Her gasp echoed off oak paneling all the way up to the high, coffered ceiling. Silence, monstrous and shocked to its bones, filled the cavernous room. He’d just told his father, the Duke of Arundel, that a strumpet—or . . . what precisely was she?—was his wife. Two sets of eyes burned into him.
The pendulum clock ticked off another minute of time before the Duke crossed the distance and wrapped his arms around Percy, giving him two manful claps on the back. “Let me be the first to congratulate you.”
Had Percy picked up a note in his father’s voice on the wordcongratulate? Just a little note of disbelief? Of playing along? His father had always been good at that game when Percy was a child. Whatever pretend world Percy created, his father never missed a step entering it with him.
But his father’s visage betrayed not a hint of irony. Percy almost wished it had, because now . . .
Now he had to follow through with the farce that he’d taken a woman he didn’t know—he wasn’t even clear on her trade. Whore? Dressmaker? Both?—to wife.
The Duke stepped back, and his focus landed on Izzy. Percy’s stomach lurched with nausea. “And does your bride have a name?”
Percy’s mouth opened and shut.Izzy.Women called by the nameIzzydidn’t marry into the aristocracy, much less a duke’s line. Surely, a codicil decreed it so.
Green eyes wide and unflinching, she stepped forward. She possessed the most direct gaze Percy had ever beheld. Whether they shone with competition, fear, or purpose, they didn’t shy away. If he didn’t know better, he’d think them the most honest eyes he’d ever encountered. But he did know better.
“My name is Isabel, my lor—”
“Your Grace,” Percy provided. She needed to know that she was the pretend daughter by law to not just any lord, but a duke. What a night. Would there never be an end to it?
“Your Grace.” She dipped in a curtsy, deep and graceful. Where had she learned that particular skill? Not at Number 9. Or the dressmaking shop. Then, where?
The Duke took Isabel’s hand and bussed a courtly kiss onto it. “Enchanted, my dear.”
Enchanted?Panic streaked through Percy. What had he done? Would he never cease to be the family profligate? He found enough presence of mind to ask, “Is Rosebud Cottage available for our use?”
The Duke smiled. “Lucretia instructed the beds be made up with fresh linens only yesterday. She hoped you would join us. Rosebud Cottage only ever awaits your arrival.”
That last sentence sliced through Percy like a cut, jagged and deep, leaving behind the sharp-edged pain of guilt. Percy could only assume the invitation to join this house party lay buried in the stack of unopened social correspondence that he rarely bothered sorting through.
He’d been too long on his own, too long reliant on himself only, to slot back in to the niceties of Society.Nay, not Society, his conscience piped up.Family.The Duke was family, and Percy could do better. Hadn’t this been one of his vows upon his return to England? Yet his determination to exact revenge upon Montfort had taken precedence.
He must do better.
The Duke tapped his morning paper against his leg. “I trust you haven’t forgotten the way?”
Percy nodded, and the Duke cast a parting smile toward Isabel, a name, Percy thought with no small amount of relief, which suited both the woman and the situation infinitely better thanIzzy. “Welcome to the family, daughter.”
Percy inhaled the groan that wanted release. He’d made a monumental mistake of epic proportions.
The Duke disappeared down the corridor to his study, where he would read theMorning Chroniclefrom cover to cover and take his first pot of coffee alone before the rest of the house stirred.
The rustlings of early risers echoed from the servants’ wing. “We need to go,” Percy said to Isabel. He couldn’t face anyone else yet, not until he’d evaluated this turn of events and what it changed.
Actually, the answer was obvious. It had changed everything.
“Follow me.”
He strode to the front entrance, still open from their arrival, and paused beneath the wide, Grecian-columned portico. “Don’t think about bolting,” he said, low and hard, when Isabel stopped beside him. He wasn’t in the mood for nonsense.
“And how do you reckon I do that with a new mother wearing her night-rail, a babe, his wet nurse, and Tilly?” she retorted before brushing around him and joining her rag-tag sisterhood below, a trace of honeysuckle and summer scenting the air behind her.
The consequence of his lie to the Duke hit Percy square in the jaw. He was stuck here, in the country, with his “bride,” leaving Hortense to handle matters in London without him.
How had the night, now day, gotten away from him so entirely?
Chapter 6
Isabel’s eyes flew wide open, and she sat straight up in a high, four-poster bed, breath scraping the back of her lungs in ragged gasps.
