Page 68 of His Illegitimate Duchess

E lizabeth Talbot, Duchess of Norwich, woke up one morning and realised that she no longer wanted to stay in that unfamiliar, unhappy house with that man, so she had Mary and Mrs. White pack her things (instructing them to leave behind all the dresses that the liar had ordered for her!) and summoned Mister Ed to drive her home.

Her mother tried to talk her out of it, but after a while, Elizabeth simply walked out of the room without further argument.

As her belongings were being packed (an event that, although initiated by her, she couldn’t bear to watch for some reason), Lizzie sat with Thunder in the garden.

The dog was moving to Mayfair as well, since, despite having been procured by her deplorable husband, she felt that he was part of her people now.

As soon as she arrived in her old house, she immediately sent out notes to inform her friends of her change in address, too tired to include the why of it all.

She spent the rest of the day in the kitchen, explaining to the women of the Mayfair house why she felt she needed to be apart from her husband, while her mother most likely cried in her room.

“And for how long do you think he will allow you to do that?” Mrs. Barlow asked anxiously.

Elizabeth shrugged. “I don’t see why he has to allow it. Aunt Isolde was away from her husband for months while she chaperoned me. I don’t think it is uncommon for people like them to live apart.”

“But your aunt is older and she has already given her husband children. The duke is young, and well, has no heir yet,” Jane said with a pointed look.

Elizabeth pursed her lips together. “With all due respect, his heir is the last thing on my mind right now.”

“I understand that perfectly, my child, but men are not like women,” Mrs. Barlow said compassionately. “And he’s a man used to getting what he wants, from what I’ve gathered.”

“I don’t think the Duke will be causing problems for Lizzie,” Mary said confidently, and the two older women exchanged a doubtful glance.

“What does your mother think of all this?” Jane asked carefully.

Lizzie sighed and shook her head, and it was perfectly clear to all of them how her mother felt.

She had talked to Catherine about Colin’s betrayal several times during her recovery ( No!

Not Colin! The duke! Talbot! She chastised herself internally.), but judging from Catherine’s remarks, it had been pretty obvious that her mother was truly incapable of grasping the severity of his actions.

Her words from that morning still stung.

“Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill, Lizzie. He’s a good man, he married you when he didn’t have to,” Catherine had said.

“Can it ever be about me, Ma, and about what I want? Maybe I didn’t want to marry him, have you ever considered that?” Elizabeth had yelled, exasperated.

“How could you not want to marry him? Do you not realise how lucky you are, how safe? You’re a duchess, you never have to worry about anything ever again!”

“Only my husband’s utter disdain for me,” Lizzie had replied through her sobs.

She closed her eyes against the memory.

“It’s late,” she told the women assembled at the kitchen table. “I think I’ll go to bed now.”

“I’ll come up and help,” Mary said as she stood up, but Lizzie shook her head.

“You’ve exerted yourself enough for today. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

*

A strange sense of loss came over Elizabeth as she settled into her girlhood bed.

She could deeply feel the November cold, despite the fire and the thick, down-filled covers (which had no initials or family crests embroidered on them, she noted absent-mindedly).

She was so cold, she couldn’t sleep. Her mind contrasted her present state with how warm the bedroom in the St. James Square house was, and how safe it had felt to relax and fall asleep in Colin’s arms (for he obstinately remained Colin in her treacherous mind).

The image that logically followed the memory of falling asleep with him was being awoken by his contagious desire.

As her cheeks burned with shame, Elizabeth remembered how she had been on her elbows and knees for him most mornings, how delicious the cold air of the morning had felt on her backside and entrance, and how that particular position of her body somehow had always felt both indecent and infinitely exciting.

Elizabeth was suddenly furious with herself for having allowed that man to witness her in such a state, before her (now not-so-treacherous) mind offered her a memory of Colin’s helpless moans, slack-jawed awe, and the genuine delight he’d exhibited whenever they had been together.

She closed her eyes and shook her head in an attempt to physically dislodge these thoughts from her head, but this back and forth recurred no matter what part of their marriage she thought of: one moment, she’d be upset with herself for her naivete and the tenderness she’d shown her husband, but would then recall his attentiveness and kindness towards her. What was the truth?

Ultimately, as she kept nervously picking on a thread on the edge of the coverlet, her mind wandered to the last night she’d spent in this room, which had been the night before her wedding.

She could instantly taste the old despair, the hurt, the humiliation and the powerlessness she had suffered because of the man who, for months, had led her to believe that…

What? She asked herself. What did he lead you to believe, Elizabeth?

In the end, the one thing she was certain about was this: Colin Talbot had deliberately and knowingly prevented her from marrying the man she’d given her word to (a good, kind man!), he’d stained her reputation and undone her efforts not to be like either of her parents, and he and her brother had then browbeaten her into marrying Talbot.

She was still unclear on his reasons for the whole thing. ( As if men like him needed a reason! She scoffed.)

She also considered the conundrum of Colin lying to her. Had he lied, or had he just omitted the truth? If a liar admits they’ve lied, is that the truth? Would she ever believe a word out of his mouth again?

Ultimately, she decided not to believe his words about wanting to marry her all along, and she didn’t want to even think about his claims that he’d been burning up or unable to get her out of his head, or whatever else he’d said during that terrible fight.

Instead, she held onto that one thing she was certain about with all her might and, with its help, managed to fall asleep some time before dawn.

*

Elizabeth woke up a few hours later with a raging headache.

Not in the mood to talk or smile or make herself look pretty, she simply rebraided her hair, pulled on a grey wool morning dress, and headed downstairs.

She soon realised that part of the discomfort was having missed the daily bath she had become so used to during her marriage for two days in a row.

She heard voices coming from the morning room, and when she drew closer, she heard her husband cheerfully chatting over breakfast with her traitor of a mother. The pain of feeling betrayed by both of them cut her so deep that she almost slammed the door into the wall as she flung it open.

“What is he doing here?” she asked through clenched teeth, her headache threatening to push her eyeballs out of her skull.

Her husband looked at her with worry apparent in his bright eyes (they looked grey again today), but she didn’t let that soften her.

“I live here, wife,” he replied gently, despite not having been asked anything.

Her mother stood up and excused herself with an apologetic look at her daughter, who was now ignoring her.

“Since when?” Elizabeth asked her husband, her first words to him in days.

“Since my wife moved here.”

There it was again, that soft, endless, annoying patience in his voice.

Elizabeth sat down in a chair, grabbed a piece of toast and started breaking it into smaller pieces, trying to contain the frightening wave of her rage somehow.

“Why do we need to live in the same house?” She asked, and as she was saying it, she knew she was being deliberately obtuse and belligerent, despite generally not being inclined to such behaviour, but her headache and fatigue were getting the best of her.

“I don’t want to live with you or be around you,” she added.

She knew her husband rather well by now.

Whenever he’d felt disrespected or threatened in the past, he would lash out with his words or resort to bitterness, and if she was being honest with herself (which she wasn’t), she’d admit that she was trying to get him to fall for her provocation, to prove all her unflattering opinions of him right.

A huge fight full of angry, hurtful insults was just what she needed to, once and for all, label her husband as a monster unworthy of her love.

Love? She thought, startled. Why am I bringing love into this?

But the man who’d taught her to fish wasn’t taking her bait.

“You had almost 20 years of living without me, and you got one more day yesterday. I think that’s quite enough time away from me.”

“I disagree,” she said petulantly.

“I seem to recall a certain young lady once lecturing me on the importance of the marital vows one pledges on their wedding day,” Colin said playfully, but his face grew more and more serious as he went on.

“And I’ve since come to realise that she was right.

I’ve given my word and I’ve entered into a covenant with you, and we are bound to each other for as long as we both shall live. ”

Lizzie wrinkled her brow in thought.

“The vows don’t state we have to live together. Besides, if I remember correctly, you also vowed to endow me with all your worldly goods? Does that mean the Norwich estate belongs to me now?”

“Everything I have belongs to you now,” he said solemnly, but she looked heavenward and shook her head.