Page 23 of Matters of a Duke's Heart
Inside, she found a dark and very dreary manor. She had expected it to look magical; a place filled with so much splendor she would lose her words to describe it.
Yet most rooms were dark and covered in sheets, and curtains were drawn in many rooms ahead of night falling. So many dark colors surrounded her, and all she could perhaps was no wonder Alexander acts out so much.
If she was forced into a life of no color she, too, would not be the happiest person in the world.
In comparison to Merriweather House, Felicity couldn’t believe how gray it all was. Even her own room was dark, smelling slightly of too much stale air, unused but clean. Her lady’s maid, Lottie, greeted her with enough brightness to look at-odds with the room. Felicity was immediately comforted by her.
“Good evening, Your Grace.” Lottie gave a deep curtsey. “I have run you a bath already in case you wished to refresh after your journey out here. I have also prepared a gown for dinner for you. Heavens, you look positively lovely! It will be good to have another person in the manor. Things can get ever so quiet and—goodness, please excuse me. Mrs. Avery often says I speak too much.”
“I find it refreshing,” Felicity told her quickly. “And thank you for all of those things. I—I actually am rather nervous.”
“I have some relaxing Epsom salts I can put in the water for you.” With a bright smile, Lottie disappeared, and Felicity was left thinking how she reminded her a little of Daphne. Smiling sadly, she turned to look at her room. Like everything in the manor, it was dark and gloomy.
It didn’t bring her any comfort whatsoever. She already missed her bright room at Merriweather House. The flowers she always displayed fresh on her windowsill, plucked daily by a gardener, the pale rug, the carpet, and the bedsheets that always made her feel brighter.
She missed the flowers and the vines on her wallpaper. She missed color.
She sighed, sitting down on the edge of her new bed.
The sound of a hard thud came from the wall behind her, and she turned to look, startled. Lottie returned, glancing at the wall.
“I do not know if Mrs. Avery has taken you on a tour yet, but just in case, His Grace’s room is right next to yours.” She noddedin the direction the noise had come from. “It is, of course, customary for the duke and duchess’s rooms to be beside one another. Now, would you like to prepare for your bath?”
Felicity took a moment to stare at the wall in wonder. She ought to have expected it, but her nerves only grew.
Will he visit me in the night?
She couldn’t bear to think about that.
And besides, he had assured her he didn’t want more children. He had his heir; there was no physical requirement for Felicity, and she was not in a hurry to bear any children of her own.
Her body heated in embarrassment at the thought of him visiting her for any other means than simply creating a child—as if there would be enjoyment in such an act itself without an ulterior motive—and she tampered the thoughts down, tucked them away from sight, and forced the Duke of Langdon from her mind for a while.
She had the rest of her life to be nervous.
For now, she simply needed to relax in a tub and wash the day’s worries from her body.
Chapter 8
Dinner the night before had been tensest affair Spencer had ever suffered the displeasure of sitting through.
The dining hall that had brought him so much peace when he had first married Sophia—only to then deliver suffocating grief upon her death—had brought him more surprises.
Awkwardness.
He had suddenly felt incapable of conversing with his wife despite how they had spoken in the Merriweather’s drawing room a few days prior. Seeing her in his home, in Sophia’s former place at the table, had rendered him mostly silent, able to only answer a few words to her incessant questions.
Idly, he had thought how well she might get on with Alexander. The two enjoyed prying.
But now, the following morning, he headed downstairs to prepare in his study for the business he would be conducting that day.
There was a tenant he had to meet just outside of Langdon Village, no more than a half-hour away on horseback. He missedriding his horse, Arion, and the feeling of that would surely chase away the cobwebs of suffocation London wrapped around him.
The suffocation of being a husband again had wrapped around him.
Yet when he jogged down the main staircase, he stopped in his tracks, hearing a voice that was slowly becoming familiar. He followed the sound of Felicity’s voice into the drawing room. On his way, he passed staff rushing to and fro with a frenzy he had not seen in many years.
Curious and agitated, for he hated not knowing what was happening under his own roof, Spencer approached the doorway of the room. Felicity’s back was to him, her arms outstretched.
