But there did not need to be. He was her betrothed. They were engaged to be married. The truth of it struck her as though she were only now fully realizing it. She was going to be married. Soon. She was going to be a duchess.
She folded the note neatly and took it upstairs with her. She changed into older clothes, armed herself with her gardening tools and gloves, and strode out into the back garden to wage war on the weeds that had dared encroach upon her property. Gardening had always soothed the most turbulent of her emotions, and none were more turbulent than the ones that had raged within her yesterday and still did today.
The weeds did not stand a chance against her.
4
Dora was dressed neatly again and ready to go soon after luncheon since the duke had not stated exactly when he would come for her. Normally she would not leave for Middlebury for another hour and a half, but she did not want to be caught unprepared.
Today was worse than yesterday in some ways. Today she expected him. And today her stomach—and her brain—churned dizzyingly and quite out of her control, partly with excitement, partly with a fearful sort of awe. He was a duke. The only higher ranks were king and prince.
The gardening had soothed her for a while before luncheon, but she could not go back outside now. She seated herself at the pianoforte in the sitting room instead. It was a battered old instrument, which had been ancient even when she was a girl, long before she brought it with her to her cottage nine years ago. But she did not feel deprived for not having a worthier instrument. She loved the mellow tone of this one. She even loved the two tricky notes, one black, one white, which no amount of coaxing and fiddling with and adjusting by piano tuners could quite induce to behave as the other keys did. They felt a bit like old friends. This pianoforte had seen her through all the joys and sorrows, all the upheavals and tedium of several decades. In all that time it had never—or almost never—failed to bring her joy and to soothe away any trouble of her soul. She sometimes felt that she would not have survived without music and her pianoforte.
The Duke of Stanbrook must have knocked on the outer door. Mrs. Henry must have opened it and then tapped on the sitting room door before admitting him. He would scarcely have walked straight in as though he owned the cottage, even if he was betrothed to its owner. But the first indication Dora had of his arrival was an awareness of something large and dark at the edge of her vision where there had been no such object before. Her hands fell still on the keys and she turned her head slowly. He was standing just inside the door, where he had stood for a while yesterday.
“I beg your pardon,” they said simultaneously.
He bowed. “I must say,” he continued, “that it was extremely clever of me to choose a wife who can fill my home with music for the rest of my days.”
He was doing what she remembered his doing last year when she was seated beside him at dinner prior to playing for the guests at Middlebury. He was smiling with his eyes and saying something that would set her at her ease. And she remembered the most vivid impression she had had of him that evening and during the subsequent days, that he had not only smiling eyes but also kind eyes. One did not expect kindness from a man of his lofty rank. One expected aloofness, even haughtiness of manner.
It was his eyes and what they suggested about him that had caused her to dream of him while he was still at Middlebury and after he left, though dream was the key word. In reality he had seemed universes beyond her reach. His was merely the kindness of condescension, she had told herself more than once.
He had the loveliest eyes of anyone she had ever known.
“I did not hear you arrive,” she said, getting to her feet. “But I am ready. Are we walking?” But they must be. She surely could not have been so deeply absorbed in her playing that she had missed the sound of a carriage stopping outside her gate.
“Will you mind?” he asked her as she put on the bonnet she had set ready on a chair with her shawl. “The lovely weather is still holding, and it seems a pity to waste it.”
“I do not mind,” she assured him, draping the shawl about her shoulders. “I walk everywhere.” She would have longer to spend with him if they walked. And she would have the rest of her life to spend with him after they married.
Oh, my. Oh, goodness. Suddenly she felt almost giddy with the pleasure of it all.
It occurred to Dora as they left the cottage and stepped out through her garden gate onto the village street that the arrival of the Duke of Stanbrook here yesterday would not have gone unnoticed. Word would surely have spread to every inhabitant before the day was over, as word of anything remotely unusual always did in a small community. She would be willing to bet that by now half the village knew he had returned today and that more than a few people fortunate enough to live or have their businesses on this street were watching discreetly from behind their window curtains for his emergence from her cottage. Now they were witness to the sight of Dora proceeding along the street in the direction of the gates into Middlebury Park, her hand drawn through the duke’s arm.
She would not have been quite human if she had not felt a certain enjoyment at these realizations. Speculation would be rife for the rest of the day. Mrs. Jones, the vicar’s wife, perhaps not purely by chance, was standing at her garden gate talking across it with Mrs. Henchley, the butcher’s wife. They both turned and smiled and curtsied and commented on the lovely weather and looked significantly at Dora. The duke touched the brim of his tall hat with one hand, wished them a good afternoon, and agreed that yes, summer appeared to have come early this year. They would regale the rest of the village for what remained of the day with an embroidered account of the encounter, Dora guessed with an inward smile of fondness for her neighbors.