Page 43 of Wedded to the Beastly Duke
It was, to her knowledge, the fifth time they’d had this conversation, but he showed nothing but patience.
“I believe so, Your Grace.”
“And he at no point suggested that I might join him with Rogers?”
“He did not, Your Grace.”
Several times, she considered ordering for a carriage to be brought around to visit her family without him. That would show him. For all his insistence that they would live as husband and wife, he was hardly spending any time with her at all. What would hetrulymind if they led separate lives? It wouldn’t be much different from the way they were at present.
The only difference was that she would be living with her family, and people would talk. That, he had made clear, he would not accept.
In the end, she wasn’t entirely sure why she chose to remain. Perhaps it was because she had not fully discovered the secrets that Adam concealed, and she would rest at nothing until she uncovered them one by one.
Or perhaps it was because, in the dark of the night, her body sang out for all the pleasure he had given her. And for all her promises to herself that she would never let him touch her again, she knew she would so long as he would make her climax once more.
If that made her weak, so be it.
But as long as she remained at the house, she would not be idle.
“Tell me about the late Duke,” she said to Mrs. Pentwhistle as she examined the new drapes she intended to hang in the hall. Let the Duke see aboutthat.
“Ah, that was a tragic case.” Mrs. Pentwhistle shook her head sadly.
“What happened? The Duke has never been especially… forthcoming.”
“It devastated him, of course. And after the fire… well you can imagine what that did to him.”
“I had heard that the late Duke slipped and hit his head,” Emmeline said delicately. “Is that truly what happened?”
“Well, I suppose that’s the thing. No one knows for sure. The body was never discovered.”
“No one found it?” Emmeline was hard put to conceal her surprise. “Then how do you know he’s dead?”
“It’s not confirmed, but he dismissed the servants on the day of his disappearance. It wasn’t wholly unlike him, you know, to let us take days off. I suppose he liked his peace and quiet. It made for an easy life—he paid us for the holiday we took, so we saw it as a good thing. And the day of his death…” Mrs. Pentwhistle sucked in a breath. “It’s a nasty business. No one around here likes to talk about it. See, he’d been acting funny for a little while.”
Emmeline stared. “He had?”
“Some say he fell, but I don’t know that’s the whole of it. My theory is he must have been out walking—he loved to walk—and he slipped and hit his head.”
“So not at the house?”
“Not unless he got trapped in a secret room.” Mrs. Pentwhistle chuckled, but Emmeline stared.
Perhaps that trulywaswhat had happened. After all, she had nearly perished in a secret corridor. The castlewasfull of secret places.
“We should find his body once and for all,” she declared.
“Now, Your Grace, consider. I can turn a blind eye to gardening, but I draw the line at hunting for corpses. You are a duchess now, and duchesses simply do not go hunting for dead dukes.”
“But in the east wing, there are?—”
“Please, Your Grace.” Mrs. Pentwhistle looked genuinely distressed. “His Grace asked that you not go exploring again without him being here, and I would hate for either of us to get into trouble.”
If Emmeline was the only one likely to get into trouble, she would have risked it—especially now as she had a taste for the Duke’s favored ‘punishment,’ but Mrs. Pentwhistle would not be so lucky.
“Very well,” she said, relenting. “But the moment he is back, I shall put forward my theory.”
“You must also consider, Your Grace, that the Duke has had ample opportunity to think about all these considerations himself. I’m certain if there was any chance, he would have looked himself.”
