Page 104 of The Duke’s Hidden Duchess

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The following morning Nathaniel sat at his study desk and discovered, with some irritation, that there was nothing urgent upon it.

There were estate accounts, certainly. Three letters required answers. A tenant at Wexford Park wanted permission to alter a boundary wall, and Bassett had left a tradesman’s account beneath the correspondence.

None of it was dangerous.

He sat back.

The distinction was proving unexpectedly difficult to become accustomed to.

For years there had always been something beyond the ordinary business of the day: Georgiana to watch, the household to keep beyond reproach, some possible consequence of his mother’s history to anticipate before it arrived. He had become so accustomed to arranging himself around the next difficulty that the absence of one felt almost like an omission.

Bassett brought the coffee at eleven.

“Will there be anything else, Your Grace?”

Nathaniel looked at the orderly desk.

“No.”

Bassett waited.

Nathaniel looked up. “Apparently not.”

“Very good, Your Grace.”

Bassett withdrew before Nathaniel could accuse him of finding the situation amusing.

The peace sat there in the room, and Nathaniel could not think what to do with it.

He had never had any.

He had just begun considering whether an inspection of the stables constituted legitimate occupation or cowardly flight from leisure when the door opened.

Selina came in carrying several closely written sheets.

Nathaniel looked at the papers. “What have I done?”

“Nothing yet.”

“That is not reassuring.”

“It was not meant to be.”

She crossed to the table and set the pages before him.

“I have been working on something.”

“So I see.”

“You are going to have opinions.”

“I usually do.”

“Yes. I have allowed for them.”

Nathaniel drew the first sheet towards him. Selina remained standing until he looked pointedly at the chair opposite.