Page 47 of His Illegitimate Duchess

E lizabeth’s eyes woke up earlier than the rest of her body did.

The dream she’d had must have been strange and unsettling, for her heart was racing, but she was unable to recall any details about it.

She turned her head towards Colin, who slept like the dead, and examined every one of his features, stunned by how different they looked when completely relaxed.

Not many would call her husband classically handsome – his jaw was too square and his brow too high, but there was no other man whose presence alone exuded such raw might and self-assuredness, which to Lizzie was far more attractive than a pleasing symmetry.

Yet lately, there had also been a softness about him. She’d felt it in his glances and the way he talked to her. Sometimes he made her feel like she was an egg he was gently cradling in his hands, careful not to damage it.

She finally managed to get to her feet, still unsteady from the nothingness of being asleep. The dawning sky pulled her to the window. Although it was August, the floor was ice-cold, and the morning looked misty and wet.

Lizzie remembered Hannah telling her they called them cobweb mornings . She admired the comparison, then wondered whether God was amused by this description.

Thank you, Lord, for creating such a beautiful world for us to live in, she thought as she did most mornings, almost tearful today for some reason.

The sight of the sky, her husband sleeping, misty cobwebs, being here, being in this moment, it was all too intense, too much.

I want to always remember standing here and watching the Sun rise over the sleeping world, alone with God.

By the time she made it to her dressing room, Mary was, by some miracle, already there, yawning in an armchair by the fire, and Lizzie smiled to herself at her earlier notion of being the only one awake in the manor.

The kitchens were most certainly already hot and fragrant and bustling with activity, while she, now acting the grand lady, had been gazing at cobwebs and contemplating the beauty of the world.

Oh, how quickly man forgets.

“Good morning, Mary,” she said cheerfully. “What are you doing here so early?”

“Morning, Your Grace,” Mary grinned through a yawn.

Elizabeth shook her head at her friend’s teasing.

“I’m here because the duke ordered me to prepare some clothes for your outing later today, but warned me not to tell you anything about it.”

“He did? But you will tell me, of course?”

“No,” Mary shook her head, “I dare not defy your husband.”

“Traitor,” Lizzie teased, secretly happy that her best friend and her husband were conspiring to surprise her.

She continued wondering about the outing Colin had planned for them as she descended the stairs.

She had Mary put a cherry red ribbon in her hair to complement her mulberry dress, and she didn’t know whether it was all that colour, or the lack of sleep, or the feverish thoughts from that morning, but by the time she arrived at the morning room door, she felt restless and discomposed.

Lizzie pressed a hand to her stomach to calm its fluttering, then opened the door. Her husband was already seated and was reading the newspaper, and he lifted his head when he heard the door. Elizabeth was certain her eyes mirrored the delight in his.

“Good morning,” she said shyly, not wanting to seem too eager for some reason.

“Good morning, wife,” he replied warmly, rising from his chair.

He seemed so perfect to her, immaculate in both his attire and his manners. Would she ever cease admiring him?

“Have you slept well?” he asked.

“For the most part. I had a strange dream, so I awoke quite early.”

He returned to his paper as she filled her plate, and they sat in companionable silence until the servant who was arranging the last of the food left.

Talbot then wordlessly pushed the newspaper towards her. On the cover, she saw the words A year after Peterloo, and looked up at him. He was gazing at her intently as if waiting for more seditious sentiments.

“Thank you,” she said and started reading the article. It talked about the heroic yeomanry and the treacherous enemies of the Crown, and Lizzie put the paper back on the table, all her earlier good mood gone.

“A two-year-old boy was killed that day, and a woman who was expecting,” she said quietly, “I don’t think that boy had been plotting against the Crown.”

“He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Talbot said, clenching his jaw as he took in her distress.

“Eighteen dead, over six hundred injured,” she recited from memory.

He said nothing. Elizabeth looked at her husband (the perfect gentleman, the Duke!) and realised that he viewed every attack on the Crown as an attack on his own title.

Had her brother thought the same thing? Was that why he hadn't wanted her to read the papers any more?

Lizzie didn’t want to look underneath the gilt on her idea of Colin, so when he remained silent, she added, in a conciliatory tone, “I cannot believe a year has passed already.”

He nodded, seeming pleased at her change in tone, and she felt something inside her relax. She didn’t want a third man in her life to be disappointed in her.

“Yes, time flies, doesn’t it?”

She nodded and managed a small smile.

Colin cleared his throat. “Ever since our carriage ride to Norwich, I’ve been wondering how and why you even started reading the newspapers?”

Elizabeth leaned back in her chair and took a sip of her hot chocolate.

“I used to teach children in my old neighbourhood to read and write,” she said.

“I never knew that,” her husband said, raising his eyebrows in surprise.

“Yes, well,” Lizzie smiled awkwardly. “Mary’s father, Mister Ed, once confessed to me that, ever since his son joined the ship's crew, he found himself wishing that he didn’t have to wait for others to read his letters to him, or pen his responses.”

Her husband’s lips pressed together in almost imperceptible disapproval at the mention of the sailor , but he was otherwise engrossed in her story.

“He told me he’d learned to recognise most letters as a child thanks to some Methodists, but never learned to sound out words or write legibly.

He was an adult man, you see, and I feared it wouldn’t be productive to attempt to teach him the same way I did the children,” she explained, and Talbot nodded.

“I then remembered that he always had Robert read to him from old newspapers he brought home, or from whatever pamphlet he could get on the street, so that was clearly the material that was most enticing to him. And that’s how he learned.

Then, when we all moved to Mayfair, I got subscriptions to all the newspapers for us as a household. ”

“You sound like an exceptional teacher,” he said, and her stomach felt soft, like a sponge.

She looked away, saying, “Thank you. I enjoyed teaching a great deal.”

“It shows in the way you talk about it.”

It was as if they were both suddenly struck by timidity.

“What did your brother think of your seditious reading material?” he teased in an attempt to break the tension.

“It was one pamphlet, Talbot. And we stopped reading those when we learned about the new government acts against seditious libel. But yes, you are right to assume that Nicholas wanted me to read nothing but La Belle Assemblée and Ackermann’s .”

“And did you?”

A slow, sly grin spread across her face. She ran her tongue over her teeth in an attempt to subdue it. When she couldn’t, she simply shrugged.

“I always got the impression you were subservient to your brother,” he said with a surprised lift of his left eyebrow.

“I care about my brother, and I wanted him to be happy and pleased with me. That isn’t subservience, but love, isn’t it?” Elizabeth replied defensively.

“You’re asking the wrong person,” Talbot replied quietly.

Elizabeth had a hundred questions on the tip of her tongue, but she was too afraid to voice them. Had he ever loved a woman? Did he think he might grow to love her? What did he think the definition of love was?

“Have you corresponded with your brother lately?” he asked, a note of wariness in his voice.

“Some,” she replied reluctantly.

She had replied to a third of Nicholas’s letters, always in a polite, brief, and cold manner. She couldn’t bring herself to ignore him completely because that would mean severing her relationships with Sophie and Emma, but she felt like her earlier feelings for him were dead or at least numb.

“I’m sorry that I have caused a rift in your relationship with your brother. He has his reasons for not considering me a good-enough match for his sister, but I believe that, in time, he will accept it.”

Elizabeth could hardly believe her ears. Hadn’t Nicholas hit him and forced him into this match? Why would he now be upset about Talbot’s compliance?

“You said you all moved to Mayfair,” Talbot broke the silence that had ensued between them. “Who were the people who moved with you?”

“My mother, our maid Jane, Mrs. Barlow, who used to be our cook when…” Elizabeth was still thinking about what Colin had said about Nicholas and couldn’t formulate a coherent reply.

“Wait. I need to start at the beginning. See, before my,” Lizzie stopped abruptly, then looked down into the cup that she was holding, and then continued more slowly, more cautiously, “before my father died, we used to live in a lovely home in Belgravia. Mary’s mother was our cook, that’s how we first met.

Mister Ed, her father, was our driver. Jane has been our maid ever since I can remember.

We had other staff, as well. Maman was in charge of my education, and there was talk of getting me a tutor the following year. ”

Elizabeth set the cup back on the table and put her hands in her lap, one gripping the other, to conceal their trembling.