Page 30 of Bride of the Fae Duke

Chapter 11

Nelliereallyhadnoreason to be nervous.

It was not like she was going to meet her husband for the very first time, after all. He’d seen her in plenty of more intimate ways than on the other side of a dinner table; they’d had conversations before, albeit interspersed with other, more physical activities. So there ought to be nothing new about this, eating a meal together. It ought to be a stepbackrather than forward.

She changed dresses four times all the same. Clothes suddenly seemed to matter now that she was supposed to keep them on for longer than a few minutes.

‘Aren’t you worried about the curse?’ Anne inquired, sketching a still life of an apple, a book, and one of the giant silver candelabras she’d found in the attic. ‘He might suddenly fall in love with you if you spend a whole night talking.’

Nellie squinted at her own silhouette in the mirror, examining the fresh green of her dress. ‘That seems rather unlikely.’

‘Why?’ Her sister huffed. ‘Youarevery nice.’

‘Thank you,’ Nellie absently said, turning to inspect herself from the side. Hard to refute that argument without shocking her little sister to the core.Lord Locke feels nothing but lust for me– you couldn’t really tell a sixteen-year-old that, could you?

Instead, she added, ‘He’s still mourning six other women. And either way, I have no reason to be nervous. If he starts showing any particular signs of attachment, we can always ask Walford to get us out of here.’

As the steward had promised. As he’d reminded her twice in the past few weeks, hastily whispered reassurances in between her meddling with bouquets and wallpapers.

Anne grumpily sketched on, but did not argue.

The green dress would do, Nellie decided – which was for the best, because the bell could toll eight at any moment. She locked the dressing room with its heavy iron key, checked herself in the mirror one more time in case a giant blood stain had suddenly materialised on her skirt, and made for the door when that didn’t appear to be the case.

‘Don’t leave any charcoal on my bed when you go to sleep,’ she warned, slipping out.

Her sister’s scoff was, presumably, a declaration of both love and worry.

The bell of eight came as she descended the staircase, and there he stood waiting for her – entirely the frigid nobleman, his blue hair tamed into a lifeless queue, his face so blank it could have been hewn from marble. This was the man who’d proposed to her, who’d married her … but sheknewthat emotionless beauty now, had learned all the ways the mask could shatter with pleasure or amusement, and somehow that was enough to turn him into a different person entirely in her mind.

At once, she was no longer nervous.

Rather … excited?

‘Your Grace,’ she greeted him, and that alone was enough to quirk his mouth as he held out his arm to her.

‘I seem to recall a conversation on the matter of that title,’ he murmured as he began walking.

‘So do I.’ It was strange to wrap a hand around his arm with a glove and a coat and a shirt in between; she’d gotten used to the warmth of him, the feel of muscles shifting right beneath his skin. ‘I wasn’t sure if it applied to other contexts, too.’

When both of us are dressed, for example.

She didn’t say it out loud. There were servants within earshot, and either way, her husband didn’t need to know she had trouble looking at him without thinking of his nakedness.

‘I don’t see why it wouldn’t,’ he said, his voice so flat she dared to be surehewasn’t thinking about nakedness at all. ‘Unless, of course, you’d prefer for me to address you by your title as well during dinner, in which case—’

A snort escaped her, settling the argument.

Again his lips trembled suspiciously.

The dining hall was unrecognisable after her work of the past few days, even though it was far from finished: the stiff and soulless seats had been replaced by a set of upholstered dining chairs that had been banished to the attic after Jeanne’s death, and Alis’s paintings of Issian and Karwaldian landscapes had returned to the bare walls. The candelabras on the table carried the coat of arms of Rosamund’s family. Nellie couldn’t help glancing at Locke – no, Othrys – as they sank into their seats, but he didn’t pay the heirlooms any particular attention.

Instead …

Instead, his gaze appeared focused on the blue-and-white porcelain plates.

‘It’s been a while since I’ve seen these.’ There was no emotion in the statement. ‘Where did you find them? The attic, too?’

‘We— Yes.’ She wasn’t sure what to make of that expression on his face, or rather, the lack of it. ‘Mrs. Hartnell wasn’t sure where they’d come from, but …’

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