Page 22 of His Duchess of Scandal (Brides of Scandal #1)

Chapter Fifteen

“ I have heard glorious things about Branmere Hall, but to actually see its splendor is quite another thing.”

Josephine tipped her head back to look up at the high ceiling, taking in the walls and the decorative wallpaper. She peered into each room she passed, humming with pleasure.

“You are most lucky, Hermia,” she said. “And to think I brought this upon you.”

Hermia pointedly ignored the knowing look in her friend’s eyes. “Phoebe, you must bring Thomas along with you to the conservatory. We are having tea in there. You may show him the etiquette I have been teaching you.”

“And then I can teach him,” Phoebe insisted.

As they walked down the hallway, Phoebe and Josephine’s toddler, Thomas, walked side-by-side, flanked by Miss Ternan and Miss Halloway, Thomas’s governess.

“Indeed.” Josephine nodded. “Heaven knows my boy will be ever so rampant when he grows up.” Her gaze flicked to Hermia.

“If I can involve a young lady in his life from this age, I believe it will either calm down the wildness I already see, or it will make him a heartbreaker before he ever attends his first ball.”

“I am only ten!” Phoebe insisted. “I will not have my heart broken by a baby .”

Hermia masked her smile with a cough. “I fear we have two highly spirited children to watch over today, then.”

“I believe we do.” Josephine laughed as they headed into the conservatory. “Speaking of hearts, where is your husband?”

Hermia stumbled slightly at her friend’s question and shot her a look.

“What?” Josephine asked, settling onto the settee.

Hermia joined her right as the children settled on the adjacent one. She had a feeling the relative peace wouldn’t last for long.

“Nothing,” she answered. “It is just that—well…”

Josephine, beautiful in an emerald-green day dress that complemented her auburn hair, merely looked amused. “It is not often that I see you at a loss for words.”

“I am not at a loss,” Hermia said quickly—too quickly and defensively, judging by her friend’s growing amusement.

“I do not believe His Grace and matters of the heart go hand-in-hand. Either way, he is out meeting with the tenants. We will depart for London soon, so he is wrapping up his business here.”

Josephine’s pale eyebrows rose. “Heavens, has it been a month already? Time passes when lovers are?—”

“Phoebe,” Hermia cut in with a pointed look, “how about you and Thomas play outside? The weather is pleasant enough.”

“Can I show him my favorite tree to climb?”

“Heavens, no.” Josephine laughed. “However, you can challenge him to kick a ball. How about that? Thomas is quite fond of such things.” Looking at Hermia, she added, “William learned that the hard way with a good pocket watch that was left on his vanity.”

Hermia stifled a giggle as the children clambered off the settee and hurried outside, followed by their governesses.

She watched the children for a moment, feeling a painful pang in her chest as Phoebe showed Thomas how to hit the ball so it didn’t soar, but gently rolled.

It surprised her, such assiduousness.

She overheard Phoebe say, “You are a baby. We do not want you to get hurt. If you do, I will be blamed for it by my papa, so be gentle.”

She smiled fondly, sighing.

When she finally turned back, she found her friend reading her like an open book. Mercifully, she was granted another moment as a maid entered and set down a tea tray and desserts.

The maid curtsied and scurried away, leaving her in the heavy silence.

“You ought to try the macarons,” she suggested, hoping to distract her friend.

“I shall try them when my dear friend tells me what has her so quiet,” Josephine answered smoothly.

“Just me, then, for now.” Hermia took a macaron and bit into it slowly, acutely aware of her friend’s eyes on her.

“Hermia.”

“They really are delici?—”

“ Hermia. ”

Finally, she looked back at Josephine. “Yes?”

“I have never seen you like this,” her friend said quietly.

“Uncertain of yourself. Skittish, almost, as though you do not know what to do with yourself. You have had a month-long honeymoon. For many, that is a time of beautiful exploration, of emerging from one’s residence with a fresh glow.

I certainly did. Tell me what has happened. ”

“Nothing,” Hermia replied quietly, realizing just how lonely she had been this past month.

How she had thrown herself into her new duties as Duchess in lieu of conversations with her sisters, or meeting with her friend for their usual walks.

“When I was exiled to Wickleby Hall after my failed Seasons, I thought I could not get any lonelier. I filled my days with my sisters—tutored them, guided them, even argued with them. And yet, here… loneliness is a weight I ignore. Sometimes I am successful, other times I am not.”

“You have a husband to love,” Josephine countered. “And a daughter—should you wish to see her as such—to help raise. What is going on, truly?”

“My husband prefers to spend countless hours alone in his study rather than endure a dinner with me,” Hermia muttered.

“And I discovered that Phoebe often eats alone, so I have taken to dining with her. She is as lonely as I am, and my husband refuses to acknowledge any of it or change. Every time we take a step forward together, we clash once more and take three steps back.”

Her face burned with shame as she added, “He even rejected me on our wedding night. So I do not know what sort of honeymoon I should have had, but it certainly has not been filled with activities that leave a bride glowing.”

“There has been no intimacy between you at all?”

Hermia’s thoughts wandered to a hand cupping her face, fingertips pressing into her hip, a ragged breath between kisses, and her name stripped of title and etiquette, replaced with desire that had cracked his voice.

“Oh,” Josephine murmured, her eyes lighting up. “There has been something .”

Deny it. Deny it. Do not give any power to that kiss; has it not plagued your mind enough?

And yet the confession slipped from her lips, tangled in the memory of Charles’s desperation as he had pressed his lips to hers.

“Charles kissed me.” Hermia drew in a shaky breath. “He kissed me, and he has scarcely spoken two words to me ever since. It has been a week. I cannot sleep properly; I cannot think clearly. I try to distract myself with my duties here at the manor, but I-I am helpless to the memory of that kiss.”

Josephine stared at her, blinking. “Forget the macarons, Hermia. I think strong wine is in order if we are going to discuss this.” She gestured to the playing children. “At least, it would be if we were not being responsible. Heavens, I miss Bentley’s parties.”

Hermia narrowed her eyes at her friend. “Damn those parties! Had you not dragged me along to that one a year ago, I would never have been brought into this mess.”

Josephine’s eyes glimmered with mischief. Hermia had already explained her connection with Charles the day before her wedding, and her friend had been utterly delighted.

“So you wish to blame me for the most delicious night of passion you’ve ever had, and now I am to blame for everything else?”

“Precisely,” Hermia muttered.

She expected her friend to laugh. Instead, Josephine took her hand and gave it a squeeze.

As the eldest sister, the dutiful daughter, the lady who let herself go cold for others and told herself she was perfectly warm enough, the gesture was unexpected.

She looked down at Josephine’s hand.

“If you truly feel that way, Hermia, then I am sorry in one regard,” Josephine said, surprising her. “However, you deserved that last night of freedom, no matter the consequences. If you would like my opinion?—”

“I would not,” Hermia interrupted, half-teasing.

“Well, you will receive it anyway. Heaven knows nobody else can tell you this. You have sacrificed too much all your life. I believe Bentley’s party put an opportunity in your path.

A hidden blessing. A hard blessing, for certain, but a blessing nonetheless.

You have a handsome husband, a beautiful home, a title befitting of a lady like you, and a little girl who looks at you as though you have hung the sun in a very dark world. ”

Hermia blinked, turning to look at where Phoebe was instructing Thomas on how to draw in the soil with a stick. When Thomas thwacked the ground with his stick, she put a hand on his arm to slow the sharp movements. Then, she demonstrated with her stick.

Warmth spread through Hermia, and her lips curled into a smile. How could a tornado of a girl become a gentle whisper of wind so suddenly?

Was Josephine right? Was the situation Hermia had found herself in a blessing? She had escaped exile to France, certainly, but she had not considered it a blessing .

“How was the kiss?” Josephine asked when she failed to answer.

“It was… everything I have feared it would be,” Hermia whispered.

“It was—it consumed me. It roused something I thought would forever slumber after I failed to secure a match. And Charles… he—he said my name. My Christian name. He said it like—” She broke off, uncertain of how much to say.

“Like he was desperate, but he has ignored me ever since.”

Josephine’s mouth twitched with amusement, and Hermia fought the urge to scowl at her friend for finding humor in her predicament.

“Do you know what William did when he first proposed to me?”

“I do not.”

“He ignored me for a week. No letters, no visits— nothing .

I was ready to end our courtship, convinced he had lost interest. In truth, the man was so consumed by want that he did not know what to do with it.

Oftentimes, that is the way. They cannot speak their mind, and they think they cannot act on what they do not say, either.

Left with no other choice—in their terribly small minds—they ignore us until they see the light.

It leaves us bereft and unmoored, of course, and that is a terrible fate, but it is the way of men.

“What I am trying to say, Hermia, is that you think he is ignoring you because he does not want you, when the opposite is likely the case. He wants you too much and does not know how to express it. From where I am sitting, it looks as though you want something more from your convenient husband. You would not look so forlorn otherwise. And perhaps he feels the same.”

Hermia was struck silent by the revelation. She struggled to believe her friend, but what if Josephine was right?

On the other hand, what if Charles had wanted her, but one night had been more than enough? What if she had been terrible in bed? What if she were?—

Josephine finally picked up a macaron and bit into it with a hum of approval, pulling her out of her thoughts. “Oh, you are quite right—these macarons are delicious. We all must take a bite of the delicious things put in front of us.”

Hermia tried to ignore her knowing look.

Upon their return to Branmere Manor after their honeymoon period, Charles introduced her to the staff before immediately departing for business meetings, muttering about catching up on work now that they were back in the city.

Hermia barely got a protest out before the door slammed shut behind him.

“Well,” she sighed, aggravated. “That is that.”

She turned to Mrs. Andrews, whom she had just been introduced to, and?—

Ah.

It was then that Hermia remembered that the nude painting had been unveiled in this townhouse. The very townhouse she had stormed into that night to confront Charles.

The worry she’d had about who had seen the painting grew, now that she was right where many servants had likely seen it. Where many of the ton had likely seen it, too.

According to both Phoebe and Lord Wickleby—not Charles, for he never spoke to her about such things—the Branmere charity auctions were always a hit.

It would not have been a quiet affair nor a small spectacle.

Hermia’s eyes wandered around the entrance hall. Where did Charles paint? What secrets did this townhouse hold, and were they the same as in Branmere Hall?

“Your Grace.” Mrs. Andrew curtsied, a tight smile on her face.

It was not unkind, but it was a smile that held back thoughts that Hermia was annoyed enough to want to know, for she feared they were about her.

She pushed down the urge.

“Mrs. Andrews,” she said.

“Let me take you on a proper tour,” the housekeeper offered, hinting at her improper visit that very first night a month ago.

Hermia fought back a flush of embarrassment at how she must have looked back then, and merely followed the woman.