Page 8 of The Jilted Duchess
Hector coughed suddenly and sharply, making Alexandra jump. “Are you all right, Your Grace?” She asked him quietly.
Hector sniffed and nodded, trying not to flinch at her calling him “Your Grace”. He had been no one’s better until a few months ago, and the title still made his skin itch when he heard it. “I’m fine. Look, we’ve arrived.” He nodded out of the window at his approaching estate, hoping it would distract her.
It worked, as Alexandra turned to catch her first glimpse of her new home. She worried her lip with her front teeth, and Hector looked away sharply. His stomach flipped, but he put it down to nerves and exhaustion. There was no reason a strange lass he had only met today should make him feel so wired. No, much more likely it was the stresses of dealing with his blasted half-brother's mistakes.
The carriage stopped outside the imposing building, and the door was pulled open. Hector climbed down, nodding cordially to his footman. But when Alexandra made to climb out after him, Hector surprised both her and himself by gripping her by the waist and lifting her bodily from the carriage to the ground beside him.
Alexandra gasped audibly, her hands flapping in the air before gripping his shoulders for balance. They stared at each other fora moment before she let them drop to her sides. When Hector failed to remove his own hands from their firm grip on her waist, Alexandra coughed delicately.
“Excuse me, Your Grace, but I fear you are acting most improperly.”
Her formalness amused him, and he grinned wolfishly at her. “Och, am I indeed? I dinnae ken that. What is improper about our current situation, Duchess?”
She swallowed hard. “I don’t believe it is proper for you to be holding me in such a way out here, in view of your servants. I implore you to remember your manners, Your Grace.”
“My manners, eh? My sincerest apologies then.” He let her go, and if she noticed that he squeezed her waist just slightly before he did so, she made no remark on it but merely straightened her dress and avoided his gaze. “I suppose ye must have a lot of questions for me?”
Alexandra surprised him by shaking her head. “No. I don’t believe so.”
For a moment, Hector floundered. “Oh. Well, okay then. I suppose I’ll get someone to show ye up to your rooms then.”
He turned away to climb the steps up to the entrance but was called back by her voice. “Introduce me to your servants. Please?” She added after a pause.
He inclined his head before addressing the butler who had materialized at the now open door. “Mr. Laroux, assemble the household if you will.”
Hector hesitated, wondering if he should wait for his new bride to enter the house ahead of him. But she stood facing away from him now, so he quietly walked away, leaving her standing on the bottom step, looking across the manicured gardens.
“Mr. Laroux is my- our butler. Mrs. Hopsted here is the housekeeper. Young Margot will be yer maid, Yer Grace. As for the grounds, Mr. Hopsted is the groundskeeper. He and Mrs. Hopsted live with their bairns in the cottage we passed on the way in. Nice lasses, the bairns. They’ll be in the woods somewhere, no doubt. Mr. Drake is our gardener, touched with a green thumb he is. He has an apprentice laddie, Jim, who’ll be tending the orchard trees right around now. Ye met Laurence already, the footman.”
Alexandra’s head was reeling as she tried to remember the onslaught of names. She said a polite “how do you do” to each of her new staff, and watched with interest as Hector said kindly things about each of them, attempted to joke with them, and seemed to treat them with a level of respect she wouldn’t have expected from a duke.
Especially a duke who looks as wild as him.
The staff seemed unaffected by his strange familiarity, suggesting he regularly trod a tightrope between his station and theirs. Alexandra wondered where on earth he had come from that he thought his behavior was appropriate for a man of his station. She was somewhat irritated that she couldn’t quite work him out, though not nearly as irritated as she was by him constantly sneaking glances at her and then turning sharply away when he realized he’d been caught. She kept fidgeting nervously under his gaze, and more than once had spotted him smirk as though she were somehow amusing to him.
Once he had dismissed the servants, the two sat in a silence that had quickly turned awkward in the absence of other people. Finally, she could take it no longer, the words bursting from her before she could stop them.
“I must insist you be more proper, Your Grace.”
Hector blinked. “Eh?”
Alexandra sniffed and folded her hands in her lap. “You are not what people expect when they are expecting a Duke. You were so- soroughafter the ceremony, so common. And so familiar with everyone, even if societal rules suggest you should not be. I do not wish to insult you, Your Grace, but I do believe this is somehow all new for you and it is my opinion that you must learn the proper manners which befit your station.”
He stared at her for a long moment, and Alexandra suddenly wondered if he was going to cast her out of his home there and then. She was shocked when his lips curled up into a grin and hebarked out a laugh. “Och my lass, you dinnae insult me. Intrigue me is more likely.”
Alexandra blushed furiously, raising her hand in a futile attempt to hide her darkening cheeks. “You shouldn’t call me that,” she replied primly.
His smile widened even further, and Hector leaned down onto his knees. Her eyes flickered down his mammoth frame and back up to his eyes that were now dancing in glee. He waited for her to meet his gaze before replying softly. “I mustnae call ye what? Lass? Why is that then? Do you not like it, lass?”
He whispered his last word so that she almost missed it. Alexandra huffed, hoping he would see her as angry instead of confused at the way his pet name clawed at her chest. She stood abruptly, smoothing down her dress. “I must retire to my rooms. I am tired from the travel.” She said primly, turning and walking steadily to the door. Her hand was turning the knob when she heard him chuckle.
“Sleep well. Lass.”
Later in her room, Alexandra would congratulate herself on making it fully out of the study and, more importantly, out of his sight before she quickened her pace into what could only be described as a flight.
CHAPTER FIVE
The estate was larger than she had imagined at first, and Alexandra had been to her sisters' estates in the past. The grandeur and beauty had been astounding at each of them, it was just now it belonged - at least a little - to her.
