He was clearly expecting an apology from her too, but she would not give it.
After a stilted moment or two, he shook his head. “Caroline, our marriage is one of convenience, but it should not make us both miserable. You are a duchess now—you are at liberty to do whatever you please, within financial and respectable reason.”
“What does that mean?” Caroline replied.
He shrugged. “Invite your friends to a garden party. Arrange a ball. Spend half the year at the townhouse in London if that is your wish—spend theentireyear in London if you like. Purchase a dog. Read everything in the library and buy more books when you are done. Request a tutor to teach you whatever it is that interests you. Whatever you wish to do, as long as it does not put us into poverty or disrepute, you may do it.”
“At what cost to me?” Caroline asked, a waver in her voice.
“All I ask is that you do not behave as if I am your enemy. There is no need for us to quarrel all the time,” he replied with a shrug. “Let us be civil. Let us live separately under the ruse oftogetherness. In truth, we do not have to see one another at all, aside from the odd social occasion to keep up appearances.”
Caroline blinked in astonishment. “And I would still be free to do as I pleased?”
“As long as you do not purchase an elephant from India or take twenty paramours or decide you want to add spires to my manor, then yes.” He paused, his eyes gleaming in the bronzed glow of the now-roaring fire. “Two months.”
“Excuse me?”
“That is all the time we have to tolerate one another for,” he explained. “When that period is over, I will have acquired a residence for you that is yours and yours alone. Then, we can live truly separate lives.”
Caroline might not have had the loving husband she had always dreamed of or the grand wedding she had imagined since she was a girl, but his offer was, by far, the greatest wedding gift she could ever have expected. Indeed, she could not wait.
“You have a deal,” she said.
He turned back to stare at the fire, his broad shoulders and muscular back rippling beneath the fabric of his tailcoat. Gentle waves of his golden hair curled at the nape of his neck, his demeanor brooding even without the heat of his piercing blue eyes.
“Good,” he replied, that single word as binding as a handshake. “In that case, I shall bid you goodnight and leave you to roast in all those blankets.”
He left quickly, closing the door as if he had never been there at all.
“I think she missed your company, Your Grace,” Mrs. Whitlock said from across the lantern-lit kitchens. Milk warmed on the stove, plumes of steam rising from the saucepan.
Max laughed tightly. “I think she missed me as much as she would miss a stone in her shoe, or an itch between the shoulders that one just cannot reach.”
His mind wandered disobediently back to his wife’s bedchamber, and the glimpse of her in her nightgown. It had been no more than a second or two, but she had looked quite ethereal in the white garment—a vision of purity, intensified by her angelic beauty. A truly rare and undeniable beauty.
It was ironic, in truth, that most of society’s gentlemen would think him the luckiest man in England.He, of all people, had married the year’s most sought-after debutante. A feat that countless suitors had attempted and failed with gifts and charm and proposals of courtship and poetic wooing.
He had just been in the right place at the right time. Or the opposite, in his opinion.
“Have patience with her.” The housekeeper tossed a little bag of herbs into the bubbling milk, releasing rich and exotic scents into the air. Heady and spicy with the promise of knocking Max into a much-needed and fathoms-deep sleep.
Max cast the housekeeper a pointed look.
The old woman chuckled. “Very well, havemorepatience with her. She is young, she is away from her home and her family, she is likely still in turmoil over what has happened, and you leaving her alone all day gave her an opportunity to dwell. Dwelling is dangerous territory, Your Grace. One can stew over things too much, coming to some bizarre conclusions.”
Max waved a dismissive hand. “I believe I have unruffled her feathers for now.”
“It is not my place to hear about such things, Your Grace.” Mrs. Whitlock smirked and turned back to the bubbling milk, removing it from the stove to let the spices steep a while longer.
“I did not mean… I… That is…” Max took a breath, a note of reluctant humor in his voice as he proceeded, “That was uncouth of you, Mrs. Whitlock. I might expect gossip from the maids, but not from you.”
The housekeeper smiled slyly. “One must havesomeentertainment in their advancing years. Apologies, Your Grace.” She paused. “I assume you didn’t find any trace of your brother?”
All of Max’s recovering cheer abandoned him. “No. Not a sign. I went to Greenfield House, but the staff have not seen him. They were quite dismayed, in truth. They had a pleasant wedding breakfast prepared and had decorated—a sorry state of affairs indeed.” He expelled a frustrated breath. “He has likely gone to London, tucking himself away. But he will emerge in due course; he will have to.”
“Do you think she would have been any happier today if shehadmarried him?” The housekeeper’s question made Max sit up straighter, his brow furrowing as he tried to imagine it.
His brother had seemed content that morning, even whistling as he ate his breakfast. He had not seemed like a man who was dreading what was to come, so much so that he would flee and leave a young lady’s reputation in greater tatters.
