A Princely Dilemma. Elizabeth Rolls
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when I positively begged for brandy—I felt faint, Severn, faint!—was bleat that I’d better have a glass of water!’
In the library Severn stared at the portrait of his father, resplendent in the silks and lace of his generation, an angel of ill-fortune, looming over the chimneypiece. ‘What a mess,’ he said. ‘Why the hell do fathers have to interfere in the marital decisions of their sons?’ He sank into the chair at his desk and buried his face in his hands.
His head snapped up again as a throat cleared in a very pointed sort of way.
Oh, hell!
His wife, having clearly just arisen from the wing chair facing the window, stood, book in hand, her expression unreadable, but her chin tilted just a little higher than normal. His heart kicked at the sight of her, but he kept his expression indifferent. Perhaps she hadn’t quite heard. It wasn’t as if he’d been speaking loudly.
‘I beg your pardon, my lord duke. I did not hear you enter. I hope you do not mind if I borrow your book?’ Her voice was quite even, not the least sign that she realised she had just heard herself comprehensively insulted.
‘They are your books now too.’ He looked at the one she was holding. ‘What are you reading?’
‘Goethe.’
‘What?’
‘You object?’
‘Of course not! I just didn’t know you could read German.’
‘And French, and Italian.’
She was better educated in that respect than he was. ‘An accomplished wife.’
‘As you wished. Or so I thought.’
Oh, damn. She had heard.
‘You will excuse me?’ She started for the door, her deportment perfect, correct in every particular.
‘Madam…’ He rose, went towards her, hands held out. ‘Linette, I did not mean—’
She changed course, quickening her step and skirting his outstretched hands. The slight hint of panic in her step, the sharply indrawn breath, halted him as nothing else could have. ‘No matter, sir. Fathers can be inconvenient creatures, I am sure. Good day.’ She reached the door and was through it in a froth of muslin skirts.
Returning to his chair, he dropped his head back into his hands and swore. He hadn’t even thought that she might be in here. Women were supposed to prefer drawing rooms to libraries, weren’t they? But his new duchess loved books, judging by the pile she kept beside her bed, and he had politely made her free of the library when he brought her home yesterday. At least it had been his wife, rather than a maid dusting. Although he wasn’t entirely sure which would be worse—the servants’ inevitable gossip, or his bride’s stony face over the dinner table.
Dinner… Oh, hell! It was Easter Sunday; they’d invited his immediate family, and her grandmother, for dinner. It might have been possible to speak with her, apologise, over dinner if it were just the two of them. He would have no hesitation in dismissing the footmen and dining alone with her. Impossible with guests. He’d have to speak with her before dinner.
Chapter Three
Linnet, Duchess of Severn, having ordered a bath in front of the fire, wondered in what way her undoubtedly bourgeois behaviour had disgusted her aristocratic husband. Grandmère had made it all perfectly clear, instructing her on how to conduct herself in such a grand marriage. Clear enough until one tried to actually do it. It didn’t help that he called her Linette, rather than Linnet; Grandmère had been very clear that being named after a bird was not at all proper.
Leaning back in the bath, she closed her eyes, listening to her maid, Bolt, moving about beyond the screen, laying out her evening clothes. She was never, or rarely, alone and yet she had never been so lonely in her life.
She had never thought that she would have no one to talk to. Really talk to. She certainly couldn’t talk to Bolt, who had been her mother-in-law’s maid and clearly disapproved of her new mistress. She had thought that she would be able to talk to Severn, that they could be friends, even though he had not married her for love. But it seemed that Grandmère had been right.…
‘No demonstrations of affection… You must use his title always… Any display of vulgar enthusiasm will betray ill-breeding, and give him a disgust of you… A lady of consequence lies still and accepts her duty; she submits to her husband’s attentions quietly.’
She hadn’t realised how difficult it would be to don the cloak of formal decorum. It didn’t feel at all like the gracious ease of manner that her grandmother told her was necessary; it felt stiff, and cold. Papa had always encouraged her to be affectionate, open in her manners. Not vulgar, of course, but relaxed. But she supposed Grandmère must know more about the aristocracy than Papa had. In fact, Papa had never intended such a grand match for her at all.
‘Marry a fellow you can trust to be honest with you.’
She swallowed. Severn had been completely honest with her about his reasons for offering for her hand—debts. His father’s crippling debts which, without her fortune, would have sunk the dukedom. He had been open about it all, not paying her flowery compliments, nor pretending that he had fallen head over heels in love. She shivered; he had not behaved at all like her cousin, Joseph. Joseph had fooled her completely. Courting her, paying compliments, buying her extravagant gifts, which it turned out had put him even further into debt. He had been all tender consideration, with the false light in his eyes a beacon to lure her to disaster. She had been so lonely with Papa gone, had wanted someone to love so desperately. Apparently Joseph didn’t even much like her.…
‘But, Father, she’s so plain! And she reads too much, dull as ditchwater!’
‘She’s worth a fortune, boy. Enough and more to pull you out of the River Tick. That makes her a beauty, especially if you blow out the lamp. And there’ll be time enough to school her out of annoying habits once you’re safely married, and the money’s tied up. She’ll have to obey you then.’
Plain. Very well, she knew she was plain. Without the curling iron, which she hated, her hair was dead straight. And, with or without the iron, it was an unremarkable mousy colour. Not unlike the plumage of her namesake. Her eyes were a dull brown, and although her complexion was good, it was marred by those horrible freckles. As for her breasts, well, it was a good thing her stays pushed up what little there was. And Severn… She closed her eyes. Severn was beautiful, if you could call a man beautiful—those gorgeous eyes, the deep burnished gold hair and a face like…like a Greek god! And he was strong, but so gentle with it.
‘She’s bran-faced, Father, not to mention as flat as a board!’
‘Take a mistress, then, once you’ve got a brat on the chit. Just marry her and secure the money.’
She grabbed the washcloth, soaping it vigorously. Eavesdropping was shameful, of course, not at all the behaviour expected of a lady. She had known it then, and if that hadn’t been enough to prove to her that eavesdroppers rarely heard any good of themselves, then this evening had proved it. Not that she had meant to eavesdrop on either occasion. Still, sometimes it was better to know the truth even when it hurt. She had refused Joseph’s offer the following morning, accompanied by a few pithy quotes from the conversation she’d overheard, and removed from her uncle Bartholomew’s house to her grandmother’s within the hour.
There had been nowhere else to go. Her father’s will stipulated that until she married, or turned thirty, she must reside with either her uncle Bartholomew or her French émigré grandmother.
Madame la Marquise de la Marchèrand had received her willingly, if coldly. Even her enduring disgust at her daughter’s elopement twenty-three years earlier with a wealthy English merchant did not blind her to the advantages of chaperoning a young lady worth two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.
‘Soit. So be it. We will contrive. Bad blood, oui.’
Her