Page 81 of Caught By the Ruthless Duke
Lord Bardwell rejoined his wife. Lady Bardwell took his arm without looking at him, an automatic gesture worn smooth by decades.
Theodore watched Cressida watch them. He understood, without needing to examine it too carefully, that he had been wrong about something. Not wrong in a way that required admission, just wrong in the quiet private way that sometimes preceded a correction.
He had spent weeks learning to see her clearly. He had not thought to ask where she had come from.
Now, he was starting to understand.
Three days later, the farewell was conducted with the brisk efficiency that attached itself to the end of visits once carriages had been called and luggage loaded.
The morning was cold and flat, the oaks along the east drive stripped to their bones, and the whole scene had the quality of something ending cleanly.
Lady Bardwell embraced Cressida with the faint surprise of a woman who had been reminded, over several days’ proximity,that she was genuinely fond of her daughter and had perhaps not been expressing this with adequate frequency.
“You look well,” she said, drawing back to study Cressida’s face. “Very well.”
Peter kissed her cheek, clapped on his hat, and descended the steps half-turned toward them. “She has always been the cleverest of us, you know. We just didn’t say it enough.”
He got into the carriage before either of them could answer.
Mary threw her arms around Cressida last, with the full and unselfconscious force of a child who had not yet learned to calibrate her embraces for dignity.
She pulled back and looked at Theodore with frank, unhurried assessment. “Take care of her.”
“I intend to,” he said.
She nodded once, apparently satisfied with whatever she had found, and ran down the steps.
The door closed, and soon the sound of hooves began to grow distant. The entrance hall settled into the quiet of a castle returned to itself.
Cressida stood at the top of the steps until the carriage had disappeared through the oaks and the sound of it had dissolved into the cold air. Theodore stood beside her. Neither spoke for a moment.
“It is true,” he said, eventually. “What Peter said about you.”
The footman informed Cressida that His Grace had gone out with the carefully composed expression of a man delivering news he had been anticipating would be noted.
“To Lady Seymore’s, Your Grace. He did not leave a time of return.”
She stood in the doorway of the morning room and nodded. “Thank you.”
Then she went to the library.
It was consideration, she told herself while settling into the chair nearest the window. Theodore had not invited her along, and the reasons needed no explanation. Whatever was to pass between him and his aunt required space she had no business occupying.
She opened her book and read three sentences before she found she was reading them again.
Lady Seymore received him in her sitting room.
She was already seated when he was shown in—not the posture of a woman taken off guard, but that of one who had decided in advance on the terms of the engagement. Her hands were folded in her lap. There was tea on the table between them, two cups, which told him everything about her expectations.
“Theodore,” she greeted.
“Auntie.” He sat but did not reach for his tea.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Lady Seymore studied him with the unhurried directness that had always been her main quality, the genuine kind that saw past arrangement to whatever lay beneath his bluster and armor. He had never been able to manage her the way he managed other people.
“You look,” she noted, “like a man who has slept.”
