A week passed,and one morning Violet walked idly through the stacks of the enormous library, trailing her fingers along the dark leather spines of the many books that lined the shelves.
She often found herself at a loss for something to do, as the house ran like clockwork without her needing to lift a finger. Ashton was normally ensconced in his study with Richard, or riding out to visit the tenant farmers or whatever business he had with his land steward. Sometimes, Violet felt almost invisible, wafting around this cavernous house without any purpose.
She searched the shelves for something to divert her. There was only so much embroidery a lady could bear. And she had already worked her way through a stack of monogrammed handkerchiefs for the duke. The thought of starting on a set of tapestried cushions or some-such nonsense made her feel like tearing her hair out.
Agriculture, animal husbandry, and treatises on various motions for reform.
Such dull tomes. Perhaps Ashton would buy her a novel if she asked, Violet mused. Unless there were some older ones here, hidden away in a yet unexplored corner.
Perhaps then Violet would have something to do with her time. She had quickly realised in the days past that she had no idea what a duchess was supposed to do all day.
Yes, she met daily with the housekeeper. A most competent woman who was well used to running this household. Although she had most generously asked for Violet’s approval of the next week’s menu and had politely requested they hire another kitchen girl.
Alternatively, Violet thought she might take up gardening. She knew how to plant a kitchen garden, but maybe she could learn to raise orchids or plant a new rose garden.Did the manor even have a hothouse?
Violet shook her head at the idle thought. Ridiculous.
A charity maybe?
But what the Duke would allow her to do, she still did not know.
In fact, Violet knew hardly anything about the man really, other than some idea of his appetites and his immediate desire for an heir.
Violet smiled softly at the thought of a baby, pausing to turn the idea over in her mind.
She supposed she could re-decorate the nursery, at the very least. Surely Ashton would not object to that as a project. Violet had wandered up there yesterday, and it seemed unchanged since perhaps the duke himself was installed there as a young boy.
The thought of her irascible duke as a smiling young boy brought a soft huff of laughter to her lips. No, it was impossible. He must have been born whole, arrogant and belligerent from the very start.
Violet had stood in the centre of the sunny nursery, taking in the moth-eaten edges of the curtains and the assortment of dusty toys and books, and had pictured it all made new.
She knew what she would choose. Pale, soft coverings and drapes, made to soothe and cocoon the young life that would be housed there. New, brightly painted toys and a rocking horse, with life-like glass eyes that just begged to be ridden by a spirited youngster.
It would be a space she could make her own, where she would take joy in her babe.
Violet knew in her heart she could never be as her mother had been, aloof and indifferent to her offspring.No.
There was a well of feeling inside Violet that was slowly opening up now that life had set her on this new path. She wanted to hold and kiss her baby. She wanted to smell the sweet scent of milk on their hair.
Violet had tended to her two younger sisters when they were little, being that she was already eight years old when the first was born, the second following not two years later.
Her father had never forgiven the lot of them for not being born a boy. It was a bitterness that radiated off of him her entire childhood, the burden he felt raising four daughters with no son to show for it.
A streak of sunlight shone through the tall, leaded windows that lined the Library. Polished weekly no doubt by an army of servants.
Violet struck the suddenly morose train of thought from her head, rather admiring the dust motes that shimmered in the air, disturbed by her passing. Tilting her face towards the warmth of the sunlight and willing it to fill her with its vitality.
“Stay right there,” came a low voice from behind her, and Violet turned her head slightly towards the sound of the duke’s voice.
“Beautiful,” Ashton murmured, stepping closer. His booted footsteps fell slow and steady until he stopped a little way from her.
“You have the look of a sylph, sent to tempt me, standing there with the sun lighting your hair into a halo.”
The duke’s voice, the smooth cadence of those words as they floated towards her sent a shiver down Violet’s spine. She stood still, trembling, wanting so badly to please the man who had brought her to this strange place. This life she didn’t yet understand.
Ashton moved closer. She heard his breath catch.
“And that new muslin dress… Well. I can see the silhouette of your form most perfectly, illuminated as you are now. Like a lithe cat, arching to be stroked. I must admit I do like these new fashions.”
