Page 17 of His Haunted Duchess
His face loomed before her with his gentle half-smile. A warm glow settled over her, just as it had the night before. She reluctantly pushed the feeling away. Why had she felt so drawn to him?
She hadn’t the foggiest idea. To her knowledge, she had never seen him before. She wasn’t even sure she knew who he really was. Someone—it would seem—connected with the Duchess of Blackmore, her aunt’s acquaintance. That was the extent of her information. She rolled to her side. Not that connections mattered after this point. She—with only a tenuous foot in the door of good society—would certainly, after last night’s events, have it shut on her face. Her scars were bad enough; rumors of intrigue were worse.
At least, she speculated miserably, she wouldn’t have to go to any more balls.
Winifred patted her on the shoulder.
“Scandal is a terrible thing, dear.” Her voice was heavy with worry. “It’s definitely not an outcome that we would have hoped for you, but all will come to right.”
Caroline, fortunately, had her head bowed, so Winifred might not see her wince. Winifred sniffed hard and snapped up some hair pins.
“All I can say is that the Duke of Blackmore isn’t anything but a scoundrel if he won’t marry you.”
“Who?” Caroline raised her head. “Is that the gentleman I met last night?”
Winifred bobbed her head up and down once. Her fingers trembled as she pushed pins into Caroline’s hair. Caroline tried to sit as still as she could to aid her and to preserve her scalp from incision.
“The Duke of Blackmore, Lady Esther Blackmore’s son.”
Caroline’s curiosity overrode, at least for the moment, her unease.
“What’s he like?
“Oh, a real gentleman,so called,” Winifred said savagely, “or at least everyone thought so before last evening. He manages his father’s estate and is dedicated to his mother and brother.”
“It’s said,” she continued, as if she was stabbing pins into a cushion, “that he’s a fine sort of man. One of the most eligible bachelors of the Season.”
“He sounds at least pleasant, then, if nothing worse can be said about him,” Caroline said, mildly. Her heart sank. “What an unfortunate business.”
What an unfortunate choice! Surely no man as well-favored as the duke could be enticed to consider her, the scarred daughter of a former earl, as an equal companion.
“No misfortune on his part, surely,” Winifred said, weaving a delicate pink ribbon into Caroline’s hair as if she were brandishing a rapier. “He should be honored—any gentleman should be honored—to consider such a great lady as you.”
Oscar hopped off the bed, ears forward, drawn to the wiggling bit of extra ribbon Winifred had allowed to fall near the side of the footstool.
“I don’t want to marry him,” Caroline said.
Winifred stopped.
“What?”
“I—” Caroline closed her eyes. “Even if he was so inclined, I don’t want to marry the duke.”
Oscar fiddled with the bit of ribbon. A piece of it caught on his claw and he stuffed it, growling furiously, into his mouth.
“But—” Winifred resumed her braiding. “The scandal! An alliance with the Duke of Blackmore would be redeeming for both of you, however sadly it came about.”
“Perhaps,” Caroline admitted. The discomfort of being shunned—even more so than she had been—for the rest of her life loomed before her eyes. “Nonetheless, I have no interest in an alliance with the duke.”
Or an alliance at all,she admitted privately. Secretly—so secretly even that she had not before this moment admitted it to herself—she had leaned away from Aunt Olivia’s marriage plans for one reason. The same, haunting reason that stalked her dreams and dampened her waking hours: the curse.
Of course, rational people didn’t believe in curses. Rational people generally had their family members about them. Caroline had Aunt Olivia, the stables, Oscar, and Winifred, and she loved them dearly. But in the dark, late at night, or on dull, slow afternoons, memories of her parents, her younger sister, and her older siblings crept into her thoughts. Snippets of laughter, the echo of someone’s voice—she carried them with her wherever she went.
Winifred finished her hair and moved around the front of the footstool, kneeling until they were at eye level.
“He’s not such a terrible man,” she said. Her eyes scanned Caroline’s face. “They say he’s nothing like his father.”
“As to that, I am not familiar with the particulars of his situation.” Caroline clasped her hands in her lap. “And after our conversation last night, I am not overly concerned with his character.”
