Page 59 of The Duke’s Caught Bride

Alice rang for tea. Then she sat and watched her father continue his inventory of the room. He arrived at her eventually, in the manner of a man returning to the least interesting exhibit in a gallery.

“The Duke seems satisfied with the arrangement,” he said. “People say that he walks into his club as though the world has rearranged itself in his honor, which I suppose it has.” He paused. “And you? You have made yourself… useful?”

“I manage the household. I spend time with the twins.”

“Yes.” He turned the hat brim between his fingers. “A ready-made family. Not quite what one hoped for a daughter, but under the circumstances, one takes what presents itself.”

The tea arrived. Alice poured it with steady hands, glad to have something to do.

“I received a letter from Mrs. Hartley,” her father said, accepting a cup. “Cousin Barbara’s sister. She says the Cheswicks have been making the most extraordinary claims at dinners. That you were seen at the Pembroke garden party in a state of, shall we say, disarray.” He lifted the cup. “I trust there is an explanation.”

“The afternoon was warm.”

“Alice.” The social pleasantness dropped half a tone into the one she had grown up inside, the one that meant she had failed to understand something obvious. “You are a duchess. The scrutiny is considerable. You cannot afford behavior that invites gossip.”

“I was at a garden party.”

“You were seen in a state of…” He set the cup down with a click. “The Cheswick girl said your hair was in disarray and there was grass on your dress. You are a guest in the better drawing rooms of London on the strength of your husband’s name and the very great fortune that accompanies it. People are looking for any reason to dismiss you. You cannot hand them the ammunition.”

“I appreciate the counsel,” Alice said.

“I am not offering counsel. I am stating a fact.”

He looked at her directly, and the look was the one she had carried since girlhood: the precise and practiced assessment of a man measuring a bolt of cloth and finding it short of the required length.

“You were not made for this life. We both know it,” he continued. “Rachel would have navigated these rooms with ease. She had the training, the temperament, the… well…” He spread his hand briefly in a gesture that encompassed her figure and dismissed it in the same motion. “The presence. You will have to work considerably harder than she would have.”

The room had gone very still. Alice was aware of the square outside the window, the creak of the house settling in the mid-morning sun. She was also aware of her own hands, which lay very still in her lap. Not trembling. She was not going to tremble.

“Rachel has not been found,” she said. “Kenneth has engaged⁠—”

“I am aware of what Bearmoor has done,” he cut her off, the pleasantness gone entirely. “You would do better to focus on what is before you rather than concerning yourself with matters that are well in hand. Your sister’s situation is not your burden. Your burden is this marriage, and you are not managing it with the distinction I would hope for.”

“With respect, Father,” Alice said, and she was proud of the steadiness of it, the absence of any tremor, “I am managing it precisely as well as I intend to.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means⁠—”

“It means,” said a voice from the doorway, “that my wife’s management of this household and this marriage is not a subject on which her father’s opinion is required.”

Kenneth stood at the threshold. He stepped into the room without haste.

“Your Grace.” Her father stood up and bowed his head. “I did not realize you were at home.”

“I am. I had to finish some important matters before checking on the reason for my father-in-law’s visit.” Kenneth crossed to Alice and stood beside her chair.

He did not touch her. He simply stood there, close enough that the warmth of him registered against her arm, and looked at her father with the expression of a man who had decided to be patient and was finding that it cost him something.

“I also heard the substance of this conversation,” he added.

Her father’s chin lifted. “A father has the right to speak frankly with his daughter.”

“You may speak with her as frankly as she permits.” Kenneth’s voice was quiet. “What you may not do, in this house or any other, is use frankness as a vehicle for something that is not frankness. What you have just said to my wife is not counsel, Lord Peltbury. It is a long habit in a new setting, and the setting has changed.”

“I am simply suggesting⁠—”

“I heard what you were suggesting.” He moved to the mantel, one hand resting on the carved edge. The movement had no aggression in it, only the weight of a man occupying the room he owned without needing to assert it. “Let me be plain: Alice is the Duchess of Bearmoor. She manages this household, navigates a position for which she had no preparation and considerable opposition, and does so with a grace that I have watched this house improve under. If you have come to offer her your assessment of how well she measures against her sister’s hypothetical performance, you will find no audience for it here. Not now, and not at any other time you choose to arrive unannounced at my door.”