Yet, something in Lucien’s expression when he shared the news made Grace suspect some darker tension simmered beneath the note’s surface.
She tried to smile and greet the staff installed at the smaller brick residence as Lucien made cursory introductions, but it seemed he knew what that cost her.
“Tomorrow is soon enough to begin taking charge of the household,” he said. “Today, you will want time alone to unpack and settle yourself.”
Under the circumstances, she could hardly expect a tender interlude like most bridal couples shared. Yet, after the night he’d come to her bedchamber in the townhouse, some part of her imagined that she might hope for more than this dismissal. Her new husband was an enigma. At one moment, controlled, commanding a room and everyone in it. The next…there had been something almost charming about his discomfiture with Sibby Rose and Scrap. A hint of vulnerability that had called to her.
“I have a pressing appointment with my solicitor, so I will be gone for dinner,” he said, consulting his pocket watch. “I will come to you at ten of the clock if you find that agreeable.”
He was just leaving her? She felt a frisson of alarm but reined it in firmly. What had she imagined? That he would spend this first day they’d been truly alone with her, as bridegrooms were wont to do? Apparently Lucien meant to begin as he would go on.
“Ten.” She almost imagined him noting it down as if it was one more obligation in his appointment book.
Lucien bowed and strode away.
The maid assigned to attend her was named Ruby, an affable country girl, eager to please as she took things out of Grace’s trunk.
“His lordship gave strict orders you are to have every comfort. A bath, supper served in your chamber, books lining your shelves.”
Every comfort, it seemed, except familiar company in these strange new surroundings, she thought. She lifted her chin and set herself to spreading her belongings about this room, longing to make it more like home.
They’d worked for nearly two hours when Grace saw Ruby remove a flat rectangle bundled up in a shawl. Before the maid could unwrap it, Grace took it from her hands.
The startled girl flushed. “My lady?”
“I will finish the rest on my own,” she told Ruby, then tempered her voice. “Thank you so much for your help.”
The maid gave her an uncertain smile, bobbed a curtsey and left.
As soon as the door was shut, Grace sat down at the dressing table. She unfolded the silk until it lay open on her lap like the petals of a flower, at its center, a framed sketch she had made of her brothers and mother four summers ago. It was only a fair likeness drawn by a girl with some small talent. But it captured the joy in her loved ones, the warmth. A frozen moment when all had been right with her world.
She propped it on her dressing table then set the toy soldier beside it.
It was so very, very quiet here. Almost as if the house were a tomb and those inside it were unable to wake up.
The Willows had always been bustling with noise and people. Even the times she’d squirreled herself away in the study, it had been with the understanding that, at any moment, her brothers could burst in and carry with them delicious chaos, quarrels forher to mend, injustices to put right, toads and rocks and any number of treasures to be admired.
It all felt so strange, as if the events of the past week had happened to someone else and she was watching some other Grace from a distance, vaguely perplexed.
At least she had the books she’d brought for company, letters she could write. She sat down at the desk, drew out a sheet of stationary. Dipping her quill in ink, she tried to form the words to sooth her brothers. But what could she say to ease the anger, the hurt, and their feeling that she’d deserted them? The one thing of which she was certain: they would all be changed when next she saw them. Avery and Ethan. Bennet. She would be changed as well. Blinking back tears, she set down her quill.
She’d never felt so alone.
The night’spreparations had been fit for a bride. A bath with scented rose petals, hair brushed until it shone, a gauzy nightgown donned. Even the coverlets had been turned down, before a blushing Ruby curtseyed and left Grace alone with the ticking clock. Was this to be her life? Grace wondered. Lucien even scheduling the hour he would come to her bed?
She read and reread passages of a novel, unable to recall what they said from one page to the next. When she finally heard the low rumble of masculine voices beyond the door to Lucien’s bedchamber, she grew more on edge than ever. She recognized her husband’s voice, though she could not make out what he was saying. His valet answered, no doubt readying Lucien for bed…knowing what the night would hold? Her cheeks burned.
She attempted to focus on her book, but she surrendered, staring into the fire until she heard the valet leave. Lucien’sroom went quiet for what seemed an eternity, her nerves on edge.
She was almost ready to go to his room herself when she heard footsteps nearing the adjoining door, the handle turning, the panel opening. Her heart raced as Lucien entered her room. He was garbed in a silk brocade banyan of midnight blue fastened with gold silk frogs. His hair was slightly damp from his own ablutions, and he was freshly shaved. He looked every inch a prince, carrying an inlaid chest in his hands. Pandora’s box? She wondered.
“Good evening, Lady Everdene.” The syllables rolled over his tongue as if he were savoring the finest whiskey.
Her mouth suddenly went dry, her heart racing. “My lord,” she answered, a shiver of anticipation and unease mingling as she imagined what was to come.
Lucien grippedthe box in his hands, trying to think what to say. That Grace was so beautiful she took his breath away. That he’d been counting every moment until he could strip away the last barriers between them, take the lovely body that had haunted his thoughts since the moment he’d left her, naked in her bed. That she deserved every luxury he could give her, the softest linens, the warmest fire, to be made love to with a tenderness he could never hope to possess, drawing out pleasure to an exquisite edge. He wanted to tell her that and more. Yet all that would come out was, “I trust you have had sufficient time alone to unpack and settle into your role as mistress of the household.”
“I did. Quite too much time, actually.” Her hand fluttered to her throat. “I mean, I finished unpacking long ago.”
