Her eyes flooded with what amounted to tears for a stranger. “I never presumed that you would—you wouldforceme into anything, Your Grace.”
The title reached him as nothing else had. The anger went out of his face all at once, leaving him older. He sighed and brushed a tear from her cheek with the back of one finger.
“I won’t have you spill tears because of me, Miss Fairbourne. I’m sorry to have upset you.” Although his voice was softer, and his hand gentle, she could not rid herself of the idea that he was still angry. “You found me in a poor mood, and poor company for reason. Forgive me.”
“It… it means nothing,” she whispered. “The letter, I mean. Mr. Windham. Nothing.”
“Then I believe you. Come, no more tears. We both knew this was not a marriage of affection.” He drew a folded sheet from his coat. “Sophia’s nursemaid has written out a schedule for her lessons. I trust you’ll oversee it, and provide whatever else the child lacks. It is my hope the two of you will grow close, in time.”
Isadora swallowed, valiantly forcing back the tears. “That is also my hope, sir.”
“Good. And it’s stillNicholas, even when I’m teetering on behaving like a bounder.” He looked at her one last time, and she thought he might show her a sign of affection—perhaps even a brush across her cheek to swipe away the stubborn tears that clung there, frozen in time. Instead, he merely frowned, conflicted, and disappeared back through the door.
Nicholas returned to the letter he had received during the day’s festivities. Isadora, it seemed, was not the only one to have received a disturbing correspondence.
For a moment, his mind strayed back to the image of Isadora standing there in that cotton nightgown. Plain, washed thin, high at the collar—nothing any man alive might call alluring. And yet the firelight had passed clean through, revealing the tips of her nipples pressing against the worn cotton, and he had lost the thread of his own fury mid-sentence.
He had even forgotten the contents of this letter.
But he soon remembered, and the knowledge that her former betrothed was sending her letters paled in comparison to this.
My dear Duke, the letter ran.
No doubt you will not have heard of me, but you may be sure that I knew of your darling Grace. Very well, in fact.
You know as well as I that your marriage with Grace was not what everyone thought it to be. The years we spent together, she told me many things about you after all.
Before you killed her.
The letter came with no name attached. And even reading it through made Nicholas’s heart pound. His marriage to Grace had not been what he had hoped it would be after their wedding night. They had wanted very different things, and the fights had been tremendous.
Yet for all that, he had never once laid a finger on Sophia’s mother. He had thought they loved one another. Certainly, he had loved her. And perhaps in hindsight, toward the very end of their marriage, she had been unfaithful—but never earlier.Not earlier.And she had no cause to lie about him, too.
The writer must be someone demanding an easy payout. A former servant, perhaps, trying to take advantage of his new marriage.
Even so. The thought unsettled him.
Was it a coincidence that it only started after Isadora came seeking him out in his dead wife’s wedding gown?
It would come to nothing. These things always came to nothing.
Still, when he went to his bed, he found himself listening to the house—the settling timbers, the wind in the lime trees, a horse shifting somewhere in the stables—for a sound that did not belong.
CHAPTER SIX
The next morning, Isadora woke tired and tangled in her thoughts. All she could think about was the way Nicholas had looked at her last night. The flame in his eyes, doused so quickly by his anger at her having received a letter from Mr. Windham.
She had already burned it.
Still, she resolved to put her husband from her mind. As he had told her, theirs was not a marriage of affection but of convenience, and she was determined to make the best of it.
Sophia’s lessons began at ten, so Isadora had plenty of time to rise early and explore the house. But Anna caught her the moment she stepped from her room.
“Would you like to visit the rooms His Grace prepared for you?” she asked.
Isadora faltered. “My… rooms?”
“He had them fitted up last night so you’d have a place in the house that felt comfortable and entirely your own.” Anna smiled, her face lighting up. “He was most particular that you approve.”
