Page 86 of Married to a Frozen Duke
"I don't think you're a beast."
"No?"
"No. Beasts are interesting. You're just..."
"Cold? Formal? Permanently refrigerated?"
"I was going to say careful."
"Careful?"
"You're so careful about everything. Every word measured, every gesture calculated, every emotion locked away where no one can see it."
"That's called being a duke."
"That's called being afraid."
The words hung between them like an accusation. Alexander's face went very still.
"I should go," he said quietly.
"Alexander…"
Chapter Eighteen
But he was already gone, the door closing with soft finality behind him.
Ophelia sat alone in her sitting room, tea growing cold, and wondered how they would possibly convince anyone tomorrow that they were anything other than two strangers legally bound together.
The rest of the afternoon passed slowly. She attempted to read but couldn't concentrate. She walked in the gardens but found their perfection oppressive. She returned to the music room and played scales until her fingers ached, finding comfort in the mindless repetition.
Dinner was even more stilted than usual. Alexander barely looked at her, addressing his few comments to the middle distance. She responded in kind, and they sat at their opposite ends of the table like bookends with nothing between them but space and silence.
After dinner, she retired early, claiming a headache that wasn't entirely fabricated. The stress of the past two weeks, the argument with Alexander, the impending visit—it all pressed against her skull like a vice.
Mary helped her prepare for bed in careful silence, the new formality between them a barrier neither knew how to cross.
"Your Grace," Mary said as she was leaving, "I hope tomorrow goes well. With your brothers' visit, I mean."
"Thank you, Mary."
"They must miss you terribly."
"I suppose they do, in their way."
"It will be good for you to see family."
Would it? Ophelia wasn't sure. Charles and Edward meant well, but they were forces of chaos in a house that valued orderabove all else. Their very presence would be like oil and water, impossible to mix without creating a mess.
She lay in her enormous bed, staring at the canopy above, and thought about the conversation with Alexander. She'd called him afraid, and perhaps that had been cruel. But it was also true. He was afraid...of change, of loss of control, of Coleridgees and their supposed corrupting influence.
And she was afraid too...of never belonging, of spending her life being tolerated rather than accepted, of becoming the cold duchess Alexander seemed to want her to be.
Through the connecting door, she could hear him moving about his room. The walls were thick, but at night, when everything was quiet, small sounds carried.
Did he ever stop working? Did he ever just exist without purpose or duty driving him?
A soft knock at the connecting door made her sit up.
