Page 16 of A Bride for the Heartless Duke
“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—buthecould 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 frostcome 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 shewas 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.”
