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A frown appears between his dark brows. “The role of marchioness is in and of itself a job.”
“Then you will have to tell me what that job entails. Because I have done all the wafting about that I can bear, and will soon start attempting scientific experiments in the garden sheds that might or might not involve an explosion or two.” I don’t know how to make things blow up, but surely that’s what the internet is for. I smile sweetly at him. “Whatwillthe neighbors say?”
“We have no neighbors in any real sense.” Of course his tone isrepressive.“There are a great many kilometers between this house and the next.”
I have taken to wearing the absurdlounging pajamasthat are set out for me, because I take immersion in a role seriously, and lean onesilken hipagainst his doorjamb. “That sounds like a challenge.”
“I assure you, it is not.”
But if I hope that he will be the one to take me by the hand and teach me how to bear his title, I’m disappointed. He passes me off to his stone-facedmayordomo,who looks me up and down as if she doubts very much that I have what it takes.
“Let me guess,” I say as she walks me into yet another part of the house I haven’t seen before—the kitchens and, beyond them, a hall of what seems to be offices. Hers being the first and largest. “You too believe that I am a stain upon the family name.”
Salma pauses as she goes to sit behind her desk and I realize she’s waiting for me to sit first. When I do, she follows, and delicately clears her throat.
“You are the Marchioness of Patrias, Madam,” she says in her matter-of-fact way. Her gaze meets mine, steady and knowing at once. “Save the Marquess himself, whose opinion about this family could possibly matter more than yours?”
And that introduces me to life as a grand lady of a grand house.
And I like solving mysteries. It’s all about collecting and sorting through details. Deciding how to weight them, how to interpret them, and how to use them to build a picture.
Running a house like this is much the same.
Especially because the house spends part of each month being open to the public, which requires a whole different set of details to follow and keep on top of.
By the end of the second week, I can admit to myself that it would be possible to live like this after all. Because an estate like this is made up not simply of the people who own the house, but all of the great many people who work here. The land. The rentals. The tours. There are relationships with locals to maintain, regulations to follow, and an endless variety of ways to handle these things depending on the goals of different months and seasons. Is it a harvest period? Is it a heavy tourist period? Are there repairs that cannot be delayed? Is there outreach that can be undertaken with the locals to try to lower any animosity about the resources a huge house like this consumes?
No two days are ever the same and I discover I like being good at something else.
As if there’s more to me than the thing I decided I’d be good at when I was eighteen and scared.
I tell my husband this later that same night when I meet him out on one of the balconies before dinner, a nightly custom I have also come to love.
“Don’t tell your mother,” I say as he hands me a drink, something fizzy and nonalcoholic, “but I think I will be anexcellentmarchioness.”
“I would prefer that we not discuss my mother,” he replies, and his face looks almost tortured as he pulls me closer, setting his mouth to mine.
I make a note to wear this particular red dress—another magical addition to mygrand ladywardrobe—more often.
And when we finally get to our dinner, we eat it cold, wrapped up in blankets and each other before the fireplace in his room.
But the next day, after I wake naked in my husband’s bed, still giddy from the things he did to me the night before, and then another stern and silent breakfast, I realize that I’m into my third week of handlinggrand estateaffairs. And my fifth month of pregnancy.
I stop halfway through getting dressed—because lounging pajamas are for ladies of leisure, not competent marchionesses, as Salma did not dare say directly but I feel sheimplied—and let those facts press into me.
Particularly the latter.
My baby will be here soon. Very soon.
And there is one matter that needs to be addressed directly before that happens.
So after I dress as impeccably as possible—something that is not hard when my wardrobe expands on its own, every piece a work of art—I do not go to the little sitting room attached to these quarters that Salma indicated was the marchioness’s office. I seek out his mother instead.
Francette lives in one of the newer parts of the house. Salma, who finally took me on a real tour of the entire house and all the ground, told me that the wing that once stood here burned down in the nineteen-twenties and they only rebuilt it twenty years or so ago, to modern standards.
It is kept out of the tours,themayordomotold me.
Because it does not give that historical punch that the punters want?I asked.No coats of armor and random masterpieces?