CHAPTER 8
T he strangest thing about the nightmare, in Grace’s opinion, was that she’d had the same dream during her time away. But then, it hadn’t bothered her.
Then, the dream where Bertha Packard was screaming at her for some unknown slight had just been a reflection of her daily occurrence. The dream hadn’t been pleasant, to be sure—dreams had been the only way Grace could escape the wretched reality of her situation. But most nights, Mrs. Packard had screamed at her before shutting Grace up in the little cupboard for the night, then had screamed at her again in the morning when she’d let her out.
When she’d had the dream, back then, she’d woken up with a sigh.
Now, the same dream woke her with a scream.
She hated it. Hated it. She hated that those awful people still had a grip on her, hated that her sleeping mind couldn’t seem to remember that those horrible days were behind her.
And when she woke with a start, her hands flying to her mouth—because the Packards had always been especially cruel when she’d made noise that disrupted their rest; that was why she’d learned not to cry out in the first place—part of her hated her husband for bringing her to this place, for not telling her they weren’t going to Scotland, for living in the north, for marrying her in the first place.
It was considerable, as far as lists of grievances went.
The dream had left her blood pounding in her veins, her body screaming about danger that was only imagined. Grace knew she’d not get back to sleep, not easily, not quickly. She’d learned that in the months since she’d been back, since the dream had become a nightmare.
Except maybe she was still dreaming, because what other explanation could she offer for finding herself inexplicably kissing her new husband?
“ Leannan ,” he murmured, the word fracturing into a groan as he pressed back into her kiss. His cheek was warm beneath her palm.
For just a moment, he kept his hands to himself—then he took the fingers that had been creeping up her wrist, leaving a trail of gooseflesh in their wake, and knotted them in the hair at the base of her neck, right above where her plait began. He used the grip to tilt her back, to maneuver her, until her body was arching up toward him and her mouth was opening beneath his. He brushed his tongue ever so gently across her bottom lip, and she darted her own tongue out daringly, seeking to mimic the action?—
And met only cold air as he released her so quickly that she nearly fell back onto the icy flagstones.
Her eyes fluttered open to find her husband staring at her as if it was now his turn to wake up from a nightmare. He cleared his throat and then—there was no other word for it—fled.
He fled, without so much as a “goodbye” thrown over his shoulder and left her there on the floor.
She wasn’t cold, though, despite the chill of the house—because she was bleeding simmering with anger.
“Your descendent,” she told the dour, praying man in the portrait in front of her, “is an arsehole.”
It was, she’d decided, an acceptable time to start saying the oaths out loud. It even made her feel just the tiniest bit better about things. It gave her enough momentum, at least, to carry her through the dark hallways that had seemed so unsettling on her way down. None of the paranoia could touch her, not as she stomped her way back up to her bedchamber, not bothering to be quiet as she slammed the door. She hoped it unsettled her husband from his rest.
When she didn’t see him the next day, she was glad for it. When he didn’t come to dinner, she didn’t seek him out. Instead, she ate every bite with a kind of vicious satisfaction, then went down to the kitchen to compliment Mrs. Bradley, who blushed like a schoolgirl.
On the third day, she decided he was hiding. Good. Coward.
And if he was going to be a coward who avoided her because he was ashamed of his own bad behavior, she decided as she threw on her warmest shawl—her luggage had finally arrived, but she hadn’t packed for the chill this far north—she was going to be everywhere .
He could avoid her if he liked, but he was going to have to work for it.
“Mrs. O’Mailey,” she said as soon as she found the housekeeper, who was giving instructions to one of the downstairs maids. “I would like a tour of the house at your earliest convenience.”
The Scottish woman pressed her lips together so firmly Grace wondered if she would do herself an injury. The pause was, once again, just on this side of insubordination. Grace just waited.
If these people thought she would wilt over a few uncomfortable silences, Grace thought, they were dead wrong. She was a woman who had learned not even to flinch when she got smacked with a broom handle because she’d dropped a cloth, spilled a speck of soup, or simply because Mrs. Packard had been feeling irritable that day.
“Very well,” Mrs. O’Mailey said after a moment, sounding enormously put out.
They moved through the house room by room. In each space, Grace asked questions. How was the room normally used? Was it effective to heat, or challenging? Was the amount of work that went into the upkeep worth the level of use it saw?
Mrs. O’Mailey had blinked at that one, the first time she’d shown any emotion to Grace at all.
“I’m not sure what you mean by that, Your Grace,” she admitted, sounding mighty displeased about it.
Grace, meanwhile, was delighted. This was her first victory in their little war.
“Ah,” she said, not showing her pleasure. “Well, some rooms may only be used a few times a year—but need to be cleaned weekly, or more. If those rooms can’t be closed up—perhaps they’re important for heating the whole house, perhaps they’re too central to other rooms that are used more frequently—it is often best to rearrange things so that a neglected parlor becomes a more frequent spot for visitors. So that it merits being tended to that often,” she concluded.
Grace carefully did not react as she watched the housekeeper work though the logic of this comment—that when Grace alluded to a room being worth the upkeep, she meant in terms of the servants’ time. Which implied caring about the servants’ time, something that not all aristocrats ever thought about.
She instead watched Mrs. O’Mailey’s face carefully, so that when she saw a reason to argue occur to the woman and her mouth open to utter it, she could speak first.
“Even with such an efficient, well-staffed household as you seem to have here,” she added beneficently, “keeping up a house like this is no small task. So you mustn’t take this as an indictment of your processes, Mrs. O’Mailey. I merely ask to understand how we might best work together.”
The woman closed her mouth.
Grace put on her best innocent look as Mrs. O’Mailey thought that one through.
Grace knew that telling the woman that Grace was not here to ruin things would have no effect. People could make promises until they were blue in the face, but if they had no reason to keep to those promises, the words were naught but hot air. Grace had heard many promises that had gone unfulfilled; she knew the reality.
But if she showed Mrs. O’Mailey how she intended to go forth, if she acted well and then continued to do so…that might earn her a tiny bit of goodwill. And a little bit was all Grace needed, at least to start. She could work with that.
“Back parlor’s never used,” the woman said gruffly. “His Grace is typically found in his study—” Grace made a mental note to find herself frequently near his study, to make this habit unpleasant for him. “—and we havenae had a duchess for some time, but the morning room, front parlor, and duchess’ receivin’ rooms are all more comfortable.”
Grace nodded. “And is there a good reason not to close up the back parlor?”
Mrs. O’Mailey narrowed her eyes, like this was a trap. “We were never told to close it up.”
Grace smiled. “Well, then. Consider yourself told. An unused room isn’t worth spending time—especially since I imagine that means there’s never a fire and it’s wretched cold while working in there?”
Mrs. O’Mailey’s silence was enough confirmation for Grace.
“Wonderful,” she said, clapping her hands together briskly. “Let’s continue, shall we?”
By the time they’d looped their way around to the soon-to-be closed back parlor, Mrs. O’Mailey was speaking beyond when asked a direct question.
By the time they’d made it upstairs, the woman had even ventured two separate suggestions.
Grace, perhaps for the first time in her life, felt like she understood her father. Was this why he was so eager to curry political favor? She didn’t care. This was triumph, at long last.
And since fortune, as Grace had heard it, favored the bold, she paused at the end of their tour.
“Mrs. O’Mailey,” she said lightly, trying to sound like she didn’t much care about the answer either way. “Would you care to join me for tea in the duchess’ parlor?”
For a breath, Grace thought the woman would say no. It was common, though certainly not obligatory, for the lord’s new wife to share tea with the housekeeper. The austere older woman regarded Grace, and Grace thought she might have been less nervous when she was being presented to the queen.
Then the woman cracked what might generously be called a smile. “What a generous offer, Your Grace,” she said, dipping her chin politely. “I accept.”
The first day, they barely spoke. It was nearly unbearable, if Grace was telling the truth. She considered choking on a biscuit just for something to do.
But the second day, Mrs. O’Mailey accepted again. And as she left that day, she lingered at the door.
“I don’t mean to impose, Your Grace,” she said, not quite meeting Grace’s eye. “But if we gather for tea again…perhaps we might consider including Mrs. Bradley.”
Grace resisted the urge to leap to her feet in joy.
“That sounds lovely, Mrs. O’Mailey,” she said instead. “Thank you for thinking of it. Would you be so kind as to extend the invitation to her for tomorrow?”
Another day—and two brief glimpses of her husband, one of his left arm, the other of his head from above over the edge of the upstairs landing—and Grace realized that the inclusion of the cook in the afternoon’s proceedings was even better than she’d realized.
Because, judging by the way the two women exchanged a look, they hadn’t just come here to get their due show of respect from the new duchess.
They’d come to share information.
Grace tried to look like a person who had never noticed anything in the whole of her life while the women gathered their thoughts.
“Your Grace,” Mrs. O’Mailey said before stopping.
“Would you like a biscuit, Mrs. Bradley?” Grace asked, passing over the plate. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, but they’re phenomenon.”
“It’s my grandmaither’s recipe,” she said proudly. “The trick is to use the freshest butter ye can find.”
“I thank you for trusting me with that knowledge,” Grace said, “though I hope I never need it, as it means we will have been foolish enough to let you slip through out fingers.”
Mrs. Bradley sat up a little straighter in her chair.
Perhaps it was an easy strategy, Grace mused, but a touch of flattery never hurt.
“Your Grace,” Mrs. O’Mailey tried again. This time, she didn’t lose her nerve. “The tenants in the west pasture. Their roof. It leaks.”
Grace paused. “I see.” She took a deliberate sip of tea. “And I take it that their cottages are under the ducal purview?”
The housekeeper was cautious, but her shoulders relaxed, just a fraction, when Grace answered evenly.
“Aye, Your Grace, it is.”
Grace again waited, though. This was delicate. The woman had already shown that she felt loyalty toward her employer; her coldness when Grace had first arrived, which had not been echoed in her demeanor towards Caleb, indicated as much. Which meant, if she was coming to Grace with this, it was about Caleb.
But saying as much explicitly would risk her newfound peace with these women. The politician’s daughter in Grace—or maybe the battle-scarred survivor—knew this.
She made no accusations; she offered no advice. Instead, she asked.
“How can I help?
“I told ye it was a good idea to say something,” Mrs. Bradley muttered into her biscuits.
Grace would never suggest her housekeeper so childish as to kick the cook under the table, no matter what Mrs. Bradley's sudden jump in her chair suggested.
“It’s possible,” Mrs. O’Mailey said with stiff-backed composure, “that the tenants there do not consider themselves…sufficiently comfortable with His Grace in order to voice these concerns.”
“Well,” Grace said lightly, even as her mind raced. “It was sensible of you to let me know.”
Mrs. O’Mailey gave her a look that suggested she was not taken in by Grace’s politeness. But Grace had her own problems, now, because she, too, was not sufficiently comfortable with His Grace to voice any concerns. Except…she couldn’t leave tenants with a leaky roof. It was cold enough this close to the North Sea when one’s roof was tight and snug. Grace had slept in damp, knew how it crept into your bones, how it made every night a misery and every day a struggle.
She had to fix it, even if the very thought made her chest grow tight with worry.
All of which meant she’d have to find her husband, then find some way to make him listen to her. She’d have to make him care—not just about what she had to say, but about the tenants, too. And what if he wouldn’t ride out to inspect the buildings? If the women were coming to her, that meant her husband didn’t make the trek frequently—otherwise they’d have waited. And what?—
She forced herself to pause, breathe. Information first. Then action. She knew this by now.
And she could not let them see her fear. She knew that, too.
“Is there anything else I need to know?”
The women looked at one another again.
This time, Mrs. Bradley spoke. “Did ye know, Your Grace, that both Greta and I came from the previous duchess’ family home? Blackmuir House. His Grace was raised there, before he went off to school. And, well, I daenae mean to tell ye how to manage things…”
“Please, speak freely,” Grace encouraged.
The woman nodded, as if gathering her courage. “Well, at Blackmuir, the laird and lady would have the tenants come up to the house. Only once or twice a year, ye ken. A dinner, a little fete for the wee ones—just enough that the folk around the village saw that the grand family were made up of real people. And that the grand family could see that the village folk…” She trailed off again.
“Were real people, too,” Grace murmured, half to herself. “And that hasn’t happened here.” It was not precisely a question.
Mrs. O’Mailey was clearly the braver of the two. “Not in all the time I’ve been here, no. Part of it was His Grace’s time in the army. He dinnae come home as soon as he inherited, ye see.”
That, Grace had not known. If it was unconventional for the eldest son to go into military service, given his duties as the heir, it was practically unheard of for him not to return home even after he’d gained the title.
She didn’t know what this said about her husband. It said something, she just didn’t know what.
“I see,” she said again.
“Now, don’t go thinkin’ that His Grace doesn’t care,” Mrs. O’Mailey scolded. “That man is a good employer, and I’ll not have you thinking otherwise. He pays out wages on time, doesn’t skint on the pay. He doesn’t trouble the lasses and he doesnae bully or shout or throw things.” She left it unsaid that if a duke did do those things, nobody would be able to stop him. “But…”
“But the tenants are, shall we say, reticent,” Grace summarized.
“Just so,” the housekeeper agreed. “They know he’s an important man. A busy man.”
Grace translated this in her head: her husband never bothered to get to know his tenants, and likely never would. She didn’t know exactly how long it had been since he’d inherited—which suddenly seemed like a horrifying oversight—but she would have heard of a young, Scottish duke gaining a title, which meant it must have happened while she was away.
“But even a busy man can make time for those he is duty-bound to protect,” Grace said, weighing the taste of the words in her mouth. Perhaps that argument would work with her husband?
“Mayhap now things will get better,” Mrs. O’Mailey said. Her air of pessimism was likely as much an indictment that Grace was likely to hear of her husband’s negligence—for that was the only way she could describe ignoring his tenants.
Grace didn’t always agree with her father. She didn’t go head-to-head with him as often as her brother did, but she found his tendency toward speechifying more tiresome than inspiring. About one thing, however, she agreed with him wholeheartedly: when you had the luck to be born to wealth, to a title, you had an obligation to do honor to that luck.
Well. Her father wouldn’t have called it luck, of course. So perhaps she only mostly agreed with him. The point remained.
“I will do what I can,” she told the women. She meant the promise, though she felt that the weight she saw lifting off their shoulders was heaping onto her own. She would try, but she didn’t know what power she might have, not in the face of her husband’s seemingly indominable will—not to mention his apparent talent for avoiding her.
After the two women left, and after Grace spent a little while resisting the urge to bang her head exhaustedly against the table, she tried to think logically. The first step would be to corner the elusive man she’d married.
She just didn’t expect to do so in the dead of night.
The nightmares hadn’t abated, so Grace had taken to prowling the house at night. She would sleep for a bit, wake bathed in a cold sweat, then wander until her body’s exhaustion drew her back to bed and, finally, to dreamless slumber.
Tonight, she was in the library, the fire banked until it was barely more than coals. In these late-night wanderings, she let herself shed all her guises, let herself just be , when, finally, nobody was watching.
This only worked, of course, if she didn’t encounter her husband while she was trying to relax in front of the banked fire in the library, wearing a blanket like a cloak, and holding a book over her face to read in the dim light.
“Do ye never sleep?”
Thwack . Grace, startled, dropped the book on her face. She jerked, got caught in her blankets, and by the time she got herself free, her nose was smarting and her cheeks were burning—and her husband was crouched at her side.
“Jesus wept, lass, are ye all right?” he asked, even looking mildly concerned. Grace supposed it was nice to know that he wouldn’t avoid her if she was actively in peril—even if the peril arose from her own clumsiness.
“I’m fine,” she said tersely, shoving him away and scrambling to a (slightly) more dignified position. She kept the blanket held around her. Not only was it chilly with the fire so low, but she had a simply awful record when it came to encountering her husband while wearing a nightgown.
Because he was the kind of person who had turned being persnickety into an art form, Caleb turned to leave without so much as another word. Grace, fearing she’d not see him for another fortnight, grabbed his arm.
“Wait.”
He looked down at her, eyebrow raised.
“Aye?”
Oh, curse the stupid blankets. Grace struggled to her feet, wishing she were having this conversation while looking less like a child in a closet drama about old monks or ghouls or people with very ugly dresses.
“I have something to discuss with you,” she said primly. If she refused to acknowledge the absurdity of her dress, it would not exist.
If only her husband could go along with her scheme for once . But no, instead he looked pointedly around the darkened library, then at her garb—if it could be called that.
“Right now?”
“Yes, right now,” she said peevishly. Why was he so good at annoying her? It was intolerable. “Because if I let you get away now, you’ll disappear. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”
He looked bashful for precisely one and a half seconds before pasting on that scowl. “I told ye. We don’t need to see one another. Not unless ye’re suggesting we move forward our deadline for heir makin’?”
She ignored this. She would not be distracted by his nonsense .
“We shall discuss why you are skulking about your own home later,” she said.
“Skulking!” he repeated, outraged.
She ignored this, too. “But first, I want to know why you are neglecting your duties as a duke.”
She hadn’t actually planned this phrasing to rile him into a response, but had she tried, she couldn’t have done better, she realized, as he outright gaped at her in fury. If he was willing to marry a woman that he wanted naught to do with, all for the sake of duty, he’d no doubt respond poorly to being faced with his own negligence.
She pointedly did not react to his outrage. Her thoughts about her husband were…complex, but still none of her well-honed instincts told her to fear his anger.
“I am not neglecting my duties as a duke,” he insisted when she failed to scamper away like a terrified little rabbit at the force of his glower.
Grace gave him a bored look. “I have it on good authority that your tenants are terrified of you. Some need new roofs. Others need their farming equipment modernized if they’re to keep up with other local producers.” She’d done a bit of investigating since speaking to Mrs. O’Mailey and Mrs. Bradley and had learned that they’d only brought the most serious concern to Grace’s attention—there was far more that needed attending.
“And yet, you appear unaware,” she pressed when a flicker of surprise crossed her husband’s face. “Which leaves me wondering: what are you doing all day if not caring for your duchy?”
“You,” he said, pointing at her, “need to mind your own business.”
“It is my business,” she countered, voice still calm. “I am the duchess now. Or did you forget?”
He narrowed his eyes. She stood her ground. He took a step forward. She still stood her ground. He wouldn’t catch her out with that trick twice.
“I dinnae forget,” he grumbled. “But that’s man’s work. A man’s business. And therefore naught for you to concern yerself over.”
“Maybe not,” she allowed, inspecting her fingernails. “Except for the fact that you are not concerning yourself over it. Thus, I must concern myself, or else tell the tenants, ‘Ah, I’m just a woman, so enjoy the drip over your beds.’”
“It’s over their beds ?” Caleb asked before he remembered that he was trying to put her off.
Grace had no idea, honestly, but she shrugged. “I’m sure if it isn’t, they don’t mind getting icy water dripping into their food, or on their kitchen tables, or while they’re sewing by the fire, or?—”
“All right, lass, I get your point,” he grumbled. “If I tell ye I’ll see to it, will ye keep yer nose out of my business?”
“If it gets done,” she said, “there won’t be business for me to poke into. Unless, of course, there are more things the tenants need, more ways that you have been derelict. Then you shall find that I am very much involved.”
He growled. He actually growled.
Grace decided this meant that this conversation was going far better than she had hoped. Annoyed was more promising than apathetic, in her opinion.
“I said I’d do it,” he huffed.
“As a point of clarity,” she said, holding up a finger—see how he liked having someone poke at his nose, huh? “You did not say any such thing. You asked if I would leave you be if you did it.”
“What are ye, a bloody solicitor? I’m not derelict. I’ll see to it.”
She smiled. “And I will keep my nose right where it is, until I am satisfied of that fact.”
Talking to him at all had irritated him; accusing him of ignoring his duties had angered him.
But implying that he was a liar, Grace realized, outright offended him.
“I do as I say, lass,” he said, voice low and serious, as he took another step toward her.
This time, she couldn’t resist moving back, just slightly. Except she’d been so close to the fire when she’d started that this nearly put her back into the flames, might have left the trailing ends of her blanket into the coals, if not for her husband swiftly seizing her around the shoulders and whirling her onto a low couch.
Momentum brought him nearly atop her, his weight palpable if not oppressive above her, one of his hands cradled behind her head.
His nearness—the great broad physicality of him—caused her breath to catch in her throat.
“Oh yes?” she challenged. Those honed instincts of which she was so proud had apparently decided to go on holiday, as this was, she knew even as she did it, very stupid. “I seem to recall you not completing one specific promise.”
She licked her lips to punctuate the sentence, and it almost made his words from the other night audible in the air between them.
Perhaps there might be a way to…prepare .
They were now nearly a week into Caleb’s two-week deadline; Grace had been thinking about that ticking clock—and about his comment in the portrait gallery—more than she cared to admit.
It was, she’d tried to tell herself, simple curiosity. Something about having one’s reputation smashed to pieces led to wondering what all the fuss was even about. It had nothing to do with any specific man.
Nothing at all.
Especially not this one.
“Oh, aye?” Caleb murmured. She felt the rumble go through him as he let a tiny bit more of his weight sink atop her. She wanted to dislike it.
She probably liked it, she reasoned, because it was crushing the air out of her, which was probably why, she further argued to herself, she was getting a touch lightheaded and stupid.
“Indeed,” she said, her voice a little breathy, like the most intolerable of the flirtatious misses at Society events. “Unless you intend to—” A thousand inappropriate words crossed her mind, and she used her last grasp at sense to not say any of them out loud. “—ah, produce heirs , from across the house, I don’t think avoiding me is proper preparation.”
There was a pause while Caleb looked down at her like he was thinking something through. Bully for him. Grace’s ability to think was currently off somewhere having a nighttime lark.
“Ye know,” he said, something she couldn’t place in his voice, “I think ye might be right.”
And then, before a retort could come to her, he pressed his mouth to hers.
It was like their previous kiss in that it lit her up, warmed her instantly, made her limbs feel simultaneously full of energy and lax with languor. It was very much unlike their previous kiss in that, instead of quickly rushing away like she’d jabbed him with a fork, Caleb let his weight sink more fully atop her as his mouth positively plundered hers.
Grace let out a little whimper as his mouth moved against her, as his tongue danced out to touch her lip. Her body knew, somehow, how to react; she opened her lips a fraction wider, let her tongue brush against his, tentatively at first, then more firmly. She wrangled an arm free from the blanket and tossed it around his neck.
“Christ, leannan ,” he grumbled, nipping at her bottom lip and making her gasp. “Daenae move about like that. I cannae take it.”
Grace wasn’t sure what he meant by this until she felt the unmistakable hardness at the front of his pants where his hips pressed against her leg. It was surprisingly thrilling, the experience sending a shiver through her that was very unlike the cringe of revulsion she’d felt whenever Noel Packard had decided it was acceptable to relieve himself on whatever shrubbery happened to be nearby?—
She pushed the thought from her mind, and another probing swipe from her husband’s tongue banished it entirely. She used her one free arm to cling to his neck, to try to gain leverage to press herself upward into him more firmly.
The hand that had been cradling her head clamped tightly, half spanning the base of her skull, fingers winding into the hair at her nape. This pressure, too, was marvelous, and another soft whimper tore from Grace’s throat.
“Please,” she said, tugging at him. Kissing was grand . All the years she’d not spent doing it were stupid .
“Patience, patience,” he soothed, kissing her lips, her cheeks, her jaw.
But patience was also stupid, so Grace wriggled—her husband’s prohibition be damned—until she could take his mouth again. They kissed for long moments, tongues tangling, hands roaming, though never venturing to more illicit places, as if by unspoken agreement.
If this man weren’t Caleb Gulliver, Duke of Montgomery, Grace might have even said it was a nice moment . Since it was Caleb, she could only conclude that kissing held inherent virtues, assuming one’s partner did not smell revolting.
Caleb, she vaguely noted, always smelled pleasant, like soap and sometimes whisky.
Eventually, the kissing grew unhurried, almost languid. Grace had always assumed lovemaking, and anything even remotely connected to it, was frantic, animalistic. Shouldn’t it have been more brutish? Shouldn’t she have been swept away by her passions?
Instead, she just felt…warm. And yes, part of this warmth was focused in, ah, unmentionable locations, but Grace did not feel a particular urgency to tend to any of it. Doing so would mean moving, and she thought she might be content to lay here like this forever, Caleb’s hands in her hair, her own fingers carding through the short strands at the base of his skull, her wrapped in a blanket and pinned down under the heat of him.
She wondered, insanely, what it would be like to sleep with him warming the bed beside her, before reminding herself that she would never know. They might eventually consummate their marriage, but she could not imagine this gruff, rude man cuddling up beside her.
The thought made her stiffen, which made Caleb pull back as if stung. The cool air felt like a slap against all the places where he had lain.
“Right,” she said as he pushed himself upright, as ungraceful as she’d ever seen him. “I, um. That was very. Informative.”
“Grace,” he said, and she didn’t know if he was reaching out his hand or if he was censuring her, and she could not wait to find out for certain.
There were stories, of course, about women who confused physical intimacies with affection. These cautionary tales were mostly bandied about when discussing rakes, the ones who made sweet promises that were never followed through upon, leaving women brokenhearted and ruined behind them. Caleb might be many things—most of them annoying—but Grace did not think he was a rake.
He was dangerous, however. Not against her person, but against the fragile, tender part of her that used to cherish a dream of marrying a man she loved, and who loved her in return. Those dreams had died the night Dowling clamped his hand over her mouth and dragged her into the garden.
She could not risk them being revived. Especially not with her husband.
“Goodnight,” she said hastily, backing away like he was some rabid animal poised to strike. She even relented and left her blanket behind, though it left her chilly and traversing the halls like some sort of tragic ghost.
When she crossed the threshold of the library, she turned and fled, only pausing once she reached her room how she had managed to have the tables turn upon her so quickly—and in such a dramatic fashion.