadora finished her curtsy while Elizabeth Hortington watched her sister do it with the weary calm of a woman resigned to a lifetime of apologizing for her.
At twenty and unmarried, Marie was quite clearly the baby of the family, and rebellious for it too.
“So you’re the one who’s pulled off the miracle,” she said by way of greeting. “We’d nearly given him up. Another year and we meant to start leaving eligible ladies on his doorstep—”
“Marie,” her sister scolded.
“—in baskets,” Marie finished, unrepentant, and stole a lily to tuck behind her sister’s ear.
So this was what an affectionate family looked like from the inside. It almost reminded Isadora of her own old relationship with her younger sister, Unity.
Elizabeth, at twenty-seven and comfortably married, was a steady, dark-haired lady with a pretty face and serene eyes. Marie apparently lived with her, down in Leicestershire; they had traveled up for the wedding.
“Yes, yes,” Marie said hurriedly. “But, we are delighted. And you do so look divine.”
“We are,” Elizabeth agreed. “Don’t let him trick you otherwise; we are very fond of him, though from how seldom he invites us, one would think we’d cast him out of Eden.”
“Seldom is putting it tragically,” Marie groaned as she lowered to Sophia’s height.
“You know it has been an age since he last visited. And kept our darling Sophia from us, too, the wretch.” She tweaked her niece’s cheek and was rewarded with giggles all around, before taking her hand and dragging her off to the refreshments table.
Oddly enough, they seemed an open and endearing family—aside from Nicholas, who always seemed to stand so aloof. Even when he eventually greeted his sisters, he merely nodded at them from a measured distance and asked if they were well before taking his leave.
Isadora found him again without meaning to look.
The man of the hour stood at the window, apart from his own wedding breakfast, the afternoon sun gilding one side of his elbow and abandoning the rest of him to shadow.
A hundred guests drank his champagne, and the empty carpet around him might as well have been a moat.
“You’ve noticed then, too,” Elizabeth said quietly, following her gaze.
“Noticed what?”
“That he’s the loneliest man in any room he owns.
” She chuckled half-heartedly. “He wasn’t always like that, you know.
I was a girl when he first married, but I had a brother once who laughed until he wheezed, and climbed the orchard wall in his dinner clothes over a sixpence bet.
Ask him about it sometime. Watch him pretend not to remember. ”
Isadora tried to hang that picture on the still figure by the window. It would not fit. “More like Marie, you mean?”
“No one is quite like our Marie,” Elizabeth murmured, a fond, exasperated smile touching her lips. “But a little more like her, certainly. He could be the life of the party. Things changed when our father passed.”
“So it was the dukedom?”
“The dukedom, first. Then—” Elizabeth trailed off. Turned her glass by the stem.
Isadora itched to ask about his late wife. She had died, but Isadora did not know how nor why. She knew nothing, but there was an air around as though everyone else did, and there was a certain amount of pity directed at both Nicholas and her.
She was the duke’s new wife, and her fate was in his hands.
Not that she imagined he was capable of anything nefarious.
But she could feel people’s gazes burning her neck sometimes.
The murmurs that quietened when she got too close.
Nicholas had picked her out of an unfavorable situation and given her the title of his wife—of duchess—and everyone speculated as to why.
“Be patient with him,” Elizabeth said after a long moment. “He is not always perfect, but he will try, and whatever he may think, he needs someone to help guide him and Sophia through whatever demons he’s facing. Marie and I have long given up believing it could be us.”
Isadora frowned, nipping her lower lip. “Yet you are confident I am the right person for that?”
The raven-haired lady patted her hand reassuringly. “Well, he chose you, didn’t he? Have a little faith in yourself.”