For Love of the Duke(64)
The former duchess had managed this? A pang pulled at her heart, as she imagined a happy woman married to an equally happy man, sitting together. In that vision Jasper sat reading poems to his perfect duchess who completed the embroidery.
Her throat moved up and down in a reflexive manner, and she loathed herself for begrudging them the happiness of even an imagined bucolic moment together.
“Your Grace?” Wrinkleton spoke again, interrupting her melancholy musings.
“Then they need to come down, Wrinkleton. It is unfair to the duchess’ memory.” And if he’d not help her, well, then she’d tear down every last one of the sheets herself.
With an unladylike leap that would have earned her quite the setting down from Mother, Katherine reached for another sheet. From beyond her shoulder, she registered someone moving close, and then stopping beside her.
She peered over at Wrinkleton.
He cleared his throat. “Then, please allow me to offer my assistance.”
A polite rejection hovered at her lips, at the prospect of burdening the older servant, but instead she nodded. They set to work and a short while later, the tall, imposing foyer had been transformed into a kind of floral heaven forever memorialized upon the fabric by the former duchess. I’ve not much time,” she went on, and moved over to the next sheet, “before the eve of Christmas.”
Katherine stepped back and considered the work she and Wrinkleton had done here. A kind of bittersweet wistfulness filled her heart. How very odd to consider that these masterpieces were done by the woman who’d earned Jasper’s love, and that they should hang here forgotten and forlorn for none to see.
She meandered over to the corner of the explosion of roses and studied the fabric. A chill stole through her as she considered that the other woman’s fingers had handled the piece. It served as a stark reminder that Katherine was nothing more than an interloper on what had been a true marriage between Jasper and Lydia, his true duchess.
Her gaze climbed up the product and settled on the vicious thorns upon the fuchsia rose bush. She angled her head. How very out of place those vicious points were. Mayhap sewn there by the other woman to remind whichever woman who entered these halls of the danger in expecting affection from the duke.
The greenish-black thorn blurred before her eyes, and with a frustrated sense of shock, Katherine realized that tears threatened to spill. She blinked them back. She’d not shed a tear since her father had died and left their lives in utter shambles. Now, since she’d met Jasper Waincourt, the 8th Duke of Bainbridge, he’d turned her into a veritable watering pot.
A white kerchief dangled before her, and she stiffened, accepting the silent offering from Wrinkleton. She discreetly, dabbed at her eyes. Taking a steady, controlled breath, she looked to the butler.
“Now, is there perchance a footman who might assist me?”
Jasper tapped the tip of his pen in a distracted rhythm atop the surface of his mahogany desk. The click-click-click-click of the pen meeting wood uncharacteristically loud in the quiet of his office.
His steward had left him several hours ago.
He paused, mid-movement, the pen suspended above the surface of the desk.
Jasper suspected he’d offended his wife’s sensibilities with his clear articulation of the expectations for their union . She’d not joined him to break her fast, and had remained conspicuously absent.
He tossed his pen down and leaned back in his chair. The leather creaked in protest.
Jasper did not care for what change his actions had wrought upon his wife. The Katherine he knew since he’d first pulled her free from the Thames had a vibrant spirit that could not be quashed, and yet in the matter of her forty-eight hours and handful of minutes since she’d become his duchess, she’d closeted herself away in her chambers and not come out.
And he didn’t like her absence from his life.
Rather, he detested it.
His gaze strayed over to the wide floor-length windows along the back wall of his office. The grayish-white sky perfectly suited his mood.
He swiped a hand across his face.
He might not want a marriage in the true sense with his spirited wife, but neither did she deserve his recent callous treatment. With her absence, she made him feel…feel…guilty. And he didn’t like to be made to feel guilty. Or feel anything, for that matter. With a growl, Jasper surged to his feet. He’d done a formidable job of separating himself from the thoughts and feelings of those around him.
Then Katherine stumbled into his life, literally stumbled, if one considered their meeting at the Frost Fair and in one fateful meeting, she’d thrown his world into upheaval.
Jasper wrenched the door open, and stormed through the entrance. He marched with deliberate steps toward her chambers.