Well, of course she did not. They had spent only a month plus those few days last year together. She had felt she knew him, knew his spirit. But the truth was that she did not know him at all. Getting to know each other was what their marriage would be all about.
It was well into the evening when they arrived home. And even the homecoming should have felt perfect. The butler opened the double doors wide with something of a flourish, spilling light out onto the dusk-shaded steps, and bowed low. Behind him all the servants were gathered, standing formally in two lines extending along the hallway, the women on one side, the men on the other. Despite the lateness of the hour they were all smiling, their heads turned toward the doors. At what must have been a prearranged signal from someone, they all applauded as the Duke of Stanbrook led Dora over the threshold.
Someone must have dashed ahead from Stockwood House to warn the servants that they were on the way.
The butler had a speech to deliver, stiff but also endearing. The duke answered it and introduced Dora as his duchess. More applause followed and more smiles, and she thanked them for the welcome and promised to get to know them all by name in the next few days.
A tea tray was brought up to the drawing room and Dora seated herself to pour—her first duty as a wife in her new home. They sat on either side of the fire, which was welcome in the coolness that had come with the dusk. And they talked about the day, agreeing in effect that it had been perfect.
As it had been.
Except for those few minutes.
Several times Dora thought she would broach the subject but could not steel her nerve. Several times she thought the duke was going to make mention of it, but when he spoke it was of something else, some other fond memory of the day.
He did not stop smiling. Neither, she realized, did she.
“You are tired, my dear,” he said at last. “It has been a long and busy day. A happy one, though, would you not agree?”
“Yes,” she said. “Very happy.”
Oh, dear God, what was the matter with them? How could they allow one deranged man to do this to them?
He was standing before her chair, extending a hand for hers. There was the wedding night to celebrate. Why was she feeling depressed? She set her hand in his, got to her feet, and allowed him to draw her arm through his. She did not even know, she thought, where her bedchamber was, where her trunks were that had been brought here at some time during the day, where she would find what she needed, where she would undress, where . . .
He led her upstairs past wall sconces filled with candles, all cheerfully alight, and along a wide corridor before stopping outside a closed door.
“You are tired, my dear,” he said again, his fingers curving about her hand on his other arm and raising it to his lips. “I will leave you to have a good night’s rest and will look forward to seeing you at breakfast in the morning. Though you must not feel obliged to get up early if you wish to sleep on. Good night.”
What?
But Dora had no time either to show or to express her shock. He opened the door to reveal a dressing room lit by candlelight and a maid curtsying and smiling at her. She recognized the fine linen nightgown she had chosen for her wedding night set out over a chair. She stepped inside, and the door closed behind her.
“I am Maisie, Your Grace,” the maid said. “I will be your dresser for the time being until you choose someone else, unless you decide to keep me, which I would like of all things.”
Dora smiled.
Smiles. Perfection. What had happened in a few minutes. It was how she would remember her wedding day as long as she lived, Dora thought as she gave herself up to the unfamiliar ministrations of her new maid.
Oh, and the absence of a wedding night.
You are tired, my dear.
My dear.
She did not want to be his dear. She wanted to be Dora.
9
George was standing at the window of his bedchamber, his knuckles braced on the sill, his shoulders hunched. He was gazing out into darkness, though he was scarcely aware that there was nothing to see. He was dressed for bed, his dark blue dressing gown belted over his nightshirt. Behind him the covers of the large canopied bed had been turned down for the night—on both sides.
He could hardly have made more of a mess of the day if he had tried. The appearance of Eastham inside the church and his dramatic pronouncement there had been totally unexpected, it was true, but life was full of the unexpected. In forty-eight years he ought to have learned better how to handle it. Actually, he believed that at the time he had behaved with the proper restraint and dignity, as had the bishop. He had even had the presence of mind to ask his bride if she wished to postpone the wedding.
It was the rest of the day that had been the disaster. And he was the one most to blame, he feared. Everyone else had taken their cue from him.
What he ought to have done was kiss his bride in the carriage, as he had planned to do, while everyone looked on. Then he ought to have spoken to her of what had happened with the promise that they would talk more fully later, when they were alone and not distracted by the din of the hardware they were dragging along. Then he ought to have raised the issue quite openly with his guests at the start of the wedding breakfast, explained again that there was absolutely no truth to the charges that the Earl of Eastham had made against him both this morning and immediately after Miriam’s death, and invited everyone to put the unfortunate incident behind them if they could and celebrate his wedding day with him and his new duchess. Later, after most of the guests had left and only close family and friends remained, he should have raised the issue again and talked it out with them. And then, after returning home with his bride, he should have sat down with her and discussed the matter privately with her, talked the whole thing over with her yet again.