Page 10 of The Heartless Duke's Bride
“That all sounds like a dream, actually,” Lydia admitted. “Oh, Nancy, I wish you had been here when I’d learned of this arrangement! I wish you had said all these things to me that day. I would have been much happier if you had.”
“I wish I could have been here!” Nancy said. “I wish I could have been around to help you through all this.”
“But you’re helping me now,” Lydia assured her friend. “And it means the world to me to know that you’ll be by my side as I go through it all. I don’t know what I would do without you, Nancy, truly I don’t.”
“You don’t need to worry about that. Whatever is in store, the two of us will get through it together,” Nancy promised. “And I’m confident that the future holds nothing but great things for us—you as the wife of the Duke of Westfrey and me married to his brother. I couldn’t have planned it any better, really.”
“You’re right,” Lydia said. “I was worried over nothing. Everything really is shaping up very well. I’m sure we’re going to be all right.”
And much to her relief, she found that her fears were, indeed, alleviated. Of course, the prospect of marriage had made her anxious. That was only to be expected. But if she had to marry, her parents could have made a much less fortuitous choice for her.
From this moment on, Lydia vowed to stop worrying and embrace what was to come.
CHAPTERFIVE
“What have you done, Edward?”
The voice rang out through the massive space of the foyer and startled Edward.
Edward loathed being startled, as he thought it made him look weak. Certainly, it made him feel weak. So, he was already in a bit of a temper when he turned around and saw his stepmother standing there like a sentinel, staring at him and tapping her foot.
“Margaret, for goodness’ sake…what’s all this about?” he demanded.
“Where have you been?”
“I’ve been meeting with someone.” It had been a business meeting, and it had left him feeling exhausted, so he was in no mood for his stepmother’s ill humor at the moment. “Excuse me, please.”
“Not until I’ve had my say,” she said.
Edward, who hadn’t even taken off his riding cloak yet, stared at his stepmother. “Margaret, what are you doing here?” he demanded. “Standing around in the foyer with nothing else to do. Are you just waiting for me to come home?”
“If I don’t wait for you to come home, I don’t see you,” Margaret said. “When was the last time you and I had a conversation?”
“We haven’t had a conversation recently because I haven’t wanted one,” Edward replied. “Don’t forget, this is my house.”
“You may be the Duke, but I was your father’s wife. It’s my home too, and you ought not to act as if I have no right to be here. You always behave that way, and I’ve never understood what makes you think you have the right. What do you think your father would say if he could see the way you treat me?”
“I won’t have you speculating on what my father would say to me if he was here,” Edward said sharply. “That’s not your place. You may have married him, but I’m his firstborn son and heir. I know what he would say to me because he spent my whole life saying it to me. I know what he would want me to do. He would say that this house is your home and that you ought to be welcome here. But he would not expect me to listen to everything you have to say or to restrict myself from my own library because you’ve chosen to haunt my foyer like some sort of ghost. I’ll ask you again to remove yourself from my path so I can go.”
“I needed to speak with you,” Margaret insisted unrepentantly. “And I know exactly what you do, Edward. If you aren’t stopped coming in the door, you’ll hide away in your library for the rest of the evening, and I’ll never see you.”
That was true, but Edward felt it was justified. He didn’t want to spend the evening in conversation with his stepmother, who always had critical and judgmental things to say to him. He didn’t want to hear her opinions. And he especially didn’t want to hear them right now, when he had just fixed his engagement to Miss Lydia.
But it seemed that there would be no avoiding this conversation, no matter how much he might have liked to. “Let’s go into the sitting room,” he suggested. “Then you can say whatever you’d like. I’ll hear you out.”
“You’ll do more than that, Edward,” Margaret said, but there was a tremor in her voice, as if she found it deeply frightening to speak the way she was.
Edward closed his eyes briefly. He knew enough to know that his stepmother was afraid of him. It was just the same as what Colin had told him—he intimidated people. People didn’t feel as if they could be themselves around him. It was the reason he had been losing business and the reason he needed to take a wife in the first place. So, it wasn’t a surprise to encounter this reaction from Margaret. It was just unpleasant.
He could handle things being unpleasant.
He did wonder, though, what she was so frightened of. What was it she thought he was going to do? She couldn’t possibly believe that he would hurt her physically—he had never done anything of the sort, and she must know him well enough to know that.
Perhaps she was just afraid that he would send her away from the house. Technically, it was in his power to do something like that, and he couldn’t pretend he had never been tempted. But at the same time, he knew he never would. It would be too cruel. Where else did she have to go? Besides, Colin would be angry with him, and he didn’t want that.
Though Colin should have her live with him if he’s so determined that she belongs among our family!
He knew how wrong-headed that was, of course. Margaret was the Dowager Duchess, and she had every right to live in this house. It would be scandalous of him to have her removed from it. He would never do that. He just wished she would oblige his desire to stay away from her. It was a big house, and it was perfectly possible for the two of them to live here and never see one another.
