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She decided it was time to change location if she wished to avoid being suffocated by the cold silence that hovered over the dining room.

She stood up and headed to the kitchens. The cook and the maids immediately stopped everything, silence falling over the once busy kitchen. It was obvious they were surprised to see her.

"Your Grace." the cook said, lowering her broad frame in an attempt to curtesy. "You didn't have to come all the way, you could have pulled the bell and sent one of the maids to get you what you wanted."

"Do not fret," she said with a disarming smile. "I wanted to come, to get acquainted with the kitchen and everyone here."

Instead of being relieved, their eyes seemed to even widen more.

Victoria did not blame them, because it wasn't often that a duchess walked into a kitchen that was brimming with smoke and soot and claimed that she wanted to get acquainted with the workers there.

She on the other hand was different.

For as long as she could remember, she had always loved the kitchen and the process of preparing a meal.

She had always spent a lot of time with the cook planning meals. The scent of several spices being cooked usually brought a calm to her senses whenever her soul was in turmoil.

It was safe to say it was her comfort place and she hoped this new kitchen though different from the one in the house she grew up in, would provide that comfort as well.

With the strained relationships she had with the occupants of this castle she guessed she might need it.

"Don't mind me, carry on." she said when she noticed that they all still stood staring at he with identical stupefied expressions.

They returned to their tasks in a burst of activity. She, on the hand moved closer to the cook and made a request for a simple breakfast to be delivered to her bedroom.

When the cook nodded in understanding., she left the kitchen even though she would have loved to stay back but she recognized that her presence will just distract them from their various tasks.

In a few minutes a simple breakfast of bread, honey, grapes and tea arrived in her bedroom. After she had her breakfast, she proceeded to wander aimlessly around the estate

She wandered into the gallery where she watched arrays of portraits of people she guessed were Anthony's ancestors.

Dukes of time past who stared down from their frames with so much confidence that showed they were aware of their place in the world and sure that no one could contest their claim.

Considering the power of their title, especially among the older generation she was convinced to agree with them.

She moved until she got a picture quite different from the previous ones. There was a talk dark man with a smiling fair beauty. The love between the two was evident going by the loving way he held her hands and the easy expression on the man's face.

Going by the date of the portrait she could guess that the couple in the portrait were none other than Anthony's parents. The previous duke of Devlin and his wife the current Dowager Duchess.

It was difficult to reconcile the smiling, charming lady in the portrait with the stern Dowager Duchess she had encountered earlier.

She wondered what had happened to turn her into the woman she now knew.

She guessed that the fact that she had lost her husband, a man that appeared to be the love of her life and the fact that her son had gone off to war and returned scarred and broken in more ways than the eyes can see, might have contributed to that change.

She resolved to cut the woman some slack no matter how difficult it might be.

When she got to the last portrait, she stood for a while awestruck by the beauty of the man staring back at her.

He was powerful no doubt, with a sly smile on his lips like he had an ongoing joke he alone knew about.

It was an expression of an adventurous young man who believed that the world and all it offered was available for him to acquire.

He was dressed in full military regalia. The man in the portrait was nothing short of arresting and mesmerizing.

This was Anthony before the ugliness of war and violence have touched his body and soul leaving scars that might never completely heal.

"Victoria," a masculine voice called.