Page 20 of Duke of Moonstone
Frances walked. She kept her steps even, her chin level, and her eyes forward, and she told herself that she was ready for whatever the next few minutes required.
The Duke was standing at the altar with his hands clasped before him. He was facing forward until the moment she drew close enough, and then he turned and looked at her. His eyes lingered, and a blush crept up Frances’ cheeks. She thought to look away, but that would be entirely embarrassing.
He is looking at the dress,she told herself.He wants to know which one I chose.
She reached him. The rector began to speak, and Frances listened to the words and answered when she was meant to answer.
Several minutes later, the rector pronounced them man and wife.
The Duke turned to her and took her hand, both of his closing around hers. The touch was proper and everything the moment required, but the warmth seeped through her glove before she could brace herself for it, and blood rushed to her face before she could do anything about that either.
Frances looked up at him, and their eyes held. He was evaluating her, and this unsettled her more than anything else that had happened today.
His thumb moved, very slightly, against the back of her hand. She was not certain he knew he had done it, for the corner of his mouth curved almost imperceptibly.
When they turned to the cheering guests, she was not sure whether her legs could carry her.
She was no longer Lady Frances Pembroke. Lady Frances had been uncertain, yes, and sometimes afraid, but she had been herself. She knew the shape of her life, its familiar boundaries, and the person she was.
She was the Duchess of Whitestone now, standing in a church with her hand held in the hands of a man she did not know.
And the thought was so large and so irrevocably real that for a moment she could not feel anything at all.
Except the warmth of his hands and the certainty that nothing, not a single thing in her life, was ever going to look the same again.
CHAPTER 9
“We shall stay in town for a few days before departing for the country.”
Alexander said it as he handed her down from the carriage, matter-of-factly, in the same tone he might use to announce the weather. Frances stepped down onto the pavement in front of Whitestone House and looked up at the facade and thought, not for the first time, that it was an extremely large house for one person to have lived in alone.
“Must we live in the country?” she asked.
He looked at her. The look lasted a moment, and then—she was almost certain she did not imagine it—one corner of his mouth curved upward in something that was not quite a smile and was gone almost before she could be sure it had existed at all.
“It is expected for newlyweds to enjoy time in the country.”
The blush arrived before she could do anything about it. She turned toward the house, hoping her expression showed the composure of a woman who had not just been made to fully feel the meaning of the word ‘newlyweds’ by a man who said it with complete calmness, which was unfair of him.
The front hall was exactly as she remembered it from her visits to Eleanor—high-ceilinged, immaculate, everything arranged with the orderliness that seemed to characterize every inch of the Duke of Whitestone’s existence.
She had always felt a bit oppressive when she visited as a guest. Standing in it now as its owner was a completely different experience and not a more comfortable one. The house was grand in a way that announced itself—the kind of grandeur that constantly reminded you of the owner’s importance, and by extension, made you feel quite small.
I live here now,she thought, and the thought was so strange that she nearly said it aloud.
The staff had been assembled in the hall, two neat lines of them, and Frances arranged her face into something she hoped was appropriately duchess-like and followed Alexander as he moved along them.
“This is Mrs. Wells, my housekeeper.” A woman of middle age with a kind face and good posture curtsied with the ease of someone who had done so many times and meant it.
“Mr. Graves, my butler.” The butler was tall and serious yet somehow welcoming. Then the rest of them—maids and footmen and kitchen staff and others whose names and roles Frances absorbed as quickly as she could, which was not as quickly as she would have liked because her mind was still doing something slightly unsteady behind her composed expression.
When they had reached the end of the line, Alexander turned to her. “Mrs. Wells will attend to whatever you require. She knows the house thoroughly and will answer any questions you have.” He glanced at the housekeeper briefly then back at Frances. “I have matters to attend to this afternoon. I trust you will find everything in order.”
Frances looked at him.
He looked back at her with the expression of a man who had just said something entirely reasonable and was waiting for confirmation that it had been received as such.
“Of course,” she said because what she actually wanted to say was considerably less suitable for a front hall full of attentive servants.
