“Your new home.” His wide mouth quirked in a half-smile. “Do you like it?”
“L-like it?” she sputtered. “I don’t understand.” Her hands twisted together in her lap, her fingers finding the amber bracelet and worrying the smooth, polished stones. “Do you work here?”
He blinked, then smiled wider. “Why, yes, I do.”
“What of the cottage?”
“No, I don’t work there. Not usually, in any case. It’s more a place to escape, get off by myself for a while—ah, here we are.”
Puzzled, Kendra turned from Trick to the house, where the double doors were flung open and a steady stream of crimson-liveried servants poured out and down the wide marble steps.
“Welcome home, your grace.”
“Our congratulations!”
“Such a lovely bride!”
“Your grace.” A straight-backed, gray-haired man extended one white-gloved hand to Kendra, presumably to help her down.
She paused before putting her fingers in his, looking about in utter confusion. “Your grace?” she repeated under her breath.
“Your grace,” Trick confirmed, helping her to the gravel. Two grooms appeared from nowhere and took the caleche while more servants scurried to join the double line that flanked the tall, carved front doors.
Trick grasped Kendra by the elbow and guided her toward the steps. “May I present my wife, the Duchess of Amberley. I trust you will all do your best to see she’s happy here.”
Happy? She nodded and smiled stiffly, all the while planning Trick’s murder.
Which would come right after her brothers’.
THIRTEEN
“YOU’RE A DUKE! The Duke of Amberley, no less!” It was unbelievable. No wonder Colin had said the amber bracelet was fitting. She hooked two fingers through it, barely resisting an urge to rip it off.
“Such venom. Losh, you say it as though a duke is the worst sort of knave.”
“In this case, he is.” Kendra paced the red-velvet-hung bedchamber. “How dare you keep such a secret from me!”
“I don’t hold with lying, Kendra. But your brothers asked me not to tell you, and I reckoned it was harmless enough, in the scheme of things.”
“Harmless? You tricked me! I would never have married you had I known—”
“Even though you were in love with me?”
Kendra wanted to slap the smug look off his handsome face. “Love, hah! Why, I don’t even know you. Wherever did you get such an absurd idea?”
“Your brothers told me.”
“They knew nothing about it.” Feeling color creep into her cheeks, she hastened to add, “It wouldn’t matter, anyway. Whatever I may or may not have felt for you was destroyed by your lie.”
“Heart’s wounds.” Trick sighed and dropped onto a tufted brocade chair. “It wasn’t a lie, and most certainly not an important one.”
She only glared at him, her jaw set.
“And what, pray tell, is so bad about being a duchess? Every other girl in England would be thrilled beyond words to find herself wed to a duke.”
“I’m not like other girls, and I am never beyond words.”
“Why does that not surprise me?” Trick returned dryly. He crossed his long legs at the ankles. “I really don’t understand this, Kendra. How can marrying a duke be such a disastrous occurrence?”
“It’s too hard to explain.”
“Try.” He crossed his arms. “I’m listening.”
With a huff of impatience, she sat on the red velvet bed. She parked her hands behind her and looked up, trying to think. Above her loomed the underside of a gathered silk canopy fit for a king.
Or a duke, ranked above everyone but royalty.
“Your grace, it isn’t the title itself that sets my teeth on edge, but what it symbolizes. To me. To the world in general. All the good people who weren’t lucky enough to…”
This wasn’t working. Feeling beyond words after all, she sat straight. But the expectant look in Trick’s eyes only frustrated her further.
“Just look at this!” She leapt up and gestured wildly at the room: the padded, satin-lined walls, the carved and gilded ceiling, the four-poster bed crowned with garish poufs of red-dyed ostrich feathers. “See what I mean? Who wants to live in a place like this? I swear, it puts Whitehall to shame!”
He gave a short bark of a laugh at what she knew must be a look of utter disgust on her face. “I know women who would kill for—”
“Kill for this? That’s the first thing you’ve said all day that makes any sense.”
“I don’t care for this decor, either,” he said calmly. “But why do you hate it so much? I want to understand.”
“Oh, I knew this would be impossible to explain! It’s long, and it’s convoluted, and it doesn’t seem to make sense to anyone but me. It’s certainly never made sense to any of my brothers.”
“I’m not your brothers. Tell me, however long it takes.”
With a sigh, she sat back down and thought for a long minute, then clasped her hands in her lap before beginning.
“I won’t pretend I don’t enjoy balls and pretty clothes and the other things money can buy as much as the next girl. But I think I know what’s important beneath all the trappings. I told my brothers again and again that I don’t care about titles. I wanted to marry a man I was wildly in love with, but even more, a man I could admire. For who he was inside, not a false honor that society had settled upon him.”
“I didn’t ask to be a duke—” Trick began.
Waving him off, she jumped up again, not at all ready to listen yet. “During the Commonwealth,” she said as she resumed pacing, “my family’s title was a liability, not an asset. We hadn’t the choice to stay home and go about our business like normal people. Instead we were exiled paupers, dragged from Paris, to Cologne, to Brussels, Bruges, Antwerp—wherever King Charles and his court wandered. It was then I learned it’s what’s inside a person that counts. Some people were kind to us, and some were not. And their rank had nothing to do with it.” Her voice dropping, she stopped and
