Page 19 of A Bride for the Heartless Duke
The paper lowered an inch. His lips thinned, but he gave no reply. Isadora had meant to thank him for the beautiful rooms he’d put together for her last night, but his tumultuous mood dissuaded her. So, instead, she let the words dissolve on her tongue like communion and helped herself to the warm bread.
So this was what breakfast together would be like. She had imagined something a little different—an opportunity for them to be friends, perhaps.
As she ate, she spied on him from beneath her lashes. He set the newspaper aside at last and took off his gloves so he could eat. The sight arrested her mid-bite. Across his knuckles bloomed a fresh, livid violet like that of a bruise.
He glanced up, catching where her gaze was directed, and immediately dropped his hands below the table.
What could have caused such wounds? Somewhere between her chamber door and this table, in the small dark hours of their wedding night, her husband had found something to beat. A tavern brawl seemed absurd; dukes did not brawl. And yet those knuckles said otherwise, and it came to her, in a terrifying shiveralong the spine, how very little she knew of the man whose ring she now wore.
She returned her eyes to her plate and buttered another bread as though she’d seen nothing at all. If she asked, that frost would come down again, and once a morning was quite enough.
He said nothing more. She said nothing more. They parted from their first married breakfast as two strangers rising from a mail-coach. Where had he gone, the dry, almost kind gentleman from the park? There was not even an attempt at strained politeness. It was as though he had already decided he disliked her and everything she represented in his life, even though they barely knew each other.
Gregson arrived with a fresh batch of correspondence before bowing out. York was no London, but a new duchess drew the whole county the way a lit window draws moths: cards for tea, for dinner, for soirées, and beneath them the inevitable summons of the Assemblies. She and Nicholas would have to appear there eventually, arm in arm, civil as two distant strangers. Isadora could sooner imagine attending with the cat.
She was sorting through her invitations when Sophia reappeared.
“What are you doing?” Sophia asked, sliding into the chair that Nicholas had deemed off-limits. Isadora sent her a questioning glance, and Sophia merely snorted, “I break rules all the time when Papa isn’t here. He so veryneveris these days!Ugh.”
Isadora felt a twinge of sympathy for the little girl. She had only experienced his distant manner for less than twelve hours, and it already made her want to bury herself in a hole until the feeling passed.
“Looking through my invitations,” she eventually explained.
“Do you have many?”
“I do now that I married your father. It appears half of York wishes to make my acquaintance.”
Sophia made a sound of disgust, raising large, blue eyes to Isadora’s. “I would rather you stay with me at Winchester. It’s so boring all alone.”
As would Isadora. All these people who were playingoh so nicenow had ignored—and sometimes even gave her the cut—when she was merely the Fairbourne girl, her uncle’s unwanted ward in made-over gowns. This was nothing more than insincere; a grasping attempt at power and influence.
“Yes,” Isadora said. “I would, too. But first, you must tell me more about this cat.”
“Will you tell Papa?” Sophia asked doubtfully.
Considering Nicholas seemed disinclined to grant her so much as a ‘good morning’, the opportunity was unlikely to arise. “I will not. Your secrets are safe with me.”
“Iknewyou were a good one.” Sophia grinned and leaned forward. “Molly is a stray from the nearby farm, but they said they would drown her babies, so I saved her and brought her inside.”
“Well,” Isadora said, meeting the girl’s smile with her own—she couldn’t help it. “I suppose we had better find a place for her and her kittens, then.”
Nicholas walked into the drawing room the next day after his daughter’s afternoon lessons, and stopped short at the sound of Sophia’s raucous laughter. But beneath it, something lower and sweeter that he had not heard under this roof in six years, and what hadreallygiven him a strange feeling in his chest.
A woman, laughing.
Isadora had just finished regaling a tale that Sophia found enormously hilarious, and she looked up when he entered, one curl tumbling loose against her cheek. Dark garnet where the sun caught it, and her whole face still lit from laughing, warm as windfall apples in October grass. His daughter sat tucked against her side as though they’d always belonged together, and Nicholas felt a pang of longing.
This had been what he’d always hoped for with Grace.
His bruised knuckles ached. Everything in him was leaning toward that chaise, and he strangled it, the way he always did when it came to affection. If he let it out, he risked hurting her the way he had hurt Grace. Andthat, he could never let himself do again.
He took a deep breath, composing himself.
“Was there something you needed?” Isadora asked, untangling herself free of Sophia. “We were just about to begin our music lesson. Your Sophia is an…accomplished singer,” she burst out laughing as she met Sophia’s snickering face.
“I told you, it wasn’t me singing to Molly!” Sophia snorted back. Two days in his home, and Isadora had already somehow grown closer to his daughter than it had taken him the first entire year after his ex-wife’s passing.
“Well, Iamolder,” Isadora said, bopping the red tip of Sophia’s nose. “And I’ve had a great deal more practice.”
