“You’ve been here for a while,” she said, setting the tray on a side table. “I thought you might like a little fortification.”
Celine closed the book, her hand lingering on the cover as though it might anchor her. “Thank you.”
Mary poured, the fragrance of bergamot rising into the air. She handed Celine a cup and studied her for a moment. “Are you well, my dear?”
Celine let the steam brush her face before answering.
“I do not quite feel myself,” she admitted, eyes fixed on the fire. “This manor is ancient and beautiful, yet I cannot help but feel out of place in it. As though I have wandered into a life that does not sit easily with me.”
Mary sat down beside her, close enough that the cushions touched. Her hand settled lightly over Celine’s, steady and warm. “All shall be well. You need only keep your head high, with grace. The rest will follow in its own time.”
Celine’s throat tightened. She set the teacup down before it trembled in her grip. “Grace seems a poor shield when one’s heart is as changeful as a windvane.”
Mary’s eyes softened, but her tone remained practical. “Perhaps the heart is seeking its true course.”
Celine pressed her fingers to her temples, restless. “I know it. Yet I find no comfort in the knowledge. When I agreed to marry the Duke, I expected distance. I even welcomed it. But now—” She stopped herself, her teeth closing over the words.
She could not confess aloud the way she savored her husband’s nearness when he allowed it, the way a glance or a few careless words warmed her longer than any fire. Her heart was swaying toward Rhys, and she did not know what to do about it.
Mary smoothed the folds of her apron, her expression kind. “You are learning to live with him. That takes patience. But you are stronger than you think, and more than equal to this house. Give it time, my dear. You will realize your truth.”
Celine clasped her hands together, trying to still the nervous fidgeting of her fingers. “I did not think I would come to find him tolerable,” she said, the word bitter on her tongue.
At least ‘tolerable’ is safer than ‘desirable.’
Mary rose, her joints cracking slightly, and smoothed the front of her gown. “Then perhaps it is time you took a turn in the gardens. A walk will do you more good than sitting with books that will not read themselves to you. The air has a way of clearing what grows heavy in the head.”
Celine drew a slow breath and stood up, reaching for her shawl. “Yes. A walk.”
Mary gave her a small, approving nod, and together they left the library.
An hour later,Celine was wandering the gardens, taking in the arrangement of the new roses. It was her third circuit that late afternoon, but she still found new evidence of her husband’s relentless improvement: a newly raked pebble path, the careful stake work under the linden, the way an ancient bench had been angled to catch the late sun through a break in the hedgerows.
She stopped, pressing her palm to a patch of lichened stone and allowing herself a small smile. There was a quality of care in this estate, under the bravado and disregard that the ton so delighted in talking about. Every change—every patch of moss left untouched, every seedling kept in place—felt deliberate and stubborn.
She wondered, not for the first time, what Rhys might be if he let himself be seen.
Her reverie was shattered by a scream. Not human, but the sort of scream that was worse: raw, endless, full of terror and certainty.
A horse.
In the same instant, she knew which horse it was.
She ran through the wet yews and past the empty fountain, toward the long, low outbuilding just visible at the garden’s edge. Even before she reached it, she could see lanterns bobbing in the gloom, hear the panicked thumping of hooves against wood.
As she entered the stable-yard, she saw four grooms, two of them boys, all of them pale. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of blood and hay, hotter than it should have been for April. At the far end, lit by a wedge of orange, Rhys stood in his shirt behind the pregnant mare, his arms bloodied to the elbow, his voice sharp with command.
“Hold her, damn you! Get the head up—don’t let her go down!”
He didn’t look back, didn’t spare a glance for the men clinging to the rope halter, but Celine saw his jaw set, his movements spare and violent as a butcher’s.
The mare was slick with sweat, her white flanks streaked dark. She was trying to sit, to lie, anything to escape the agony racking her body.
“Bring another lantern. You—Grady—water. Not to drink, to wash. Move!”
Celine froze in the entrance, but her mind was leaping, racing through every word she’d ever read about foaling and every memory she’d tried to bury of what came after.
It’s not the same. It’s not.
