Page 35 of A Bride for the Ruthless Duke

“The hour is late,” Theodore said, drawing on his gloves with unhurried precision.

Augusta looked at him over the edge of her fan. “The hour has been late for some time.”

“Then we are overdue,” he replied.

Augusta’s gaze remained on him for a moment longer, sharp enough to have carried a dozen accusations had she chosen to speak them aloud. She did not. She merely turned toward Ellen and adjusted the edge of her wrap with a brisk, near-tender efficiency.

“Come, child,” Augusta said. “The night has done enough admiring of you.”

Ellen tried for a smile and managed only the faint shape of one. “Has it been admiration, my lady?”

“Of a kind,” Augusta said dryly, and offered no further mercy.

Ellen let Theodore hand her into the carriage, the dark interior swallowing the last of the candlelight and music behind her. She took her seat with her face turned to the glass, watching the lamps of the square slide past in wavering gold as the carriage rolled away.

Across from her, Augusta looked at Theodore over the top of Ellen’s bent head.

It was a long, level, weighted look, one that needed no words to be perfectly legible. Theodore met it without shifting in his seat. After a moment, he nodded once, as if accepting a rebuke no one else had heard, and turned to his own window.

Nothing was said the whole way home.

She understood a thing fully for the first time.

She had entered into a matrimony which belonged to a world that did not want her and was not going to learn to want her.

The whispers tonight had not been an accident of one cruel evening. They were the climate. She would live in that climate now, behind a name that protected her from everything except the people who used the name.

And Vance was not coming to take her out of it.

CHAPTER SIX

“Open Wrenfield,” Theodore said, turning a letter over on the desk without reading a word of it. “I want it aired, staffed, and provisioned by Thursday, and the stables put right before anyone troubles himself over the silver.”

Pearce wrote without lifting his head. “For how long shall I instruct them to prepare, Your Grace?”

“The winter,” Theodore replied, watching the edge of the paper catch under his thumb. “Longer, perhaps.”

Pearce’s quill paused only long enough to mark the answer properly. “And a mount for the duchess? You mentioned last month that Her Grace rides.”

“A mare,” Theodore said, and this time he looked up. “Quiet mouth, good temper, well up to a lady’s weight, and not a slug. Write to Hibbert and tell him I will know the difference.”

“That phrase usually produces honesty in horsemen, Your Grace.”

“It had better produce it quickly.”

Pearce made the note, then paused with the quill still in his hand as another consideration occurred to him. “Shall I give instructions for the usual rooms, Your Grace, or would you prefer the west suite prepared as well?”

“Not merely the rooms.” Theodore set the letter down at last and rested his fingers against the desk, though the movement did not quiet the line of thought running beneath it. “She is to find the place in order when she arrives. The gardens, the home farm, the stables, the house itself. I do not want anything neglected simply because it has stood empty. All of it is to be put right.”

Pearce glanced up from the page. “And has Her Grace been told of the journey?”

“I will tell her at breakfast.”

“Very well, Your Grace.” Pearce added another note in the margin. “Then I shall have the letters sent within the hour, so there is time enough for everything to be ready before Thursday.”

“See that it is done.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” Pearce blotted the page carefully, then looked once more at his master before closing the ledger. “Will there be anything else?”