Page 11 of The Jilted Duchess
CHAPTER SIX
When Hector had been a wee lad, his ma had taken him and a few of his cousins to a cottage on a hill for a holiday over a dismal few weeks in late September. With the weather pouring down around the small cottage, his ma had been hard pressed to keep four children entertained indoors.
He could remember how she had paused in making bread one day, clapping her floured hands to her face to make her skin pale and eerie and then setting them down and telling them strange tales of the ghosts and fairies who lived in the highlands and crept about houses like their own looking for the unwary and the unwise to carry off.
The years had blurred the tales into a jumble in his mind, but one in particular had always stood out to him. It was a tale of a lass who married a man she did not love and came to him on the wedding night in her bridal gown, all in white with her hair about her shoulders. Her own lover had died of a broken heart, and she was no longer for this world, his mother had said, her hands making gestures that painted wild and vivid pictures intheir minds. She brought with her a knife and when her husband reached to take her to himself, she stabbed his heart. Once she was covered with his blood, she went out to the guests and told them of her sorrows before driving the knife through her own heart in turn.
"It is said she still haunts these hills,"she had said with a chilling tone in her voice. "A slender lass in white with blood on her hands looking for her love and looking to murder any man who stands between her and her happiness."
He hadn't thought of the tale for years, but now with Alexandra, his own wee bride, standing before him in a nightgown of white and lace, her hair loose around her shoulders, he felt a little chill go down his back. She was almost ethereal in the flickering light, her face so pale that she might be a wraith herself, and her eyes that striking, almost fiery green that had caught his attention from the first.
"Aye," he continued, putting a little distance between them to give her space and not because, for a moment in childish superstition, he was worried about ghostly brides and unloved grooms. "We will have time enough to get an heir, daenae ye think, wife?"
In all truthfulness, he had never wanted a child. When he was younger, his fear about siring a bastard just like himself and cursing some poor lass or lad to a life of suspicion and confusion had kept him from casual liaisons. Now he'd had a chance to see how complicated and vile the lives of the wealthy and powerful could be, he had no intention of making a small being handle allthe scheming and backstabbing. No, his line could die with his blood and be done with it. If that meant that Benedict eventually inherited, well.
He would simply have to ensure that he had taught him better manners by that time.
There's nay reason to let Miriam know any of that,he thought to himself as he studied Alexandra's small, confused face.She can sit in her rage and fear and stew in it for a while. Let her think that the whole business is soon to be out of her reach, see what she does then.
"Then -" Alexandra frowned a little. "Will you be coming to bed at all?"
Perhaps it would be kinder to tell the lass that he didn't intend to bed her. They'd barely met, after all. And despite the electric magnetism he felt when he looked at her, matched her gaze like equals, and saw the intelligence behind those startling eyes, he had long intended to be a bachelor. His own mother had no joy in love, and those in his family he'd known since had hurt and mourned for those they cared for. He had seen more heartbreak than all else for love.
So why not tell her so? Perhaps it was too soon to trust her with this part of him yet. It was fresh, their alliance. While she could not have any great love for his stepmother and he did think her family were good, decent people, his thoughts were his own. Hector had never trusted anyone with the key to his mind, andhe was not about to start with a slip of a girl looking like a ghost on his wedding night.
With a wrench, he looked away from her eyes. "It has been a long hard day, Alexandra. Ye'll be wanting your own space for a while. Daenae worry about me, I'll come to ye when I want to have our weddin' night proper. Until then ye can rest easy in yer private room."
"Oh," she sounded taken aback and a little relieved. "Very well. That is very thoughtful of you, Your Grace. Perhaps next time you decide to be thoughtful, you would care to let me know first."
He grimaced a little, wincing at the title. It still sounded like a coat that he'd been left by someone he barely knew, that didn't fit him, and made him look like an interloper who would never belong. "Aye, I'll do that. In the meantime try to get used to yer duties here. I trust that ye are comfortable discussin' them with the servants on the morrow?"
"I am," she said primly. "I have handled estate affairs in the past, I shall be perfectly at ease."
"Good," Hector turned back to her, ready to bow goodnight or whatever the cold fish in England did when they parted from their spouses for a time. He was struck then anew with her, the look of her. She had pressed her hair back from her face and was smiling a little, and she looked like something from a fairytale. Not a princess exactly, but some strange being of light and beauty, contrasting with a dark world around her.
How was it that here, in her own home, wearing nothing but a nightshift she still managed to look so stiff and proper? Was she made of wood? Did she take lessons on propriety from when she was a baby?
"Now the matter of the bed is settled," he said drolly. "Do we need to settle anythin' else while we are at it? Perhaps the seatin' at the dinner table should be talked through? Or would ye like to discuss where we shall be hangin' all yer dresses, me dear? I should hate to waste a moment of yer time while ye're in such a barrister mood."
She huffed immediately, puffing up like a pigeon who had been offended. "I am in no such thing, Your Grace."
"Indeed, and are ye nae?" he grinned, liking the way the flush of anger lent color to her pale cheeks. "Ye would do well in the courts I think, ye'd have them all too confounded to argue with ye, that ye would. Ye have a tongue in yer mouth that could defeat the best judges in the county."
"I am perfectly polite," Alexandra hissed, folding her arms over her chest and narrowing her eyes at him in a way that caused them to flash dangerously. "I am neither argumentative nor improper. In fact, I am simply pointing out to you some small things that you may have overlooked in the managing of your household. I believe that is fully within my duties as your wife!"
Hector laughed, delighted. "And so the case passes before the judge and he bangs his gavel," he slapped his desk with aresounding sound. "And ye have won! Beautifully argued, me dear."
"I am not your dear," she said. Was it his imagination or was she pouting at him? "And I amnotarguing. I am simply presenting my facts - ohbother."
Hector laughed again. She speared him with a glare and he raised his hands quickly. "Daenae worry, I'll nae point it out. Ye've noticed it yerself and that's enough for me."
"You could be less pleased with yourself," she said sharply, looking away from him with a color rising in her cheeks. "I can tell you think you are terribly clever."
"I am indeed. I've always had to be cleverer than most around me, so why should I nae know it?"
"Because it is hardly good manners to let on that you do know it," she said, wrinkling her nose and peeking back at him from under her long lashes. "You should let people know it themselves without making it clear you know it, too."
"That sounds like a lot of bother when I daenae care if they know or nae," he said with a grin.
