Aideen harrumphed. She didn’t actually mind the guard – a useful precaution with her husband’s work, but he hadn’t even asked.
Narrowing her eyes, she glared at a portrait of the duke high on the wall, which equally returned her scowl to the breakfast table.
Each night, she’d heard him enter his room extremely late, and then there’d followed all that sloshing noise. It wasn’t a bath – wrong splash – and it wasn’t merely some ewer and basin. It sounded as though he had a personal raincloud in his chambers.
But he never came near her door.
How could she speak to him if he was never here? Ask him if they could possibly attend an event together? Or dine together? Or read? Anything really…
Of course, she knew he was busy spying on people and dealing with matters for the Crown, and that had consoled her until she’d learned from Jack that her husband had attended Lady Rowe’s ball on Tuesday…alone.
Why hadn’t he invited her?
And where were all the other society invites? Post seemed to disappear before she arose.
Was he…ashamed of being seen with an Irish upstart?
The duke had also informed the butler to refuse all house calls until “the duchess had settled in.” But she didn’t feel the need to settle in. The Quinlan household in Ireland was on the large size and she’d been organising that well enough since she’d been old enough to give orders – so around eight years of age, she recalled. In addition, the dowager duchess had been a wonder, calling in for breakfast and chatting about duties and so forth.
Boredom was not the problem as Meghan also had a surprising amount of charities which she patronised, and Aideen was only too happy to help, especially as they focused on hospitals in deprived areas rather than ladies sewing blankets.
No, she was…lonely, used to a busy home full of Uncle’s hounds and relations popping in for home-distilled whisky.
The one caller had been Jack, whom she’d seen more than her husband in the last week. He’d been for tea, for a sherry and taken her to Gunter’s.
She glowered. Perhaps a duchess’s married life was supposed to be like this.
Separate. Cold. Unaffectionate. Lonely…
“Meghan? Did you and your late husband spend much time together?”
“Gracious, yes. He was quite modern and liked to involve me in the accounts and so forth. And we always dined together. And walked together. And rode together. And then the evenings…”
“Oh.”
A caring sage-green gaze drifted her way. “He’s acting a bacon-brained buffoon, isn’t he?”
Spluttering coffee, she nodded.
“Hmm. Plunkett, his man of affairs, will be arriving for their meeting at five today – happens every Thursday. Alex then has a brandy to recover. I suggest you corner him then, when he’s mellowed.”
“But…” Aideen hesitated.
Beneath the fuming was a deep sadness. Now he’d sated his lust, he didn’t want anything to do with her. Bored with his wife after one night – it didn’t say much for her attractions.
Maybe her father was right: her unladylike conduct gave a disgust, her boldness a repellence.
Meghan stood, sauntered over and then leaned on the table in a very un-duchess-like manner. “Aideen, you are beautiful, warm-hearted and such delightful company. It is Alex that is the dullard. And if it is any consolation, he is being a monster to all and sundry. I heard tell he even lost his temper with Lord Winterbourne at Lady Rowe’s ball. He also cut Lady Lucas in the street for waving at him, and apparently his response to Lord Studland when the poor man queried after his welfare in White’s was most ill-mannered. It’s all the gossip.”
Aideen frowned. Yes, Rakecombe had a reputation for being a bit callous, but all this did sound a smidgeon more ill-tempered than usual.
“You are under his skin, Aideen, scratching away.” Meghan leaned closer. “Keep scratching, dear. Dig deep. Or…” She pulled back. “…pish to the lot of them and we’ll go to Egypt. I do so like donkeys and can quite imagine us traversing the sands with some handsome Ottoman Sultan as guide.”
∞∞∞
Rakecombe quaffed his brandy and itched his jaw.
Plunkett had left a half hour earlier with his tail between his legs, and Rakecombe knew he’d have to apologise for his foul mood. But dammit, nothing felt…right.
