He nodded slowly. He didn’t like it, she could tell. He couldn’t like it. She had stripped him of his authority over her.
She stepped around him and walked back to the house.
The duke was not in the great hall or the drawing room with the other guests. After reassuring her mother that she was fine and letting her fuss over her for a bit, Phoebe went to Thornwick’s study and heard raised voices through the door. The voices fell silent at her knock.
“Enter,” Thornwick’s voice said at last.
She opened the door and was surprised to see Lady Anne Cavendish and Thornwick standing on opposite sides of the room, both tense with something. Anne’s face was red.
“I’m sorry to interrupt.” Phoebe turned to go.
“No, Lady Phoebe. His Grace and I were just discussing a charity, but we do not agree on its necessity. And our discussion is done. I’m glad to see you well and unharmed. I will bid you adieu. Unfortunately, my sister and Lady Fitzhugh and I must leave. Unexpectedly.” Lady Anne swept from the room.
Her betrothed had been closeted in his study with another woman, discussing a charity, without knowing whether she was safe from a wild animal.
Phoebe closed the study door and curtsied. “Your Grace.”
“Please call me Arthur, Phoebe.”
“Yes, Arthur.”
“There are many things to be said. I lost my temper, and I’m sorry.”
“I accept your apology, Your Grace.”
He seemed surprised. “You do?”
“I angered you. That was not my intention, but still . . . I angered you by not doing what you asked of me. I should not have agreed and then done something else. I apologize to you, Your Grace.”
“Arthur,” he corrected her.
“Arthur.”
“Oh, Phoebe.” He crossed to her and took her in his arms and kissed the top of her head. “You are too good. Thank you.”
He was embracing her. It was what she had wanted from him for so long. But she felt nothing. Vacant.
Only when she got back to her bedchamber did she realize he hadn’t apologized for running away from the wild pig without taking her with him.
There was a sealed letter on her bed addressed to her in a feminine hand.
I must speak to you privately before your wedding. Please, upon your return to London, send word to the Middlewich house in Grosvenor Square. I will come to you immediately. It is of the utmost importance.
A. Cavendish.
She retired early. Her mother came and sat on the edge of her bed and dismissed Dawson from the room.
“I don’t want to talk, Mother. I’m exhausted.”
“That’s fine, Phoebe. You don’t have to say anything. I’ll talk. You can listen.”
Phoebe took a deep breath, preparing herself for a reprimand.
Her mother traced a pattern in the counterpane with a perfect oval fingernail at the end of an elegant, long finger. “I loved your father from the first moment I met him.”
Phoebe’s mouth dropped open. This was contrary to every bit of mythology about her parents’ courtship she had ever heard. Papa was the one who was taken with Mother and had to persuade her to marry him.
“And I met him three years before he started courting me. He was a duke already and a well-known rake—yes, we used the same word back then—and he had no interest in me. I was just a tall, skinny sixteen-year-old girl who secretly mooned over him like every other girl around. But I knew I wanted him. Wanted him the way a woman wants a man, but also as a husband and a father for my children. He and I discuss everything, you know, and he told me of your conversation this week. I was reminded he didn’t love me when we married.”
