Going to London, partaking in the Season, finding a companion—it wasn’t for the benefit of her father, or her sister, or her husband. It was forher. For Marabelle. For the frightened girl turned timid woman who had never, ever done anything with her own self-interest in mind.
She hadn’t wantedthislife. As preposterous as it sounded, the last thing she’d ever desired was to be a duchess. The acclaim, the prestige, and the attention weren’t for her. CertainlyAmbrosewasn’t for her.
When she was small, hiding under her bed or in a closet or outside the rickety old shed that housed the gardening tools, she hadn’t dreamt of a grand life, as Kitty had, but of a simple one. A quiet one. A happy one.
With a husband who loved her.
“Ouch,” she exclaimed, wincing when Agnes’s comb snagged on a wet, knotted tendril.
“Ye should dry yer hair first,” the older Scottish woman said wisely. “And yer skin, besides. Yer cold tae the touch, my lady. Here’s a robe for ye, and there’s already a fire roaring in the blue room that’ll warm ye up in a lick.”
“The blue room?” A flicker of apprehension went through Mara as she threaded her arms through the soft sleeves of a silk robe and tied it firmly at her waist. The room that Agnes spoke of was a daintily furnished parlor connecting her private bedchamber with the master bedchamber. That was to say,Ambrose’sbedchamber. The room had been vacant more than it had been occupied, but now that he was at the castle, she could only assume it was where he would be sleeping. What if he walked in and—
Stop it, she scolded herself.This is your home as much as it is his, and you’ll not be walking on eggshells in it.
Ambrose was here, and there was nothing she could do to make him leave. But her days of cowering in the presence of men had ended with the death of her father. For all of his faults, Ambrose had never raised his voice nor his hand toward her... and she wouldn’t cower around the castle as if he were about to start at any second.
She refused.
“Aye, my lady.” Agnes’s mob cap fluttered as her head bobbed up and down on a bony neck. “There’s another fire in the drawing room downstairs, but I dinna—”
“The blue room shall be fine. Thank you, Agnes.”
The maid curtsied. “Yer welcome, my lady.”
*
Waiting until theduchess had left to close the door and busy herself with tidying the bed, Agnes was in the middle of stripping the pillowcases when Lucy, a young servant who worked primarily in the kitchen, entered the chamber carrying a basket of fresh linens.
“Put those on the wooden chest,” Agnes directed, “and be about yer business. His Grace has just arrived, and he doesn’t take kindly tae dallying.”
“I’ve been running like a hen with her head cut off since sunup.” Dropping the heavy basket where Agnes wanted it, Lucy groaned as she stretched her arms above her head. “Why did Sarah have to picktodayto wake up retching into a chamber pot? I can’t do her duties and mine! My feet are going to fall off.”
“With the way Sarah’s been carrying on with that lad from the stables, I expected her tae catch the morning sickness sooner or later. Mind that ye tell her tae get herself down tae the village church and be lively about it, less people start counting the weeks after the babe has arrived,” Agnes said wisely.
Lucy’s arms dropped. “You think Sarah is withchild?”
“If there isn’t a wee bairn growing in that lass’s belly, then I wasn’t born and raised in Dunkeld.”
“But that means I’ll have to do even more work, and on a scullery maid’s wages!”
“Aye,” said Agnes without a trace of sympathy. “Take this pile of dirty linens tae the laundry and see that they’re washed with the lavender soap, not the plain. The plain is for His Grace.”
“What’s he like?” Lucy asked as she gathered the sheets and the pillowcases. “The duke.”
“Haven’t ye met him?”
“No, I started after Christmas.”
“That’s right, I forgot ye are new. Tae begin with, His Grace hates it here. He always has, ever since he was a small lad. That means he will’na have the patience for servants that stand around gossiping when they should be attending tae their duties,” Agnes said pointedly.
Hugging the used linens to her chest, Lucy ignored the thinly veiled warning. “If he hates the castle that much, then why is he here?”
Inadvertently, Agnes gaze went to the duchess’s writing desk and the leatherbound journal residing within it. The journal that she’d taken to reading some months ago, for how else was she supposed to know when Her Grace required a sympathetic ear and a shoulder to lean on? Stoic as an empty wall, that one, when the pages of her journal were overflowing with words of sadness and sorrow.
At first, Agnes had stolen quick glances at paragraphs. Then pages. Soon, while the duchess took her long walks through the countryside, she was reading entire passages. And it was wrong. A terrible breach of trust, to be sure, and the fastest way to be fired short of emptying the drawers of silver. But with no family except for a sister that Agnes didn’t particularly care for, who else was going to look after the duchess’s best interests? Who else was going to guard her well-being? Who else was going to discover her misguided plan to take a lover in London? And who else was going to plant whispers with fellow servants in neighboring households to ensure that the news was spread far and wide, thus bringing the duke to Southwick Castle?
Agnes was eighteen years happily married to an Englishman that her parents had vehemently disapproved of. They were content and comfortable but had never been blessed with children. A miscarriage and two stillborn, after which neither had the will to try again. But they had each other, they had the castle, and they had the duke and duchess, the latter of which Agnes had taken firmly under her wing whether she was aware of it or not.
