Most particular that she approve?
She inhaled deeply, doing her best to push the warmth away.Not affection.Considering she knew what this marriage would be before she entered it, she had no right to feel put uporput out now. “Yes,” she said. “I would very much like to see these rooms.”
Anna’s smile turned into a beam, and she led Isadora up the stairs to the third floor. A series of bright, sunlit rooms greeted her, complete with a pianoforte, painted screens, a snug library filled with books, and several comfortable armchairs and sofas where she might entertain guests. By the window, an easel sat out looking across a vista to a lake.
“You may have paints delivered if you choose to paint,” Anna said. “His Grace was not sure if you preferred oils or watercolors.”
For a long moment, Isadora was speechless. For Nicholas to have done all this for her spoke volumes about what role she played in his life—and how important he viewed his wife to be. Perhaps this was a marriage of convenience, but it was clearly important to him that she had her own space and could be happy here.
Warmth flowed through her… But she could not forget the cold way he had looked at her the previous night, all because of something she couldn’t help. The way he had failed to listen to her when she had tried to explain that she had done nothing to encourage Mr. Windham, and that she had not known about his letter.
Still, this had done something to ease some of her worry.
Husband of contradictions. Well. They would make the best of things, one way or the other.
Left to herself, she wandered through the rooms once more on her own before finally making her way downstairs for breakfast. She was nearly at the morning room when Sophia burst from a doorway with her arms full of something enormous and fluffy. It was a cat, tail dangling, eyes large and mournful. Not only was it a cat, but it was also a heavily pregnant one.
“Quick,” Sophia hissed the moment she spotted her. “Help me take Molly upstairs!”
“I—” Before Isadora could decide whether or not to assist the potential fugitive, she heard Nicholas’s stern voice from the breakfast room.
“Sophia? Come here, please.”
“Coming, Papa!”
Sophia sent her a desperate glance, then marched to the breakfast room, the cat still firmly cradled in her arms. Isadora followed, feeling as though she had stepped into another world.
Her husband sat at the head of the table in claret superfine, shaved and brushed and buttoned back into the Duke of Winchester, every trace of last night’s man locked away beneath a cravat tied in flawless, snowy folds. She knew what that linen covered now. That was the trouble with knowing; there was no unknowing it.
He looked up, cool gaze finding hers.
“You requested we breakfast together each morning, and yet you are late.” Each word arrived clipped and pressed, like his linen. “And I do not appreciate surprises.” His gaze dropped, inevitably, to the cat.
“But Isadora said I could keep her,” Sophia said, the lie so blatant, Isadora nearly choked. Sophia turned pleading eyes on her, and Isadora’s heart melted.
There was nothing for it but to play along.
“Is a cat so very terrible?” she asked as she drew out a chair at Nicholas’ right hand, close enough now to catch cedar and shaving soap, “Besides—”
“Not that one.”
Her fingers stopped on the carved back of the chair. He did not look up. “That chair stays empty,” he explained. A page of his newspaper turned, and the silence closed over the words like water over a stone.
Sophia had gone still, her face half-buried in the cat’s fur.
Isadora moved down one place and sat. The forbidden chair stood nearest the window, where the morning sun fell warmest. She smoothed her napkin across her lap and understood, without a word spoken, that she had just been introduced to the late Duchess of Winchester.
“Though not at the table, I think,” she said to Sophia, taking up the thread as though her heart were not beating in her throat. “The cat.”
Sophia pouted. “Cats are clean.”
“Be that as it may, but I think we would all prefer her to be elsewhere for now. Perhaps you could take her to the schoolroom. We can find a proper place for her later.”
Sophia’s scowl turned into a beam. “Thank you, Izzie!” She looked ready to fling her arms about Isadora, were her hands not full of the cat she had somehow—and Isadora was determined to discover preciselyhow—adopted.
Nicholas snapped his newspaper open as though it had personally offended him. Once Sophia left the room, hemuttered, “Must you encourage her? That animal is plainly with kits, and I won’t have the staff put upon.”
“I’ll see that she cares for it herself. Besides, a pet teaches a child responsibility.” Isadora reached for the strawberry jam. “You may add it to my duties. Overseer of lessons, and of felines.”
