Page 53 of The Replacement Duchess

“No,” she replied. “It is only that the day has been so long, and now the journey shall be long. It has been a lot.”

“And you have been wonderful with it. It is going to be easier soon enough, once you have had time to adapt.”

“I do hope so because I truly do think that I can do this. I want to be the duchess that your villagers deserve.”

“You are everything that they could ever want and more. All will be well, I assure you, and soon enough, your sister will visit us and you shall feel even more at home.”

“Home…”

It was a strange word. Diana did not know what it meant to be home, even though she had lived in the same place all of her life. She hoped that her life with the Duke would be different.

There was that word again. Hope. Would her life be any different now that she was a duchess? She could not be sure, but she wanted it to be, and when she looked at her husband, who was looking back at her as if she had never done anything wrong to anyone in her life, she thought that it might be possible.

A husband and a home. Had she been asked a few months before, she would have scoffed and sighed and sworn that she wanted anything but those two things. It was not what she had dreamed of, not for herself at least, and in the blink of an eye, she had both, and she did not know what to do with that.

But she wanted it. She wanted the life that Colin offered her, and she wanted the hope that she felt in her heart whenever she saw him. It wasn’t love, but it was more than what she ever could have expected. That was a good start, at least.

“Would it be alright,” he asked suddenly, “if I called you Duchess, just for a short while?”

“I can be amenable to that,” she replied, not wanting to ask him why he had had such a sudden change of heart.

“Wonderful. In which case, I shall inform you that we shall be going for another few hours, and so you might wish to get some rest, my Duchess.”

“Very well, my Duke.” She giggled. “Should I find myself able to.”

“You can do anything,” he said softly. “You shall find a way to sleep in a carriage.”

She hoped so, at least.

CHAPTER 15

Diana soon fell asleep, in spite of her apparent issues with doing so, and Colin watched her, terrified.

He had never planned to be a husband. It was not that he was overtly against it, so to speak, but he had never considered it a pathway that he wanted to follow. Not when he was the way he was.

Their entire situation was filled with complexities, but above all, the most peculiar part of it was his innate desire to protect her. It had been there from the moment he had seen her in the drawing room the morning after they had met, whether he wished to admit it or not, and it had only grown from there. She needed him, as much as he wished she didn’t, and he did not know what to do with that. He wanted to embrace that and to tell her to trust him and let him do what nobody else had ever done for her, but he knew that it would end terribly.

It always had done for him.

As the carriage finally arrived, he realized just how exhausted he was. He hadn’t slept at all, far too preoccupied with how lovely his wife looked while she slept and constantly preparing himself for his terrible luck to rear its ugly head and needing to protect her from whatever was coming. Nothing had happened, however, and now he had to retire to his room.

“We are here,” he said gently, and she stirred.

“Did I fall asleep?”

“Rather quickly, yes, which is exactly what I was hoping for. Now, it is quite dark, and so you shall not see the household very well for the moment, but we can do all of that in the morning once we are both rested.”

“Alright.” She nodded, still clearly in a sort of slumber.

He helped her out of the carriage, and there was no staff to greet the two of them as they entered the household. This had been Diana’s request; she had not wanted them to go to such lengths for the two of them when they could just as easily do all of the formalities the following day. He had questioned her at the time, but now that he was in the state that he was in, he was simply grateful for her intuition. He could go to bed far sooner.

Perhaps, when his duchess was well rested, she might be in awe of the estate that she would soon be expected to run, but at that moment, all she seemed to do was follow along behind him with a faint smile on her lips, lips that he had kissed just hours before and ones that he truly wished to kiss once more.

“Are we to have separate rooms, or are we to have an actual honeymoon?” Diana asked him.

He blinked, staring at her. A lady was not supposed to know about such matters.

“Diana, I do not know what you mean.”

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