Page 11 of A Bride for the Heartless Duke
“Where possible. It’s better for Sophia, too.”
Isadora nodded and decided to put her cards on the table, so to speak. “I would very much like to be your wife, if your offer still stands. And if Sophia is amenable to the match.”
The line of his mouth softened, just barely, and for the first time all afternoon, he looked less like a duke and more like a tired father. “As it happens, she was the one who proposed the idea in the first place.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Nicholas sat before the dressing-room mirror while Sophia worked at his cravat, her tongue caught between her teeth. She pinched one fold, flattened another, then drew back with a disgusted little sigh. “Too high,” she smacked her forehead.
“It has served me perfectly well where it is, you know.”
“It won’t in a minute.”
She loosened the knot with brisk little fingers, humming to herself. Seven neatly pressed cravats already lay abandoned beside her. Fletcher had long ago given up pretending they would need only one.
Nicholas handed her the next.
She snapped it smartly through the air to smooth the folds, then caught him watching her in the mirror.
“Don’t look,” she scolded. “You’ll make me muddle it.”
He grimaced. “My apologies.”
She rewarded the honesty with a tiny screwed face and set to work again. “Are you scared?” she mumbled.
“AmIscared? No.” The morning sun spilled across her pale hair. It never failed to catch him unawares, that color. Grace’s hair had gleamed just so whenever she stood by the nursery window.
She frowned at the linen, eased one fold flatter with her thumb, then looked up suddenly.
“Papa?”
“Yes?”
“When she’s here...”
Her fingers stopped rummaging.
“...will Fletcher tie these instead?”
So that was it.
All this grave attention to linen, and she had been worrying over her place in his mornings.
This was their little tradition, a way that she could remain part of him when he left the house, and something that was utterly theirs. Of course nothing would ever change that.
Nicholas reached up and tucked the loose end of her ribbon beneath her plait. “Fletcher has tied my cravats for fifteen years, Sophie. You have not allowed him near one since your sixth birthday.”
She scrunched her nose. “He makes them too stiff.”
“He does.”
“And ugly.” Sophia’s mouth twitched, though she kept her eyes on the knot gathering beneath his chin. “Miss Fairbourne might think mine are ugly, too.”
He arched a dubious brow. “Then she will be mistaken.”
Her hands paused against his collar. “You would tell her? Though if she is to be my mother now, maybe we should be nicer.”
“As I’ve said, she shall merely be a friend,” he explained.
