“How remiss of me! Go on, Your Grace. Introduce us.” She slapped her fan against his arm playfully, and Isadora gritted her teeth.
Nicholas inhaled slowly through his nose, looking almost as irritated by the interruption as Isadora felt, and slowly turned to look at Isadora. “This is Lady Windermere. She was… friends with Grace.”
Ah. A friend of the former wife. Isadora didn’t know why that knowledge sent a stone into the pit of her stomach. Nicholas had never overtly hid anything about Grace; Isadora had even found the bread basket picture of the meek-looking lady with soft blonde curls and limpid blue eyes. Sophia’s twin—except Sophia had inherited a touch of Nicholas’s stubbornness and mischief, bringing much-needed life into her face.
Isadora knew she was the second wife. She knew that Nicholas had loved his first wife; the evidence was on his face every time he spoke of her. And yet, she couldn’t shake the feeling there was still some sort of mystery surrounding her.
Isadora doubted Lady Windermere would enlighten her here today.
Nicholas’s face had gone entirely blank, any and all emotion wiped from his expression.
“Grace and I were thebestof friends,” Lady Windermere started, the emphasis dripping from her words. And Winchester and I came to know each other well, too, didn’t we?” She didn’t pause long enough for a response, instead seating herself between them and helping herself to a strawberry. “Sometimes, I feel as though I am part of the family—so imagine my surprise when I discovered Winchester had married again without asking me!” She laughed, though Isadora found nothing funny about the situation.
Nicholas poured them both some wine, his fingers grazing Isadora’s as he handed her the glass. “I did not feel as though I needed to ask for anyone’s permission. My choices are my own, and I’m more than happy with my wife. She has complemented my family perfectly.”
Lady Windermere sent Isadora a calculating glance, but then she laughed again. “To be sure, I could never have suspected anything else. I would never judgeyourjudgment, Duke.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” he muttered blandly.
Isadora took a sip of wine, wishing she could take rather more than one.
Fortunately, the lack of gossip or scintillating conversation provoked Lady Windermere to move, and she clambered back to her feet, shaking off her skirts as she invented someone else she must speak to at once.
Silence descended after she left. Isadora toyed with her glass stem, not daring to look at Nicholas.
“I’m sorry,” he sighed, reaching for her hand. “I know it must be difficult to have people questioning your right to be a duchess. But you mustn’t listen to them. You are perfectly qualified for the position, and I do not regret—” He broke off, and she finally tore her gaze away from their linked fingers to his face and the turmoil that reigned there, just for a second. “I do not regret choosing you as my wife,” he finished.
They were not the prettiest words. Isadora did not much like poetry, but she understood its potency now; even these paltry few words touched her in an odd way.
He squeezed his fingers and retracted his hand. “The sun is shining and not all the world is as objectionable as Lady Windermere,” he shrugged. “Shall we make the rounds?”
After another glance at Sophia, Isadora agreed, and they undertook the rather tedious business of walking around all the different groups and social parties, greeting everyone they knew and finding introductions to those they did not. By the end, Isadora might have retired back to her blanket in the shade when she encountered a young lady with a decidedly American accent twirling a parasol between her fingers.
“This heat is nothing,” she snickered when Isadora made her usual polite comment about the weather, ready to move on. “Not compared to Virginia, anyhow.” She smiled prettily at Isadora. “Oh! Don’t tell meyou’rethe infamous new duchess everyone’s been prattling about lately?”
Isadora held up her hands in protest. “Infamous? Oh no.”
“Well, I should hope you are, for that might at least make two of us,” the lady pinched her with a mischievous grin. “Caroline Hensley, at your service. No doubt by now you’ve figured I’m the American, always two columns down from your name in the gossip sheets. With this accent, no one lets me forget.”
Isadora had not heard of anyone discussing an American, but then again, she had hardly been privy to much of the gossip. After all, a fair amount was abouther.
“I,too, am quite infamous, you know,” the lady went on, shrugging a single shoulder. “But I am also due to inherit an eye-wateringly large sum of money, so I suppose that accounts for the fact I can call an earl astrutting coxcombto his face and still be invited to events.”
She looked Isadora over with an intrigued air, “I have to say… I expected you to be terribly stuffy, but it bodes well for me that you’re not. Shall we be friends? We both need a comrade in these trying times, I’d say, and where better to find one than in each other?”
Isadora giggled, warming to this strange American heiress almost immediately. “Well, I certainly could do with a friend.”
“Good, because I could, too. And more than you, I’d wager. You have your husband, and he’s a duke. My father is willing to sell me to any titled gentleman he thinks might improve his standing, but the ones still with teeth don’t want an American wife.” She shrugged. “He’ll find me some ancient fortune-hunter, and he won’t care in the slightest.”
“Can’t you refuse?”
“Well, Ijust hadthe most ridiculous notion that I was a woman and my autonomy belonged to another. Ah, never mind, Iam,and itdoes.”
Chuckling, she linked her arm through Isadora’s, and they walked around the perimeter of the small park. Sophia had made her way back to the blanket, and looked as though she was gorging herself on pies and cheese and sweet treats. The two footmen stood protectively over her.
“That’s not a ridiculous notion,” Isadora said to her newfound friend.
“Is it not? I feel as though it must be in this day and age. Unless…” She cast a mischievous glance in Isadora’s direction. “Did you marry your lovely duke for love?”
