Page 61 of Caught By the Ruthless Duke
“You know it?”
“I knowofit. I haven’t read it.”
“You should. It’s about a woman whose inheritance is contingent upon whoever she marries adopting her surname, which creates a tremendous amount of difficulty.”
“I imagine it does.”
“And everyone around her is either incompetent or actively unhelpful, and she’s expected to navigate the whole thing gracefully without losing her composure.”
He paused for a beat. “I see.”
“I thought you might find it relatable,” she said, entirely straight-faced, “given that it’s essentially a study in estates and the difficulties of inheritance.”
He looked at her. She looked back with perfect innocence.
“I’ll add it to the catalogue,” he said, and there was something warm threading through the dryness of it.
The castle came into view beyond the parterre, the stone looking pale gold in the morning light, the long south-facing windows reflecting the sky.
Cressida had spent weeks learning to love this castle despite herself. Now, she felt it with an ease that didn’t require effort at all. Behind her, she could hear the very faint sound of the kitchen garden door—likely one of the under-gardeners moving between the beds.
Then, closer, through the open window of the servants’ hall, came voices. Ordinary voices, not raised, carrying with the particular clarity of warm air through an open casement.
“—only saying what everyone’s already read. The scandal sheets had it right, didn’t they? His Grace forcing her into it, and the whole business with Lord Emerton?—”
“Keep your voice down!”
“I’m only saying. You can see it, can’t you? The way he keeps to himself and her trying to make the best of it. It’s not exactly the picture of a love match, is it?”
Cressida stopped walking, and Theodore had gone rigid at her side.
For one moment, they were both still, standing on the gravel path with everything the morning had built suspended between them, and then the voices dropped hurriedly as the speakers registered the silence outside.
She turned to look at him.
Whatever ease had settled into his expression over the course of the morning had vanished. The careful blankness was back: mouth set, eyes flat, the particular quality of stillness that wasn’t peace, but its absence.
He looked exactly as he had in the first weeks of their marriage, when he had passed her in corridors with the expression of a man who had decided long ago that proximity itself was the danger.
“Theodore—”
“We should go in.” His voice was entirely level and devoid of everything that had been in it an hour ago.
He turned toward the castle, leaving her to stare after him, the scent of climbers heavy in the warm air.
Chapter Nineteen
“Your Grace.” Mrs. Agnes appeared in the doorway of Cressida’s sitting room with her customary composure, hands folded, expression giving away precisely nothing. “Lady Seymore’s carriage has arrived. She is asking for you.”
“Please show her in.” Cressida set down the letter she had not been reading. “And tell Cook we shall want dinner for three this evening.”
A pause, brief and deliberate. “Shall I inform His Grace that he has a guest?”
“Yes.” Cressida smoothed her skirt. “Although I doubt we can consider Lady Seymore a guest,” she added with a small smile. “Tell him she has come to stay for dinner, and that I would be grateful if he would join us.”
For a moment, Mrs. Agnes’s expression faltered as a smile, brief and unguarded, broke through decades of professional dignity before she could marshal it back into order.
“Indeed, Your Grace.” She recovered with admirable speed. “I shall inform His Grace immediately.”
