The Duke of Thornfield was as quiet and as cold as ever. It struck her that it was rather like sitting in a carriage with a statue made of alabaster, for he moved so little. Sat on the opposite bench to her, he stared through her, not really looking at her at all, his eyes not blinking and barely breathing.
“Ahem.” She cleared her throat in the hope of catching his attention. Though he didn’t show any sign of having heard her. Venturing to speak, she tried to again to get his attention as the carriage rocked them back and forth on the journey. “Your Grace, you mentioned there were to be rules?”
“That is the first rule.” He was rather quiet as he looked up, no longer looking in her vague direction at all, but out of the window. “If we are to be accepted as a married couple, with no sense of scandal or a rushed marriage between us, then you must address me by my Christian name. You must call me Theodore.”
Margaret shifted in her seat in surprise. It was a strangely intimate thing, to call him by his first name.
“Theodore,” she softened her voice, trying it out for size. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, clearing his own throat and adjusting his tailcoat. He even knocked the boutonniere out of his lapel, though he made no effort to pick it up again.
Margaret watched it fall, wondering how symbolic those fallen petals were.
“Are there other rules?” she muttered tightly.
“Yes. We are married in the name of the law. We are both agreed on that.”
“Am I to be an ornament in your house? Just a name?” Margaret whispered, feeling a tightness constrict her chest.
“No.” He looked at her sharply. “It is your home. Do to it what you wish. Make it what you wish it to be. Yet I have two rooms in that house that is mine, and mine alone.”
“Another rule?”
“Yes.” His voice hardened as he leaned forward. “My chamber is mine and not to be disturbed. My study too is also mine.”
Margaret frowned. She knew little of what happened between a husband and a wife on wedding night, beyond what Louisa had come across in the biology books she liked to read and the occasional hints that Evelina had dropped.
All she knew was that it happened in a bedchamber, and it was something physical. It involved clothes being taken off, an intimacy taking place, and something which could lead to children.
Evelina hinted it was something… pleasurable.
Of that, Margaret knew no more, but how was she supposed to discover what this thing was exactly unless she was allowed in his bedchamber?
“Am I never to be allowed in your bedchamber?”
“No.” His voice was harsh. “There is an interconnecting door, but you shall not use it to access my room.”
“Yes, sir,” she muttered miserably. “Tell me, is another rule to follow your orders?”
He frowned, but he didn’t answer her. He sat straight, moving onto other things.
“As the duchess, it will be your task to run the household. I have things set in a certain way, but you can change them. Within reason.” At his request, she quirked her eyebrows. She had a feeling asking what within reason meant could open an argument, or even harsher and colder looks. “If anyone ever asks you about me, you are not to tell them anything.”
“I beg your pardon?” She leaned forward in her seat. “What if my sisters were to ask what my new husband is like? Am I to sit there tightlipped and not tell them of my life?”
“Someone other than your sisters.” He frowned deeply. “My life is mine, it is personal, it is not for casual gossip and sharing around others. Do you understand?”
His voice had now become flinty, as if he could cut her with his tone. Feeling rather sick, she swallowed around the bile that had risen in her throat.
“I understand. I understand the world will not know you.”
“Good.” As the carriage turned, he moved his focus beyond the window again. Clearly, she was not enough to hold his attention.
It was a reminder that though this wedding was her escape from the life she didn’t want, but this was very much a nightmare the Duke of Thornfield did not welcome.
“Will I know you? Will I be allowed to know you?” she said after some minutes of silence.
“There is nothing to know.” He kept his gaze far from her.
Staring at his stoic and quiet figure, Margaret sat there with her jaw dropped. There had been a time when she wondered if the newspapers had exaggerated their stories and suspicions about him, but now, she thought that they were perhaps far more accurate than even they had realized.
