Page 25 of His Haunted Duchess
Ajax, sensing a lull in the conversation, crept about on his belly to Aunt Olivia’s knee. Aunt Olivia nodded approvingly, patting him on the head.
“Wonderful things, house pets—even if they are a little pesky sometimes, we do adore them.”
The duke nodded, still watching Caroline. A flicker of his hope, enticingly warm, passed across his face.
“Perhaps,” she said, her blush rising even higher, “it would also be to Your Grace’s pleasure if I brought Winifred?”
“The monkey?” the duke asked. His eyes had started to dance again.
Winifred popped her head indignantly around the corner of the door jamb.
“The lady’s maid!”
He smiled. Caroline felt a warm glow—soft and gentle like a woolen blanket—spread over her, and she wondered at it.
“Oscar and Winifred are both welcome additions to my household,” he said, “provided, of course—” He turned back to Caroline. “—that their mistress accompanies them.”
“I—” Caroline clenched her fist and rolled her arm over, concealing her scar. “Yes.” She met the duke’s eyes again. “Yes, Your Grace, I accept your proposal.”
Slippered feet pattered across the great hall as Winifred fled to celebrate loudly in the antechamber. Caroline sighed. She felt worn, as if she had been on a very long walk through dry country. The duke nodded, apparently satisfied.
“Thank you, Lady Caroline. I am pleased to call you my future wife.”
He stood, took her hand, and kissed it. Caroline flinched. The duke frowned but bowed and left, shown by Martha out the front door.
Caroline sank back into the couch. Emotions chased themselves through her like dogs after a cat. The Duchess of Blackmore! It was more than she’d ever hoped for. Her curse—she shivered. At least there she could endeavor to protect her future husband. The beginnings of a headache started behind her eyeballs. Aunt Olivia kneeling, hugged her.
“Oh, my dear—for a moment, I felt I had forgotten how to breathe.”
Caroline laughed.
“So did we both, Aunt. A proposal from His Grace!” she said faintly. She rubbed her eyes, overwhelmed. “I still don’t believe it.”
She shivered again and chafed her arms to warm them. Aunt Olivia hugged her close. She pulled back, brushing a curl out of Caroline’s pale face.
“I really do feel that you will be happy, darling. Oh, how grateful I am! What an opportunity for our girl! Come, Ajax,” she said, turning to the spaniel, “it’s time to track down Winifred and crack open some of the mince pie.”
The whole house fluttered in happy uproar that evening. The servants smiled as they bent over her, Aunt Olivia’s curls bristled like a boar’s hair brush, and Winifred, weepy-eyed, said farewell to all of the possessions—hers and everyone else’s—that she would miss.
“And that lovely china vase…” she heaved over dinner. “How I will miss that precious pattern!”
Aunt Olivia’s laugh boomed over the dinner table.
“Do you mean the one we got in Bath last season, the one you insisted you hated all of this time?”
Winifred stuck her nose in the air.
“If I ever said such a thing, I must have been out of humor.”
Caroline laughed weakly. She felt too shaken, too perturbed to do much else. Married to the Duke of Blackmore, whom she hardly knew and had scarcely ever seen!
That night, after Winifred had helped her out of her dress and headed joyfully—and tearfully, bidding adieu to a painting she had once hoped to burn—to her own room, Caroline finally had time to reflect on the day.
Thoughtfully, she looked at her face in the mirror, tracing the path of her scar with her eyes. The duke’s kiss on her hand floated through her mind. She flushed, deeply grateful to be alone in her room.
Her curse elbowed its way back to the front of her mind. If she stayed away from the Duke of Blackmore, the curse would have less effect on him. In any case, he couldn’t love her.
Oddly, this comforted Caroline more than she was willing to admit, even to herself. A marriage that so conveniently benefitted them both couldn’t be unhappy—not when they both kept so much to themselves. It would be far less dangerous, too, if Frederic—she blushed—if the Duke of Blackmore kept as far away from her as possible.
