Ice Cold Duke (Frigid Dukes #2)

Chapter Three

B efore the carriage had even stopped in front of the house, Matthew was climbing out of it, not even bothering to wait for the driver to open the door for him.

“We won’t be here long, Edward,” he informed the driver, who gave a curt nod and returned to his seat to wait.

Matthew strode to the front door, knocked sharply, and waited for it to open, which did not take long, as the butler promptly admitted him and announced that the Earl and Countess of Waterburry were not at home.

“Is Lady Diana here?” Matthew asked, impatient despite making good time.

“Indeed, she is, Your Grace,” the butler replied. “I shall announce you.”

Matthew could appreciate the expediency of the man, especially as he returned only moments later and bade Matthew to follow him.

“My Lady, His Grace, the Duke of Cardan.”

“Thank you, Townsend,” Lady Diana replied.

Matthew couldn’t help but stare for a moment at the woman before him.

This woman was to be his wife, and he found his mind wandering to just what that would mean.

“Your Grace.” Her tone was polite but certainly formal. Certainly not friendly. And neither were her eyes, which seemed to bore into his.

“My Lady.” He gave a curt bow and moved closer to her, holding himself stiffly as he observed the woman sitting just beside her.

It was not one of her sisters. Rather, the state of the woman’s dress seemed to indicate that she was a servant, likely her lady’s maid.

She would do as a chaperone for this quick conversation.

“Lady Diana, I have obtained the special license, and the wedding shall take place in one week. You shall be responsible for the remainder of the planning.”

With that, he turned on his heel and started toward the door, stopping only when her voice broke through the thoughts that were now racing through his mind about what he needed to do upon his return home.

“Wait. We still have much to discuss.”

“There is nothing further to discuss,” he replied, turning back to her. “The wedding shall take place without delay, and we shall move on from this business.”

“We shall get married in only one week, and yet we know nothing about each other.”

“There is nothing that needs to be known,” Matthew stated.

“I will not marry a man who the only things I know about come from scandal sheets and gossip.”

He raised an eyebrow at her, surprised at both the strength of her tone and the steadfast look in her eyes.

“There is no love between us. However, that does not mean that we shall marry as strangers and never speak again, Your Grace. I will know more about you before we are wed.”

“What is it you would have me say, My Lady?” he asked stiffly.

“Please, be seated, Your Grace.”

Reluctantly, Matthew sat in the chair she had indicated, though he perched on the edge of it, hopeful that this conversation could still be carried out quickly and he could be home soon.

For a long moment, she was silent, but he had nothing to say on the matter and so he simply waited her out.

“Just what kind of person are you, Your Grace?”

“How am I to answer such a question?” he scoffed.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you more pleasant to those whose company you enjoy than you are to me?”

“I suspect you would need to speak to those others instead.”

“Ah, so there are those whose company you enjoy.” Her sharp tone and her wit nearly impressed him despite himself, but he remained silent. “And what else is there I should know?”

“I like to be left alone. I enjoy my peace and quiet, and I prefer that throughout my estate. If I am working, you shall not disturb me for any reason.”

That much, at least, he could tell her.

“Hmm, well, nothing of that surprises me, Your Grace. However, there must be some occasions when you do not mind at least a bit of noise. What about music? And dancing?”

“I’ve no time for either. There shall be no balls or social events in my home. They disrupt the peace of my estate, and they distract me from work that needs to be done.”

“No events?” She looked appalled at the idea, the first true reaction he had gotten from her other than irritation.

“I will not have my estate turned upside down to accommodate a bunch of witless Society louts.”

“If I am to be married, hosting balls and events is perhaps one of the things that I most look forward to,” she admitted.

“I am sorry to disappoint you, My Lady, but there will be no such nonsense in my home.”

“You are the Duke—it is practically your responsibility to host events that will bring the people of the ton together.”

“Then I have been shirking my responsibility, and I shall continue to do so,” he retorted indignantly.

Her expression was certainly one of outrage and shock. Clearly, she had not expected this, but he had no intention of conceding on this matter. The idea of having so many people traipsing about his home… it was unthinkable.

“I would urge you to reconsider, Your Grace. There is a great deal to be gained by a well-executed social event and?—”

“There shall be nothing of the sort, My Lady.” His voice was even more insistent this time, and she pressed her lips together into a thin line. “My peace shall be maintained, and you shall not interfere in any way.”

“It shall be my home too, Your Grace.”

“That it shall, My Lady, but I am still the master of my home, and it shall be run in the way I see fit.”

“I wished to know what sort of man you are, Your Grace, but it seems I might just as well have allowed you to leave when you wished it. I do not believe I have learned anything about you that should cause me to like you more than I did when you first arrived here.”

Matthew didn’t bother to respond to that, simply inclining his head and rising from his chair. Hopefully, her cold tone and the way she sat with her back ramrod straight meant that she had grown tired of this as much as he had and was ready to let him leave.

“Perhaps it would be best if we did not spend more time getting to know one another. Once we are wed, it may perhaps be best for us to remain out of one another’s way.”

“Excellent,” he replied, and her eyes showed only the faintest hint of surprise at his immediate agreement. “This shall be a marriage in name only. There will be very few occasions in which I shall need you to accompany me or to present you as my wife. Other than that, you shall be allowed to roam about the house as you wish. Any and all changes made to my household must be approved first by myself or my housekeeper, Miss Jenkins.”

Once again, Lady Diana looked exceedingly frustrated, though she was refraining from responding now. Instead, she simply stared at him with a fiery expression that he was certain would cause a lesser man to quake in his boots.

“I shall expect everything to be completed within one week for the wedding.”

The Duke strode out of the room just as purposefully as he had entered it, and it was all Diana could do not to pick up the lamp from the side table and throw it at him.

“Oh! The nerve of that man!” she exclaimed to Margaret, her lady’s maid, as the front door closed, marking his departure from the house.

“He is certainly… a trying soul,” Margaret acknowledged.

Diana couldn’t help but laugh slightly at that. “You may attempt to be polite all you like, Margaret, but the man is far more than ‘trying.’ Can you imagine, not a single event or ball? And I shall be mistress of the house in name only. To have to ask permission to run the household… the very idea…”

She was practically fuming at the mere thought of everything that he had just said and the way he had stared at her. Like she was some child that he was bored with.

“You will need to make the best of it, My Lady,” Margaret replied. “He will be your husband, after all.”

“Yes, my husband. In name only. In truth, I shall be little more than a servant without even a task to keep me occupied. Why on earth would he look for a wife if he does not wish her to run the household or host events?”

“Diana?” a voice suddenly called from the hallway.

Diana tried to draw in a deep breath and calm her racing heart. It would not do to let the rest of the family know everything that had transpired here.

“There you are, dear,” her mother said, breezing into the drawing room as she always did, her sisters alongside her. “We were told that the Duke was just here. What news did he have of the wedding?”

“It shall take place in one week,” Diana replied briskly, attempting to maintain as polite a tone as she could manage at the moment.

Though she needn’t have bothered. Short of shaking her mother, there was likely nothing she could do or say that would let the woman know that something was the matter with her eldest daughter.

“Wonderful! It will be excellent to see one of our girls getting married.”

The Countess seemed proud. Happy. And Diana wished that she could feel the same. But she had never wanted a husband.

As her friends got married one after the other, she quickly realized that what they had was not for her. Even those who had been lucky to find good husbands, she did not envy.

Elizabeth, who had married a man of her own age who seemed to have a gentle temperament. And Alice, who had married a man who seemed to care for her.

And now, to be forced not only to wed but to wed a man such as the Duke of Cardan, a man who was at every turn trying and cold, it was worse than anything Diana could have imagined.

When the Countess had left, the other girls turned to Diana, Marigold’s expression far more shrewd than any of their sisters’.

“What truly happened, Diana?”

“Nothing that you need to worry about,” Diana replied. “There is a great deal that must be done to prepare for the wedding, and I will not have us all moping about when there are plans to be made.”

The last thing she wanted to do was plan her wedding to the Duke, but there was nothing to be done about it now. And so she tried to be as brave and stalwart as possible, even though her sisters seemed to sense that things were not at all as they seemed.

“A wedding in only a week, it does not give you much time to sort things out,” Valery declared. “How could he possibly expect us to be ready in so short a period?”

“It shall be sufficient for what we need,” Diana replied. “And I am sure it shall be more than sufficient for anything that he would wish for.”

If it were up to the Duke, they would no doubt have gone before the priest that very day to be wed and get it over with. In fact, Diana was almost surprised that he had not suggested such a thing and had instead given her an entire week to plan the most important event of her life. And apparently, the last event of her life.

By the time she was able to break away from her sisters and return to her own room, she’d had enough of pretending that things were all right. The Duke had proven himself yet again to be an insufferable man who cared not for her wishes, and she had no notion of just what her life would become. It was just her and Margaret again, and as Margaret already knew everything…

“What am I going to do?”

“You have always been strong, My Lady. You’ll continue to be strong. And you’ll be a lovely bride.”

“How am I supposed to be married to this man? A man who won’t even speak to me unless he is forced to do so? Whatever shall I do?”

Diana hated that she sounded so helpless at that moment. Hated even more that she felt so helpless.

“I will be there with you, My Lady, will I not?” Margaret asked.

“With everything else that he has an opinion on, I am surprised that he has not mentioned the employ of my servants. Perhaps he simply assumes that I will bring my own maid along. Or perhaps he simply assumes that he will appoint someone for me.”

The very thought of losing not only her sisters but Margaret as well made Diana ill.

No. If nothing else, she would put her foot down about this. Margaret would come with her to her new home. The woman had attended to her for most of her life and would continue to do so. There would be no argument about that.

“We shall make the best of things, My Lady. You have some time to plan the wedding. And we shall make it the social event of the Season, even if we do not have a lot of time.”

“The Duke will likely not be pleased with that. He has already made it clear that he does not approve of social events.”

“For your wedding, he shall have to make an exception,” Margaret insisted.

Diana managed a small smile, though it was tempered by the fact that she was going through all of this trouble to marry a man she had absolutely no interest in marrying.

“Well, I’d better go to bed, then. Starting from tomorrow, there shall be a great deal to plan for the wedding. And it would not do to wait any longer than absolutely necessary.”

“Of course, My Lady,” Margaret replied, helping her into her nightclothes and then into bed. “Things will look better in the morning.”

“I can only hope that you are right, Margaret. But nothing has seemed better for the last week since I have known about the marriage. I do not believe that things will get that much better just from a night of sleep.”

A marriage in name only. Where she would be bound forever to a man who she had not even the slightest appreciation for, let alone anything else. It was almost more than she could bear. And yet bear it she must.