Eventually, she finished her supper and reassured the servants that she could find her way to her bedchamber. She accepted a candle for the late hour.
She climbed up the stairs to her quarters. But she paused when she looked right instead of left. It was the start of the east wing. She spotted light peeking from beneath the door of a room she didn’t recall seeing before.
Perhaps it’s his room.
The thought made her heart skip a beat before she pushed it away. What he was doing? Was it his bedchamber where he ate? His study where he met with the steward?
She didn’t have enough experience with lords to be confident in her guesses. There hadn’t been many in London during her short Season for her to learn much. Her tutors said little. Her best example had been her father, who had passed just short of her twentieth birthday.
Oh, Father. How I miss you. You shared so much with me and yet so little. I wish you had been there for me more than for your own interests. How much I might have learned from you.With you. You spoke more to your friends behind closed doors than you ever did to me.
Something damp trickled down her cheek. She flinched at the sudden sensation, scrubbing her skin dry.
There was a well of emotion struggling to rise to the surface.
Unwilling to let anyone see, she turned left to her bedchamber, where she could be alone.
Her wedding night passed uninterrupted, save for the tears streaming down her cheeks as she tried to sleep through till morning.
CHAPTER 9
Staring at the fire, Tristan allowed his body to relax slowly.
His muscles slackened one by one. He rolled his neck and blinked heavy and long. His body was tired. Too long he had kept it restrained, stiff, and rigid, as was required from a gentleman.
Countless rules promised peace in Society. It was a notion he clung to for comfort. And yet the boundaries took a toll on him from time to time.
So he gave his neck a rub and sighed in the quiet, where no one could look upon him to judge.
In truth, it was just another evening. Another quiet night in his study. There was little reason that anything must change, though he was wed a second time around. Already he had confirmed this with his wife. They had not shared a meal together nor said a word since their union was made official.
We are the better for it, of course. She will have reasonable expectations for our future, and I will not be tethered to someone through tears or threats or pleas.
“How glorious it is to be wed to a duke,” sounded Cassandra’s lilting voice in the back of his mind.
He remembered every version of her, whether he wished to or not. Drenched in her family’s jewels for their nuptials, she wore too much lace and too much everything. Her cloying perfume had made him sneeze for most of the day. All she had done was laugh.
“All of London shall be envious, indeed. And what a lucky gentleman you are to have me on your arm. Many attempted to woo me, you know. My father might only be a baron, but I am a clever woman who can make anything happen. Isn’t there anything you desire?” she had asked him.
When he answered shyly that he desired peace and comfort, that he wanted to get to know her better, she had laughed.
Even now, the sound echoed in his study. Not even this room had been safe from her, though he had tried to bar her from it. Her keys let her in everywhere. Even when he changed the locks, she eventually found her way through. The woman was magic. A curse.
And gone—something I have to keep reminding myself of.
“Gone,” Tristan murmured aloud.
A few years had passed now since his wife had grown so tragically ill. The start of a house party he had not attended. By the time he received the news and rode back here, she had already passed away.
“Still gone.”
He studied the flames, wondering why they brought him so little warmth. Was the evening so cold?
Glancing toward his window, he frowned but did nothing else to warm himself. Instead, he studied the flickering light against the walls as though they might paint answers in the picture of their shadows.
A glass of brandy sat on the desk before him. It was untouched, along with the papers beside him.
While his wife would continue minding her tenants as she had before, he had offered to help her with the Holcome family. No records could be traced back to their original tenancy agreement. Handshakes were all the farmers remembered. He would sort out their issues now for immediacy, and then Verity could continue on as she saw fit.
