If I let this grim place swallow me, I would disappear completely. Mrs. Gable paused. A flicker of something, amusement perhaps, or irritation, crossed her weathered face. Indeed, your grace, the Duke is expecting you in the library. She didn't offer to take my wet cloak.
She simply turned and walked into the cavernous hall. I followed, the heels of my boots clicking sharply against the bare flag stones. The house was freezing. Dust sheets clung to the furniture like ghosts in the shadows. The air tasted of mildew, old ash, and neglect.
The library doors were closed. Mrs. Gable didn't knock. She gestured toward the brass handles, turned on her heel, and left me standing in the dark corridor. I took a breath. My hands were shaking.
I forced them to still, pressing my palms flat against my damp skirt. I pushed the doors open. The room was vast, lined with towering bookshelves that disappeared into the gloom. A massive hearth dominated the far wall, a meager fire sputtering within it. Standing by the window, his back to me, was the Duke of Harwood.
He was a tall man, his shoulders broad beneath a poorly tailored dark coat. He didn't turn around when the door clicked shut behind me. Henry Pendleton is a fool. A deep grally voice echoed in the room. It was a voice that hadn't been used for pleasantries in a long time.
But I didn't think he was cruel enough to actually send you. Henry is a pragmatist, I said, stepping closer to the fire, craving the warmth. He prefers to delegate his cruelty to others. Nathaniel slowly turned around. The rumors had called him the rotting duke.
The ton loved a morbid tale. They whispered of a flesheating disease, of a man whose face was falling off the bone. The reality was less theatrical and far more brutal. The left side of his face was a tapestry of severe, puckered, burned scars. The fire had taken his left ear and pulled the skin tight across his jawline, leaving a shiny, angry landscape that stretched down into his collar.
His left eye was milky, clouded over by the trauma, but his right eye, dark, sharp, and terribly lucid, fixed on me with the intensity of a hawk. He waited. I knew what he was waiting for. He was waiting for the gasp, the recoil, the trembling hands covering the face. I looked at him.
I looked at the ruined skin, the rigid posture, the way his hands gripped the edge of a heavy oak desk as if bracing for a blow. "Well," he prompted, his tone dripping with bitter anticipation. "Well, what your grace?" I stepped closer to the fire, peeling off my damp gloves finger by finger. No tears, no fainting, no begging to be sent back to London.
He scoffed, a harsh sound. "Did Pendleton drug you before putting you in the carriage?" "Henry wagered away my dowry on an ill-advised shipping venture," I said calmly, tossing my gloves onto a nearby chair. When your solicitor demanded the debt, Henry traded the marriage contract to save his own neck. I am not here because I am brave.
I am here because I have nowhere else to go. As for my lack of hysterics over your face, I assure you, I have seen uglier things in London ballrooms. Usually, they were wearing perfectly tailored coats and smiling at me. Nathaniel stared at me. The silence stretched thick and heavy.