“Well…” Mrs. Hodge hesitated. “I expect you know him better than I do, Your Grace.”
Eleanor sucked her teeth in frustration, but it appeared Mrs. Hodge did not want to speak with her about the Duke, and she would not force the issue. Especially when the implication appeared to be that he had few good qualities. Otherwise, surely Mrs. Hodge would have led with them?
They passed through a drawing room, several small parlors, a music room, and a room named merelythe blue room, which was where the late Duchess would write her letters. Several times, Mrs. Hodge would try a room that appeared to be locked, and offered no explanation for the closed doors, and certainly did not reach for the keys at her waist to open them.
When they came to the third locked door at the end of the gallery upstairs, Eleanor finally summoned the courage to ask. “What lies beyond it?”
“That’s His Grace’s domain, Your Grace.”
The sound of her new title made her want to protest every time, to tell the housekeeper that there had been a mistake—thatshecould not be the new Duchess, that she was only an insignificant lady who had never been much to anyone.
But the ring on her finger told her that there had been no mistake. The Duke, too, appeared to have intended this, so who was she to argue?
“Do you not have the keys?” she asked.
“I do not, ma’am.” Mrs. Hodge turned abruptly on her heel and led the way to the east wing, where the bedchambers were located. “This is your bedchamber. Do not hesitate to ring when you would like to dress for dinner. Abigail shall come to assist you.”
“Thank you,” Eleanor said, stepping inside the lushly appointed bedchamber. Mrs. Hodge gave a thin smile, a curtsy, and left her to it. She perched on the edge of the large, four-poster bed. “Well,” she said to Scrunch, taking him from her pocket and holding him in her palm. His black eyes stared up at her. “I suppose this is not quite the marriage we had expected, but it is the marriage I have found for myself—or I suppose, the marriage that the Duke saw fit to give me—so I should make the best of it.”
Scrunch sniffed and licked his front paws, cleaning his face.
“You’re right, of course.” Eleanor held her hand against the covers and allowed him to scamper off. “Life here will be far easier than it ever was at home. The Duke has his rules, but if I am patient and treat him with kindness, I’m sure he will come to see me as a life partner and not as a burden.” She sighed. “Or at least, if not a life partner, then at the very least, he will grow partially fond of me. Iamhis wife, after all.”
Not that she seemed much of a wife. He had married her apparently under duress, and now that they were to share a life, he seemed to want nothing more to do with her. In fact, it sometimes seemed to her as though he wished to intimidate orscare her—although if he did, he would have to try significantly harder than that.
Still, at least she had a room to herself, a bedchamber so lush that she felt like a queen, in a manor house that carried its years in its walls. He would see away Margaret if she ever expressed a desire to visit, and would do so at very little inconvenience to herself. In fact, Eleanor would not even need to petition him; now she knew his intentions, she could deny Margaret and give her their deepest regrets. And, if Margaret should go behind her back and ask the Duke himself, he would be sure to give her a resoundingno.
“I am deeply grateful, you know,” she said to Scrunch. “I never asked for this marriage, and to think that he is the same man who—” Well, the less she thought aboutthat, the better. It seemed he had no intention of bringing up their kiss, and she was grateful for that, too. Although it did make her curious about what might come later this evening. She knew very little about what transpired between a husband and wife on the eve of their wedding, but she knew it would involve more kissing.
In fact, there had been a moment in the drawing room when she had thought he might kiss her again, though instead he had warned her that bad behavior would result in punishment. The way he’d said it, though, had made her want, for the first time in her life, to be something other than good. To explore just what punishment under his hands would feel like.
She rather thought it might be delightful.
With a sigh, she rose from the bed and went to explore her rooms and the door set into the wall. Presumably, this was the door adjoining her chambers and the Duke’s. Curious, she reached out a hand and turned the handle, but it wouldn’t budge more than an inch in either direction.
Locked.
Intriguing. Yet another locked door.
The manor appeared to be full of them, and no one seemed to have the answers. At least, Mrs. Hodge didn’t seem inclined to tell her, and it was entirely possible that the housekeeper didn’t know herself. Although Eleanor thought that odd; her father’s servants had been around almost as long as he had been, and they knew everything there was to know about the house. They had been fond of him, too, and though soon after his death Margaret had replaced them, Eleanor had fond memories of them affectionately feeding her snacks in the kitchen, or the maids brushing out her tangled hair and singing lullabies.
Not, of course, that the Duke would require similar treatment from his servants. But she did find it odd that Mrs. Hodge seemed to have no fondness for the Duke at all.
Abandoning the door, she hunted around the rest of the room, exploring the writing desk—which held paper and nothing else—and her closet. When she opened the door to the small room, she discovered it was near empty, save for a few dresses that appeared decades old. Perhaps they once belonged to the Duke’smother? She fingered the heavy brocade. Quite a different style, and oddly plain, despite the material.
At a knock on the door, she spun to find a maid and a footman bringing her luggage to the room. At her stepmother’s house, she’d never had a maid of her own, and so it didn’t strike her as odd that she hadn’t been assigned a lady’s maid immediately. Perhaps the Duke would take time to interview new candidates. It hardly mattered to her; just having someone, even an ordinary maid, to help her dress, was more than she could have hoped for.
“Your luggage, ma’am,” the maid said, bobbing a curtsy.
“Thank you. What’s your name?”
“Abigail, ma’am.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Abigail. Thank you for bringing everything up for me.” Eleanor hesitated. As a new Duchess, she knew that her rank had elevated far higher than it had ever been as a girl, but she had also been brought up almost as one of the servants since her father’s death, and she felt more in common with them than the other ladies of theton. After a second’s deliberation, she hurried to help with the clothes in the trunk. “Here,” she said. “Let me.”
“Ohno, Your Grace. That wouldn’t be proper at all.”
Eleanor smiled. “Well, I don’t care much for proper, and I have quite a few clothes that must be folded and put away. Let me help you; I have nothing else to do.”
