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Once at the landing, he placed a hand at the small of her back and guided her to her rooms. He opened the door and stepped back, allowing her to precede him inside. Once over the threshold, she gasped. “Why, it’s lovely!”
Her chambers consisted of a spacious and elegantly decorated bedchamber and two adjoining rooms, where one would serve as a dressing room and the other a sitting room. Rose-silk curtains surrounded the bed, at which she stole a quick discreet glance before returning her regard to him. Hugh withdrew a note from his pockets.
She reached for it and unfolded the paper, which read, “This is the Countess’s chamber…and the connecting door leads to my chamber.”
For a moment, she could not meet his eyes, and a wave of red blossomed over her face and throat. “I see. Thank you.”
They stood in awkward silence with her clutching the note as if it were a lifeline. He hadn’t thought to prepare another note informing her that she need not fear his advances. He was a patient man, and he did not marry her to satiate his baser urges even if they were stirring to life with the violence of a winter storm. He had learned over the years to master his emotions and expectations and in this situation, he could do the same.
As far as Hugh was concerned, they did not need to share the same bed until he was ready for his heir. His only priority now was to see about getting his sister and brother settled, one through marriage and the other with a respectable position and a marriage. A thing they both ardently wanted but believed, because of their bastardy and unique situation, such a living and contentment would be forever denied to them. Rubbish, of course. And certainly not if Hugh had anything to do about it.
Unable to express any of this, he sketched a quick bow and turned around.
“You are leaving?”
How astonished she sounded…and relieved. Hugh faced her and nodded once.
Her gaze searched his face intently as if she tried to discern his thoughts. Unexpectedly, her eyes brightened, and a soft smile appeared on her lush lips. She made her way over to him, lifted her hands, and cupped his cheek in a caress that felt as gentle as the brush of a butterfly’s wing. “Thank you for your consideration,” she murmured a bit huskily. “I am very much obliged to you, and I shall never forget your kindness, my lord.”
Her action shocked Hugh into profound stillness and sent his thoughts spinning. It had been years since anyone had touched him in such a manner…and the last person he could recall cupping his cheeks had been his mother. The awareness pulled a flinch from him, and a delicate pink stain spread from Phoebe’s cheeks down her throat. She hurriedly dropped her hand and stepped back.
Swallowing tightly past the knot in his throat, he bowed and withdrew from the room.
Once in the hallway, a silent breath shuddered from him. What had that been about? He walked away, and some instinct urged him to look back, so he did. She stood in the shadows of the doorway, watching his retreat with her large golden eyes. She lifted her hand in a small wave, and Hugh felt like an idiot when he paused, lifted a hand, and waved back.
But she smiled, and it was quite the loveliest smile, which revealed a deep dimple in one of her cheeks. His heart did this ridiculous squeeze, and with a scowl he turned around and made his way down the stairs to his private study.
…
Indifferent civility.
Phoebe had been married to the viscount for two weeks, and whenever she encountered him, he treated her with kind consideration and a dreadful indifferent civility. The very first morning after their wedding, she had woken to a note on the small table by her bedside. Even several days later, the words and the implications were still seared in her thoughts.
You are under no obligation to prepare to attend me in my chambers in the evenings, nor will I visit yours. We are newly married, but we are also strangers, so you may rest assured I will not be exercising any husbandly rights. In the future, we might revisit the matter when it is mutually convenient.
His note had been so cold and succinct. Yet another burst of relief had filled her. Phoebe had not been ready for intimacy with him, even if she found him terribly
handsome and he made her heart race in a manner never felt before. Since then, they had fallen into a routine of sort, where each morning they dined together. Caroline would join them to communicate for her brother, but he had frightfully little to say.
Phoebe often attempted to converse with him, with remarks on the weather and the beauty of the place, to which he always replied politely. But in return, he made little enquiries of her, and whenever she saw him without his sister, they could not converse if there was no paper with a quill and inkwell on hand.
In those moments, they would stare at each other, and she would feel so flustered and out of sorts while he seemed quietly contemplative. At times when his father observed them, he would mutter, “It’s really the beginning… I can see what is happening. Why is he not seeing it?” and then march away, thumping his cane.
“What is happening?” she’d asked the viscount only yesterday morning, to which he had lifted a shoulder in an indifferent shrug before bowing and walking away to his study.
Their society did not seem to call upon them, nor did they entertain. It was baffling and not what she expected from a family as powerful as the Winthrops. Their oddities grew daily. Even yesterday she had spied Caroline in trousers playing with a baby sheep. Phoebe had been astonished and amused in equal measure and had to suppress the desire to join the girl and act in a similarly unrefined manner. Dignity and decorum, she had reminded herself resolutely.
Oftentimes, the viscount disappeared for the day in his study, or sometimes he would call for his carriage, which was drawn by a beautiful team of four coal black horses, and disappear for hours. Most evenings, she dined with Caroline only, for the earl was quite unorthodox in his manners and often had a tray set up for him in his gardens on the stone table. Once she heard him mutter that he preferred the company of the birds and flowers, to which Hugh had only smiled.
Phoebe had met the staff, and while they treated her with the utmost courtesy and respect, there was little for her to do outside of overlooking the menu as the large castle was run with impressive efficiency by an army of servants who seemed to adore their master. It charmed her that they extended the same courtesy to her, and the servants had happily enfolded Sarah and her beau into their family.
Phoebe strolled down the hallway large enough to host a ball, toward the room she had commanded as her own. It was there she spent most of her days reading and oftentimes staring out the windows at the lawns and lake in the distance. By all accounts, she should be contented: her baby would not suffer the indignity of being labeled a bastard, her family and her reputation had been saved, she was not forced to marry a man older than Papa, and she was married to a future earl. She had been rescued from ruin and ignominy, yet there was a restlessness inside that saw her twisting and turning at nights.
Why do I feel so out of sorts and unsettled?
Phoebe would often lie on her side and stare at that connecting door. Sometimes she would hear her husband moving about in his room, and she would push from the bed and pad over to the door to stand before it. Sometimes she would even grasp the door handle, but she’d never worked up the courage to turn that handle or knock on the door. It frustrated Phoebe that she would do this several times, for she truly did not know what she required from the viscount.
“I do not like his indifference to me,” she said softly. “Good heavens, but my impatient heart wants more.” The desire frightened her a bit, and she had to recall her vow to no longer be impetuous or to seek after tender sentiments. Phoebe hungered for more than this polite civility but was at a loss as to how to break that polite barrier.
