Page 31 of A Virgin for the Duke of Scars
Theresa appreciated the warmth, the friendship she offered.
“I met my mother two days ago, when she came to the convent to retrieve me. And I met my father on the morning of the wedding.”
“You had no idea that you were brought back for the wedding,” the Dowager Duchess surmised. “You did not even know what life as a duchess would be like. Were not even prepared.”
“I did not even know about the Queen’s edict. I suppose it makes sense, since it only applies to noble families, and I was a nun. What use did we have for weddings when we were to be wed to the Lord?”
“It is hard to digest your story,” the Dowager Duchess murmured. “It is little wonder that you are exhausted from your travels. Your whole world has been upended in one fell swoop.”
“There are many things I do not know,” Theresa admitted. “I have no idea about proper etiquette. But I learn fast, and I’m willing to?—”
“You have nothing to worry about. We will help you through it all,” the Dowager Duchess assured her.
“I am a hard worker. I can help with chores and?—”
Juliette snorted a laugh. “The very last thing you have to concern yourself with is chores. Blackwell Manor is staffed with people who can help with any concerns you have. It is not your role as Duchess to clear the tables.”
“Then what will I do with my days if not chores?”
Theresa was truly befuddled. For more than twenty years, she had scrubbed floors and prepared elaborate meals for the nuns from sunup to sundown. They believed that hard work brought them closer to God. Idle hands were never good.
“You will learn to live a life of leisure. We will have to educate you on the ways of theton, but it will not happen all at once,” Juliette said. “First, you can relax and get familiar with your new surroundings.”
“I’m free to go wherever I want whenever I want?”
Theresa remembered riding Pippin into the sunset that last morning at the nunnery, and how she would have loved to watch the sunset from the field. She wanted to stay out without consequences. Even just knowing she could, it gave her peace of mind.
However, she dared not get her hopes up.
“I don’t have to be back by sunset?”
“You should not be out so late in this part of town alone,” Juliette advised. “But there are no rules about what you can and cannot do, now that you are married to a duke. Thetonwill forgive you anything. You are more than welcome to spend some days with me, to get a sense of what’s possible in your new life. Of course,as a married woman, you can do even things that I can’t do yet, but it will still be fun.”
“I would love nothing more,” Theresa said with a genuine smile.
A friend. Just what she had been needing in her new life. Someone she could confide in. And not just a friend, but asister.
A real one, as opposed to the sisters at the convent.
The three women ate their meal, conversation flowing easily between them. The Dowager Duchess and Juliette gossiped about the people Theresa had yet to meet, and she filed all the sordid tales away for the day she was introduced to the rest of Society.
Would anyone know that she was not raised here, and that she had no idea what was required of her?
She hoped that Juliette and the Dowager Duchess would keep their word and indeed take her under their wing. They had to be very busy, and now they had the additional duty of instructing her.
She would be grateful for every lesson, practicing until she could perform flawlessly.
Still, she desperately craved a friend whoknewher. She wanted to be around someone who understood what it was like to be afish out of water, someone who would know how shocking this transformation was.
As close as she and her sister-in-law might grow, Juliette would never understand. The only person she could think to summon was Margaret.
“Would it be all right if… if I sent word for my friend to visit?”
She dared not hope that she could accept visitors here at her new home, but that was certainly something people did, was it not?
The Dowager Duchess beckoned to the maid standing at the corner. “Please help our new Duchess send a message to her friend. You will take the message and have it delivered at once.”
The maid fetched a piece of parchment from the study and set it on the table. The Dowager Duchess nudged it toward Theresa, who scribbled down a note to Margaret asking for her immediate presence, telling her that it was an urgent matter. Then, she folded it and wrote the name of the convent on the back.
