Page 22 of The Jilted Duchess
She looked up at him and hesitated. Hector could see a question in her eyes, swirling like a cloud across the sky. He tilted his head. “Aye, wife? Do ye need anythin'?”
Alexandra looked as though she might say something, might ask him what was clearly on her mind. But a sudden bark coming from the orchard, and a gleeful shout of “No, Flick! Not the carrots!” from the gardener’s boy broke the spell they were under. The moment passed, and Alexandra merely smiled at him. “Nothing at all.”
Hector stepped aside and watched her walk into the house.Now what was all that about?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"The carriage is ready, Your Grace," Laroux said dryly, holding a jacket while the valet, a boy called Riles, straightened Hector's cravat for the seventh time.
He had become used to dressing in finery he would usually not have bothered with, but Laroux had seen the addition of Riles to the household as encouragement to increase his wardrobe.
Hector sighed, looking at himself in the mirror with a critical eye. Laroux helped him with his dark blue jacket and then allowed him the dignity of smoothing down his ensemble instead of trying to do it for him. Hector knew he wanted to. He could see his fingers twitching.
The man in the mirror was nothing like who he had once been. His hair was pulled back into a neat queue, and he was clean-shaven and even scented for some god unknown reason that Riles and Laroux together hadn't been able to explain. His shirt was finer than any linen anyone he'd ever known had everowned, with ruffs and a cravat tied neatly at his neck. The vest was embroidered with a finely crafted pattern, and his coat fit his huge shoulders in a way that he had only dreamed of when he had been a strapping lad of nineteen and still working his way to the top of his profession.
The man in the mirror looked like a gentleman, but he was not a gentleman underneath, and everyone at the ball knew this.
Sometimes it feels like gilding a bear, he thought to himself grimly.It might glitter and shine but everyone still knows it's a bear nay matter what. Including the bear himself.
"You look very fine, Your Grace," Laroux said approvingly.
"I look like a zany," Hector said crossly, wishing the jacket didn't fit so well so he would have an excuse to fidget around in it.
"Not at all, Your Grace," Riles said in his desperately sincere way. He seemed to mean everything he said with a kind of intensity that made Hector both want to laugh and ask him if he was quite well. "You look the picture of a gentleman."
"That is indeed what I am worried about," Hector said dryly. "I shall collect me wife, we will be at the carriage shortly."
"Of course, Your Grace," Laroux said crisply, and Hector pretended he did not see his butler nudge Riles in the side with an elbow. He suspected that Laroux found the boy's enthusiasm as disconcerting as he did.
Oh, what he wouldn't give to be able to tear it all off and relax in his shirtsleeves and breeches like he would have back in Scotland before all of this came for him. Hector rolled his shoulders in the perfectly fitted jacket one more time and stalked out to the stairs up to his wife's room to wait for her.
If there was one truth that subsumed all class and country, it was that ladies needed significantly longer to prepare for events than men did. They had so many pins, bits, pieces, sparkles, and baubles. It was dizzying to think about.
"Have you been waiting long, husband?"
Hector glanced up, having fallen into a reverie about the impact of some new legislation being introduced to control the import of building materials. The words on his lips died the second he saw his wife descending the stairs.
Alexandra was a beautiful woman, a lady of an inherent quality, a soft sensitivity, and intelligence that radiated from those startling, entrancing eyes of hers. He had never realized how a change of dress could so thoroughly enhance a lady's beauty, however. Her hair was pinned up cunningly on her head, brown curls looping in a complicated design that framed her serious face and made her large eyes look even larger.
She was wearing a lilac gown, simple in design, so simple in fact that it was almost wrong for her. Even he could tell that it was not typically what he saw a duchess wear to the kind of eventthat they were attending. However the simplicity somehow made her shine even brighter. The soft glow of her eyes, the beautiful smoothness of her arms, her cunning small hands and long lashes.
The simple gown was like a simple frame, allowing the masterpiece to shine by not distracting from the incredible beauty of her. His eyes followed her down the steps.
She's a beauty,he thought.She's incredible.
Alexandra laughed a little, color rising in her cheeks as she reached her last step. "I cannot have struck you dumb, Your Grace, surely."
"Nay, of course nae," Hector reached out and placed his hands on her waist, sweeping her down the last step. The way his hands felt on her slim waist was enough to make him want to keep her all to himself. Why should he have to share her with the world out there, the world that would look down on her for being married to a man who wasn't born a gentleman? Why couldn't he keep her with him where they would be both happy and safe?
"Husband," Alexandra was making the expression she always made when she disapproved of him, her nose scrunching up a little and her eyes narrowing in a way that was completely adorable. "You should not hold me so tightly, it is most improper."
"Och, sweetheart," he smiled down at her, loving the sparkle of her eyes and the dusting of soft freckles over her nose. "Is it nae me wife I'm holdin'? I daenae see a thing wrong with it."
"Husband," she said, hissing the word, her cheeks flaming and hands resting on his own but not pushing him away. "It's too intimate."
"And we are in our own home, are we nae? Who is goin' to judge us, our servants?"
She sniffed, pulling away from him and taking his arm instead. "We shall be late."
