The journey took four hours, with a brief stop to change the horses and partake of a light luncheon. By the time they arrived at the duke’s estate, the sun was beginning its inevitable slide toward the horizon, and the distant sea gleamed. The salt smellhad reached her from miles earlier. It hung in the air—thick, briny, ancient. It coated her tongue, stung her nose.
London had smelled of coal smoke and horse dung. Ravenhall Manor smelled like the sea had claimed it.
Although… perhaps she ought to call it more of acastle. The great house rose from atop a small hill, salt-stained ramparts built above a luxurious expanse of glittering windows. From there, they would have a direct view of the sea.
“Lawks,” Jane breathed, peering from the window.
“Quite,” Aurelia replied.
Of this house, she would be mistress.
She had never felt so unequal to a task before. Her mother had run the small home she had lived in with her uncle, and when they had died and she had become the duchess’s companion, she became more of a servant than a lady, in charge of nothing but seeing to the duchess’s whims.
Now she would be at liberty to have whims of her own. And she would have servants to obey her every command.
As the carriage came to a stop on the gravel front, the door opened, and two servants emerged. The butler and the housekeeper, Aurelia surmised from their uniforms. Neither looked particularly pleased to see her. If anything, as shestepped out of the carriage and onto the gravel, the housekeeper’s mouth pressed together in an unusual display of displeasure.
“Your Grace,” the butler declared, endeavoring to imbue the word with copious quantities of disdain. “'I amMr. Fellows—formerlySergeant Fellows, Coldstream Guards. This, here, is Mrs. Hodge, and we are the butler and housekeeper. Welcome to Ravenhall Manor.”
It mayoncehave been a manor, but the house now had far outgrown that, expanding into a vast display of wealth and grandeur.
Aurelia shivered, in part due to the cool sea breeze.
“Is His Grace inside?” she chattered.
“He is.” Mr. Fellows made no further attempt to clarify his answer and instead gestured at the door. “Your luggage, such as it is, will be brought through shortly.”
“You are to have the Duchess’s suite,” Mrs. Hodge explained as she followed Aurelia with the sharpclackof keys. Aurelia had always gotten along with housekeepers at her previous places of work and employment, but this was entirely different.
Shewas now mistress, and the housekeeper would answer to her.
It was obvious from the coldness of Mrs. Hodge’s demeanor that the elder woman disliked the notion greatly.
Well, Aurelia could hardly blame her. She would hardly have chosen herself as a duke’s wife; when Mr. Arnold had found her, she had been summarily dismissed, though she doubted Mrs. Hodge knew that.
Whatever the housekeeperdidknow, it was enough to ensure Aurelia could not make a favorable impression. After all, she wore the wedding clothes that had been made up especially for the wedding—the wedding the duke had not arrived at.
“I gather His Grace must be very busy,” she said, hurrying after Mrs. Hodge.
The housekeeper sent a brief, derisive glance back. “He has his things to be getting along with, ma’am. Now, you’ll find this is the Red Parlor. We use this for guests if we do not want to invite them further into the house.” By her tone, Aurelia could only imply she would have been one of those guests if she had not been married to the duke.
Married.
There was a gold band on the third finger of her left hand. It felt like a chain, tying her to a gentleman she had never met and felt nothing for. And whom, she could only presume, felt nothing for her in turn.
Mrs. Hodge took her on a tour of the house, all the rooms bleeding into one another and blurring into a confusing mass of grand spaces. The drawing room had a high, Stucco ceiling and a fireplace larger than Aurelia’s former bed.
The library had more books than Aurelia could ever have dreamed of reading, and the chamber centered around a fireplace in the center. Comfortable sofas framed with tables lined that spot, and Aurelia presumed that was where one chose to read, if one read.
There were other rooms, of course. A music room, a room that had once been used as a nursery for the current duke; a schoolroom used for the same purpose.
As they made their way upstairs, Aurelia happened to glance down the corridor—purely by chance, of course—and saw a man emerging from a room. He closed the door behind him and walked away with long, assured strides.
She stared after him, her thoughts skidding to a halt. That could not be her husband. Her husband was supposed to be elderly, stooped, possibly asleep in a chair at all hours. Not…that.
Tall. Capable-looking. Broad enough through the shoulders to make a doorway consider its life choices. And from the brief angle she caught, his face seemed precisely the sort a sculptor would chip into marble when he wished to ruin other sculptors’ confidence.
Aurelia blinked hard.
