Chapter 3 #2
She had planned to be a spinster. She had planned to disappear into respectable obscurity, to keep bees or paint watercolors or simply exist without the weight of expectation pressing against her ribs. Now, she was the lady of a castle, with a title that weighed heavily on her shoulders.
“Please,” she added. “I should like to see everything.”
The housekeeper nodded, her expression revealing nothing of whatever thoughts moved behind those competent eyes, and led her deeper into the castle that was now her home.
It took hours to explore the entire place. By the end, Alice was exhausted. As night fell, she stood in her new chambers for a few minutes.
She was no fool. She knew what was expected of a bride on her wedding night.
The door between her chamber and the Duke’s stood closed, a slab of polished oak that might as well have been the wall of a fortress for all the communication it permitted.
She moved to stand before it, her hand settling on the exposed part of her ample bosom as she rehearsed sentences that dissolved each time she formed them.
She had been a duchess for approximately eight hours. The title still did not fit.
She raised her hand and knocked.
The door opened. Not immediately. There was a pause during which she considered retreating to the bed and pretending she had been sleepwalking. Then the handle turned, and the Duke stood in the frame.
He had removed his coat. His waistcoat hung open, his shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbows, and his cravat had been loosened to the point of informality. He held a ledger in one hand, its pages marked with a finger that kept his place.
His eyes went wide. The expression lasted less than a second, but Alice caught it nonetheless—the dilation of his pupils, the slight parting of his lips, the involuntary step back, the slight shift of his body.
He was disgusted by her.
Of course, that was what it was. His eyes lingered on her exposed chest for a beat, and she wanted nothing more than to cover it.
She tightened her fingers in the fabric of her nightgown.
“Are we to never dine together?”
She had meant to lead with something gentler, something that acknowledged the strangeness of the day, but the memory of sitting alone at a table set for two while footsteps moved in distant corridors had hardened into something that would not be softened.
The Duke’s expression settled back into its familiar lines. He lowered the ledger. “I fell behind on estate matters. The wedding disrupted the day’s schedule, and the accounts do not reconcile themselves out of consideration for matrimonial obligations.”
“Estate matters.” Alice heard the brittleness in her own voice and could not seem to modulate it. “Of course. How foolish of me to assume that a wedding might warrant twenty minutes of a duke’s attention at the dinner table.”
He pursed his lips. “If you wish to critique my management of time…”
“I wish to understand what kind of marriage this is to be.” The words tumbled out before she could arrange them. “You brought me here to care for your children. To provide stability, you said. And yet, on the first evening, you cannot spare the time to share a meal with us. With your… your family.”
The word sounded wrong, and heat rose to her cheeks.
The Duke averted his gaze, looking at the ceiling instead of her. “You are extrapolating a great deal from a single missed dinner.”
“Am I?”
He shoved his hands into his pockets, and her eyes caught the sliver of skin visible due to the loosened cravat. There was a slight red tinge to it beneath the dark hair curling on his chest.
“Is that the only reason you knocked on my door?” he asked. His voice had dropped, roughened at the edges. “To deliver a lecture on the symbolic importance of shared meals?”
The question hung between them.
Alice felt the heat rise to her cheeks. She swallowed, the sound audible in the quiet room.
“I…” She stopped. Started again. “It is our wedding night.” Her voice was far smaller than she would have liked.
The Duke stiffened. His eyes moved over her slowly, calculating. His mouth opened, then closed again.
When at last he spoke, his voice was gruff. “No, we… we…” He cleared his throat. “We are not doing that.”
Alice bit her lip. Was she truly so vile to him that the thought of consummating their marriage made it difficult for him to speak?
He stepped back and began to close the door.
“Wait…”
“It is late. I have work. Goodnight, Duchess.”
The door closed with a soft, definitive click that seemed to echo in the chamber long after the wood had settled into its frame.
Alice stood motionless before the closed door.
Of course. Of course he did not want her. Why would he? She had seen his face when the door opened: that momentary widening of the eyes, the swift reassessment, the adjustment downward.
She knew she was not what a gentleman wanted. She was not what he wanted.
He had wanted her sister instead. Thin. Graceful. Accomplished. Everything she was not.
She had one purpose here. To care for his children.
To provide the stability his household required.
To stand in the space his first wife had left and make herself useful without expecting anything in return.
Her purpose wasn’t companionship nor conversation over dinner.
Certainly not the warmth of a husband’s bed.
The rejection settled into her chest with the familiarity of an old injury. She had been preparing for this marriage for two days. She had told herself that she understood its terms. That she was entering it with her eyes open, without the dangerous expectation of affection or desire.
She had lied to herself. Somewhere beneath the practical acceptance, beneath the determination to make the best of a situation she had not chosen, a small foolish hope had taken root.
The hope that perhaps, in this strange forced union, she might find something she had never been granted before: the simple, uncomplicated fact of being wanted.
The hope was ashes now. Cold, familiar, and exactly what she should have expected.