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They went upstairs next, to three more hallways again, each of them lined with suites of rooms. Each and every room was aired and furnished with linens, and each had at least one large, curtained window. Today’s light was fading, but on a sunny day, Gwen imagined the house was wonderfully bright. The ducal chambers—his and hers—dominated the central hall. A pair of footmen stood by the stairs, not moving a muscle as they passed. Gwen could almost imagine they were statues.
“Why are they standing there?” she whispered.
“Because they’re supposed to be,” he whispered back. “If you need anything, you tell them, and they’ll help you.”
“Oh.” Her father’s house had servants, but you needed to pull the bell to have them come. They weren’t the sort who stood around awaiting your pleasure. What did these men do when the duke was away?
They entered a room on the right, a grand suite of chambers too huge and masculine to belong to anyone but the master of the house. The sitting room boasted deep, upholstered sofas and a writing desk the size of four of her writing desks back home. Beyond the sitting room lay his bedroom, with a wide poster bed of deep green velvet, and massive pieces of French-style furniture with carving and gold leaf. A door on the right led to a dressing room, and, as he showed her, a bathing room beyond.
She stared in wonder at the gleaming fixtures and oversized tub. “You can get hot water from below,” he said. “An ingenious new system with pumps and pipes. If you wish, I’ll have them outfit your bathing room too.”
“I have a bathing room?” She thought of her rooms back at her father’s house, her sensible bedroom with her sensible, homemade furniture, and her dressing room you could barely turn about in.
“Come, I’ll show you.”
He led her across the hallway to a room with the same oak doors, and doorknobs made of crystal. There was another sitting room, this one outfitted for a lady, with ivory and gilt furnishings and vases of daffodils to match the pale yellow drapes. The bedroom was an airy, feminine space dominated by a pale yellow poster bed. Two tall windows rose above cushioned window seats, and a marble mantel framed the fireplace. That mantel was taller than her, perhaps as tall as the duke. Above it hung a lifelike portrait of a man who looked very much like her husband, and a smiling woman in an elegant lavender gown.
“My parents,” he said when he saw her staring at it. “You would have liked to know them. My mother died like yours, from the fever, and my father a few years later, of too much drink and an ill-thought brawl.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. They enjoyed life while they lived it.” He gazed at his parents’ painting with a reverent expression. “We’ll have our portrait made when we go to London. I’ve already engaged the artist. What else is there to do, when most everyone is rusticating in the country?”
Gwen studied the portrait, thinking what a handsome couple his parents made. She wondered if the lavender duchess had loved her drinking, brawling husband, or only pretended to with her contented smile.
“Why don’t you paint our portrait?” she said, turning to the duke. “You’re an artist.”
He laughed. “Ah, but it’s very hard to paint yourself. I’ll leave the portraiture to the masters.” He moved closer and placed a finger beneath her chin. “I’m not talented enough to do justice to your beauty. I want someone who’ll capture the fascinating shade of your eyes, and the perfection of your lips. And those tiny freckles across your nose.”
“I don’t have freckles.”
“You do.” He brushed a finger across her cheeks. “I see them very clearly.”
He guided her back into the sitting room, and led her to a pair of glass doors. They opened onto a stone patio with carved balusters, overlooking a gorgeous private garden with box hedges and flowers, and miniature sized trees.
“Would you like to go down?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. Please.”
He helped her down the smooth stone stairs into the garden. How pretty it looked in twilight, how peaceful and lush.
“This was my mother’s favorite place,” he said. “She could make anything grow. The servants have preserved it in her honor, and they plant new flowers every year. Your rooms used to be her rooms, of course, although no one has lived in them for years now. The linens and draperies are new, because the old ones were fusty. I thought you would want to have new things.”
“This is all...very...” Her voice trailed off. Such luxury, and this beautiful garden just outside her window. “May I plant things too? May I tend this garden?”
“Of course. It’s yours.” He smiled at her, that warm smile that sometimes made her forget she hated him. “You may muck in the dirt all you like, but not this evening. A modiste is coming to measure you for your wardrobe. No, don’t frown. I didn’t expect you to come to me in possession of a London trousseau. It’s good that you waited. We can order things in the latest fashion and style.”
She didn’t have the heart to tell him that she hadn’t waited, that her meager selection of gowns was the best they had been able to afford. How could he understand that anyway, here in this house with a thousand candles, and crystal doorknobs, and a patio leading down to a private garden?
“Come back inside,” he said. “I’ve one more thing to show you.”
He led her through the bedroom to the dressing room, an intimate space with mirrors and shelves and little varnished chests. He lit a lamp and began opening drawers until he found what he was looking for. He turned to her, his hands full of glittering gems, a diamond and emerald necklace with matching ear clips, and a diamond bracelet, and a gaudy diamond ring. They could not be real, these jewels, or they would have been worth an entire nation’s fortune. He held the necklace up to her neck. The ornate design lay heavy against her skin and covered her entire chest.
“I didn’t want to travel with these, but they are yours now. I thought you might wear them for our wedding portrait, with your silver embroidered wedding gown. Or if you’d like more color...” He turned back to the chests and brought out a ruby strand, then thought better of it and held out a pale green one. “This tourmaline bauble would look very well with your eyes. I don’t know if there are earrings. Your lady’s maid has recorded all the sets and organized them, so she’ll know.”
Gwen thought her lady’s maid would be irritated that His Grace had pawed through all the jewelry she’d organized, and then she thought, so many jewels. A king’s ransom in jewels, right here in her dressing room, and he doubtless had many more sets of his own.
“Well,” he said, when she didn’t respond to the proffered choices. “I’m sure Pascale will know the best way to outfit you for the portrait.”
Oh. Pascale. The frowning, thin-lipped French woman she had sent away at the inn last night. Pascale would probably make her look as awful as possible in order to have her revenge. She stared at the duke as he tucked all the jewelry away, back into their wooden boxes.
“Your Grace?”
He sighed. “You might call me Arli
ngton now that we’re married, or Aidan, when we’re alone together.”
“Aidan.” She tested the unfamiliar name on her lips. “Aidan, why didn’t you marry someone more...suitable...to your social station?”
“You know why. The same reason you weren’t married three or four years ago to some honest Welsh lad.” He closed the last of the drawers and turned to her. “Was there someone in Cairwyn you loved? Tommy, perhaps?” he added with a note of mockery.
“There was never a Tommy,” she admitted.
“I know. But was there someone else?”
The mockery dissipated, until he regarded her with a very serious look. She wished she could answer him yes, that she had loved someone. She picked at one of her fingernails, then hid it in the folds of her dress. “I left no one behind,” she said. “But it would have been nice to marry for love. I always dreamed of it.”
“Don’t let anyone in London hear you say such things. They believe it’s the worst thing, to marry for love.”
“Do you believe that too?” She didn’t know why she asked. She supposed she wanted to hear him admit it, that he was rich and cold and lofty, and without a heart.
“I’m not sure what love is,” he answered with a shrug. “Is it intimacy, or familiarity? Is it what I felt when I saw you in that meadow? Is it what I feel now, that I would kill someone before I would let you come to harm? That I don’t wish you to be...”
“To be what?” she asked when his voice trailed off.
“Ridiculed,” he said. “I don’t want you to be made fun of, Guinevere. That’s why I correct you and annoy you, and why I will make you endure a course of finishing lessons with Lady Langton. I never thought to marry for love, but now that I’m married, my every care is for your security and happiness. Make of that what you will.”
That was not what she’d expected him to say. She felt her heart ease a little as she stood blinking at him, then she said, “My close friends and family call me Gwen. It’s easier to say than Guinevere.”
