Page 12 of A Virgin for the Duke of Scars (Ton’s Beasts #1)
And why shouldn’t they know why she was different? Why she had not had the experiences nobles did? Why was her back marred with scars from discipline?
It might be a disturbing story for them, but as her new family, they deserved to know the truth.
“I don’t know what story my parents have told the ton , but I was in a convent.” She looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. “I have been there since I was born. My father thought I would not survive and took me to spare my mother’s feelings, leaving only my twin with her.”
“You remember nothing of your time with your family?” Juliette asked, worry creasing her brow.
“I was taken the night I was born, before anyone even knew I existed. When my mother woke up, they told her that she had one baby—my sister, Hope. My father took me straight to the convent, where they named me and raised me.”
“And you have not known anything about your family until now?” Juliette leaned over her plate and took Theresa’s hand in her own.
Theresa appreciated the warmth, the friendship she offered.
“I met my mother two days ago, when she came to the convent to retrieve me. And I met my father on the morning of the wedding.”
“You had no idea that you were brought back for the wedding,” the Dowager Duchess surmised. “You did not even know what life as a duchess would be like. Were not even prepared.”
“I did not even know about the Queen’s edict. I suppose it makes sense, since it only applies to noble families, and I was a nun. What use did we have for weddings when we were to be wed to the Lord?”
“It is hard to digest your story,” the Dowager Duchess murmured. “It is little wonder that you are exhausted from your travels. Your whole world has been upended in one fell swoop.”
“There are many things I do not know,” Theresa admitted. “I have no idea about proper etiquette. But I learn fast, and I’m willing to?—”
“You have nothing to worry about. We will help you through it all,” the Dowager Duchess assured her.
“I am a hard worker. I can help with chores and?—”
Juliette snorted a laugh. “The very last thing you have to concern yourself with is chores. Blackwell Manor is staffed with people who can help with any concerns you have. It is not your role as Duchess to clear the tables.”
“Then what will I do with my days if not chores?”
Theresa was truly befuddled. For more than twenty years, she had scrubbed floors and prepared elaborate meals for the nuns from sunup to sundown. They believed that hard work brought them closer to God. Idle hands were never good.
“You will learn to live a life of leisure. We will have to educate you on the ways of the ton , but it will not happen all at once,” Juliette said. “First, you can relax and get familiar with your new surroundings.”
“I’m free to go wherever I want whenever I want?”
Theresa remembered riding Pippin into the sunset that last morning at the nunnery, and how she would have loved to watch the sunset from the field. She wanted to stay out without consequences. Even just knowing she could, it gave her peace of mind.
However, she dared not get her hopes up.
“I don’t have to be back by sunset?”
“You should not be out so late in this part of town alone,” Juliette advised.
“But there are no rules about what you can and cannot do, now that you are married to a duke. The ton will forgive you anything. You are more than welcome to spend some days with me, to get a sense of what’s possible in your new life.
Of course, as a married woman, you can do even things that I can’t do yet, but it will still be fun. ”
“I would love nothing more,” Theresa said with a genuine smile.
A friend . Just what she had been needing in her new life. Someone she could confide in. And not just a friend, but a sister .
A real one, as opposed to the sisters at the convent.
The three women ate their meal, conversation flowing easily between them. The Dowager Duchess and Juliette gossiped about the people Theresa had yet to meet, and she filed all the sordid tales away for the day she was introduced to the rest of Society.
Would anyone know that she was not raised here, and that she had no idea what was required of her?
She hoped that Juliette and the Dowager Duchess would keep their word and indeed take her under their wing. They had to be very busy, and now they had the additional duty of instructing her.
She would be grateful for every lesson, practicing until she could perform flawlessly.
Still, she desperately craved a friend who knew her. She wanted to be around someone who understood what it was like to be a fish out of water, someone who would know how shocking this transformation was.
As close as she and her sister-in-law might grow, Juliette would never understand. The only person she could think to summon was Margaret.
“Would it be all right if… if I sent word for my friend to visit?”
She dared not hope that she could accept visitors here at her new home, but that was certainly something people did, was it not?
The Dowager Duchess beckoned to the maid standing at the corner. “Please help our new Duchess send a message to her friend. You will take the message and have it delivered at once.”
The maid fetched a piece of parchment from the study and set it on the table.
The Dowager Duchess nudged it toward Theresa, who scribbled down a note to Margaret asking for her immediate presence, telling her that it was an urgent matter.
Then, she folded it and wrote the name of the convent on the back.
Maybe things would get better, after all.
Aaron hadn’t slept much last night, thinking about all the ways he could still mess up his tenuous relationship with his new wife. He wanted her in ways he had never wanted any other woman.
He felt alive, and not in a good way.
He constantly reminded himself of what happened when he was with a woman, even though he had the sense that Theresa was quite different from the ladies of the ton . Not only did her beautiful looks set her apart, but so did her sweet spirit. Her innocence.
These constant thoughts were a reminder that he would never be the man he had once been, the man that a woman like Theresa may have deserved once upon a time.
For now, he contented himself with knowing that his wife would have everything she deserved. She never deserved what her parents had done to her, leaving her in a convent to be raised by strangers. Where she had been deprived of life’s little luxuries.
If nobody else was going to give her a better life, he could at least do that for her within his strict self-imposed rules.
He stood in front of the canvas, where he had been for hours now. Long ago, he had abandoned paintbrushes and now painted with his hands. The feel of the thick oil paints on his fingers made him feel alive and gave him more control over the outcome.
The blacks and reds swirled together on the canvas, the perfect reflection of his thoughts and feelings toward the woman he married. The blackness of his soul, withered as it was after so many years of reclusion. The red of his intense attraction, the way she made him feel alive.
What would he paint in the days to come as he got to know her better?
Would he get to know her better, or would he lock himself in his tower, away from the waiting world as he always had?
He wanted to be different, for her. He wanted to be the man his grandmama was convinced was somewhere deep inside of him. Theresa had awoken something in him the day she had seen him in the river.
Maybe he would try to depart from his tower without the need for his grandmama to intervene. To stop the drinking in the broad daylight of the afternoon. To at least get to know his new wife before he made a rash decision.
He reached for the old towel he used whenever he painted and wiped the paint from his hands. He left the canvas on the easel and sat back in his hard wooden chair to survey his work.
He poured himself a celebratory drink for creating another masterpiece. This had been his way of coping with all the emotions swirling inside of him. It was private; he never showed anyone his paintings, except for his grandmama and Juliette.
This was a private revelation. He uncovered emotion, translated it on canvas with each stroke of his hands. It was what he had been doing the evening his new wife had spotted him in the river, where he was washing the paint from his hands.
Theresa should never have been near that river. It was well outside the land owned by the convent, situated just on the outskirts of London. It was a decent ride from Blackwell Manor, one of the many reasons Aaron loved it there. Nobody would stumble upon him when he wanted to be alone.
No one, that is, except for the little nun.
She had so innocently told him to tend to his wounds. What would she say if she saw him now, with red paint up to his elbows? What would she say if she knew that this was how he tended to his wounds?
The only way to truly find out what she would think would be to tell her and share this part of his world with her. But he couldn’t risk it, not for someone he barely knew.
Wife or not, she was a stranger, and she needed to remain that way.
For her own safety .