Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Nicholas kept the polite mask nailed in place until the last carriage rolled down the drive.
He could have allowed Isadora’s aunt and uncle to host the wedding breakfast—tradition gave them the right—but tradition also would have given them the satisfaction, and he’d wager the whole affair would have run on watered wine and grudges.
From the very little he’d had to do with them the last week, they appeared to begrudge every shilling they spent on their niece.
Sophia had retired early after the feast, and now the house was quiet, and there was only his bride.
She sat fresh and pretty in a gown he didn’t recognize, ivory satin gone soft with age, wine-red hair coming loose from its pins in gleaming spirals. When she caught him looking, her throat moved and her eyes fled elsewhere.
Shyness. Of course. A virgin bride delivered right to her wedding night.
He shot the thought down before it could take root, then nodded to her gown. “I don’t recognize this.”
“Oh.” She blushed from beneath her lace collar as he watched it spread up the pale column of her throat, warm rose over cream. “It-it was my mother’s. I apologize I didn’t wear the gown made for me. I—” She cleared her throat and looked away. “I intended to, I mean… until this morning.”
“Did your aunt force the change?”
“No, not at all!” She shook her head hastily and met his gaze with part desperation, part defiance that took him off guard each time.
“It is my Mama’s. I wished to wear this for my—well, last time.
Instead, my aunt purchased the one from you.
I suppose she dislikes sentimentality. But this time, the decision was mine. ”
He strolled over to the opposite chair and sat, visibly making himself smaller so she didn’t think he might launch himself at her. What had her family been like if she constantly assumed contradicting him would result in losing his temper? Or worse, even; violence. “I see.”
“You are not… angry?” she ventured.
Over her wedding gown?
The satin poured over her like cream from a pitcher, clinging snug at the waist, at the sweet flare of her hips, and the low sun had turned the loose curls at her temple to burning copper.
One pin. That was all that gown was—a dozen tiny buttons and one breath of resolve—and every inch of that cream-and-rose skin would be his to uncover, slowly, by candlelight, if he were a different man and this a different marriage.
“I merely wanted you to have something of your own to wear. I suppose you beat me to that point.” He shrugged, keeping his eyes fixed on her face. “Who am I to stand between a woman and her sentimentality?”
She pursed her lips. “You went to such effort, I thought—”
“It was hardly any effort. And the gown looks good on you, besides.” He rose, restless again, knowing they ought to speak more, but unable to look at her, let alone speak about her dress, without contemplating what ought to come next in any good marriage.
Theirs was not, of course, a good marriage by any margin, but he could not be a man without imagining what his wife might be like on their wedding night. And that was not part of their agreement, nor had he wished it to be at the time.
“W-where are you going?” she asked.
“To my study. I have some work to do. If you’d excuse me.” He gave her a quick bow and left the room before she could object. There were several hours to kill before the evening came, and he had to face the reality of what he had done.
Isadora retired to bed early that night, letting the maid take her to her rooms, which she discovered had an adjoining door into what she could only presume were Nicholas’s rooms. Her heart gave a little lurch at the discovery.
Would he visit her?
They had never spoken of consummating the marriage. He had not mentioned his intentions, and she had not dared to ask. But now it begged the traitorous question of whether she would be sleeping alone tonight, after all.
“Would you like me to help you out of your clothes, Your Grace?” asked Anna, the head housemaid.
Isadora glanced at her reflection. The bedchamber was warm and generous—two armchairs by the fire, a long mirror, a writing desk, and a large canopy bed that dominated one wall. It was a cozy space she could envisage spending a lot of time in.
But should she remove her clothes and prepare for bed? Or should she wait for Nicholas to arrive—if he would? Or even, did the removing of clothes anticipate his arrival? She hadn’t been taught much of anything regarding the wedding night, she realized glumly.
The uncertainty chewed her down to bone, and she frowned at her reflection.
Her mother’s gown. The first decision she had made for her in a long time, and she was pleased with it.
What was more, the duke had seemed pleased with it too.
He didn’t seem to mind that she hadn’t worn his gown for the wedding.
All her dark little theories about him dressing her up like a china doll for company had quietly come apart soon after.
Obviously appearances were important to him—just not more than a small girl’s pride in a crooked cravat, or another girl’s sentimentality toward her mother’s wedding gown.
Well. If he wished to undress her himself, he ought to have come upstairs sooner. No one had told her the rules of this; if she got it wrong, she had a right to make mistakes.
“Yes, please,” she said to Anna at last. The maid had already laid out her nightdress—the plain cotton one from her aunt’s house, washed thin at the elbows. If she wanted finer nightclothes, her aunt had sniffed, she could buy them herself; her new husband had money enough.
Most brides came with bride clothes, but Isadora didn’t mind. Finally, she was free.
Her heart lifted as the familiar worn cotton settled over her, and while she waited—for sleep, or for the door, she refused to decide which—she set about making the room her own.
Her mother’s miniature went on the bedside table.
Her few books took up their posts on an empty shelf.
She moved the ink and paper to where a left hand wanted them, and dragged the writing desk in front of the window, where the morning light would fall.
Before she could do any more, a knock interrupted her thoughts, and Anna emerged again, holding a letter between her hands.
“This arrived for you, Your Grace,” she said.
“At this hour?”
“Sent express, I believe.”
Isadora frowned at the unfamiliar hand on the front, then broke the seal, turning the single page to the light.
Miss Fairbourne,
I must apologize for allowing time to get the better of me and failing to arrive at our wedding.
It was not my intention to embarrass you, although you must have been truly humiliated, and for that I am sorry.
You have been in my thoughts every day since, and I would be lying if I did not say what a fool I am.
I hope you can forgive me in time, particularly as you have made a far more advantageous match, which I cannot help but believe I am in some ways the cause of.
Do not forget your old friend.
Nathaniel Windham
Isadora stared at the letter. More of a note. No true explanation for where he had gone or what had mattered more than standing at her side on their wedding day. And yet he expected her to not only forgive him, but no doubt endear him to the duke so that he might benefit from her arrangement?
Yes, she had only married the duke because Nathaniel had abandoned her at the altar—but he could not take credit for the mortifying affair that followed.
What appalling behavior!
Before she could toss the letter into the fire, the door opened and Nicholas stepped through, still dressed, his cravat undone and the collar fallen open to bare the sun-warmed bronze of his throat.
Isadora could do nothing but stare at him in horror and disbelief. He had come, but he had come at entirely the wrong moment.
“A letter at this hour?” he asked lightly, nodding at her hands. “I hope no one has died.”
“No. That is... it’s only...” The words withered on her tongue.
His gaze dropped to the page crushed in her fist, then rose to whatever guilt had climbed into her face. She had seen frost come to a windowpane, spreading from the corner until the whole glass went white; she had never watched it happen to a man.
“Who has written to you, Miss Fairbourne?”
“It-it just… it was Mr. Windham. My…” She could not say the words. She didn’t need to. Comprehension sliced across his face, and the frost cracked clean through.
“Ah. The bridegroom.” Each syllable fell separately, minted one at a time and nearly making her cringe back from the force. “I suppose I ought to have known.”
“It’s not like that, Nicholas!”
His eyelids fluttered at the sound of his name on her lips, but a second later, he caught himself.
“No? Then what earthly reason could there possibly be for a gentleman to write to a lady on her wedding night?” His lips curled.
“Or does he beg forgiveness, now that marriage to me has made you grand enough to be worth his notice?”
Who was this man? Certainly he wasn’t the mild-mannered, easygoing—if at times tempered to the bone—gentleman she had thought she’d married. Where had all this sudden fury come from?
The worst part of the silly accusation was that it was true. Nathaniel Windham had not spared her a single line until she was to be a duchess. He had waited all the way to her wedding night, if anything, to consider her worthy in his eyes.
“Why does it matter what he thinks?” she asked, crumpling the letter in her fists.
His gaze came down her body like a hand drawn from throat to hem, and when it returned to her face, the winter in his eyes had gone strange, lit from beneath. “Because I may not be the husband you wanted, madam, but I’ll not stand watching my wife clutch her lover’s letter in her nightgown.”
“He is not my lover!” She thrust the letter at him. “This is the first time he’s ever written to me, and you may read it for yourself. There is no talk of love there, only that he regrets his actions.”
Nicholas looked from the letter to her face and shook his head. “I have no need for that.”
“Nicholas—”
“Coming here was a mistake. You—” His gaze fell to the worn cotton of her nightgown, caught there a half-breath too long. “You may do as you will. This is not a marriage where I will force anything upon you that you find distasteful.”
Her eyes flooded with what amounted to tears for a stranger. “I never presumed that you would—you would force me into anything, Your Grace.”
The title reached him as nothing else had. The anger went out of his face all at once, leaving him older. He sighed and brushed a tear from her cheek with the back of one finger.
“I won’t have you spill tears because of me, Miss Fairbourne. I’m sorry to have upset you.” Although his voice was softer, and his hand gentle, she could not rid herself of the idea that he was still angry. “You found me in a poor mood, and poor company for reason. Forgive me.”
“It… it means nothing,” she whispered. “The letter, I mean. Mr. Windham. Nothing.”
“Then I believe you. Come, no more tears. We both knew this was not a marriage of affection.” He drew a folded sheet from his coat.
“Sophia’s nursemaid has written out a schedule for her lessons.
I trust you’ll oversee it, and provide whatever else the child lacks.
It is my hope the two of you will grow close, in time. ”
Isadora swallowed, valiantly forcing back the tears. “That is also my hope, sir.”
“Good. And it’s still Nicholas, even when I’m teetering on behaving like a bounder.
” He looked at her one last time, and she thought he might show her a sign of affection—perhaps even a brush across her cheek to swipe away the stubborn tears that clung there, frozen in time.
Instead, he merely frowned, conflicted, and disappeared back through the door.
Nicholas returned to the letter he had received during the day’s festivities. Isadora, it seemed, was not the only one to have received a disturbing correspondence.
For a moment, his mind strayed back to the image of Isadora standing there in that cotton nightgown.
Plain, washed thin, high at the collar—nothing any man alive might call alluring.
And yet the firelight had passed clean through, revealing the tips of her nipples pressing against the worn cotton, and he had lost the thread of his own fury mid-sentence.
He had even forgotten the contents of this letter.
But he soon remembered, and the knowledge that her former betrothed was sending her letters paled in comparison to this.
My dear Duke, the letter ran.
No doubt you will not have heard of me, but you may be sure that I knew of your darling Grace. Very well, in fact.
You know as well as I that your marriage with Grace was not what everyone thought it to be. The years we spent together, she told me many things about you after all.
Before you killed her.
The letter came with no name attached. And even reading it through made Nicholas’s heart pound. His marriage to Grace had not been what he had hoped it would be after their wedding night. They had wanted very different things, and the fights had been tremendous.
Yet for all that, he had never once laid a finger on Sophia’s mother.
He had thought they loved one another. Certainly, he had loved her.
And perhaps in hindsight, toward the very end of their marriage, she had been unfaithful—but never earlier.
Not earlier. And she had no cause to lie about him, too.
The writer must be someone demanding an easy payout. A former servant, perhaps, trying to take advantage of his new marriage.
Even so. The thought unsettled him.
Was it a coincidence that it only started after Isadora came seeking him out in his dead wife’s wedding gown?
It would come to nothing. These things always came to nothing.
Still, when he went to his bed, he found himself listening to the house—the settling timbers, the wind in the lime trees, a horse shifting somewhere in the stables—for a sound that did not belong.