“No one has ever been comfortable around the Talbot sisters—and that is before one of us is married to their potential suitor.” This, from Mark Landry’s wife. Or maybe the Countess of Clare. He could never tell them apart.
“Good Lord. Even saying that aloud sounds like insanity,” said the other. He’d forgotten what chattering magpies his sisters-in-law could be. But whichever one said that last bit wasn’t wrong. The entire plan was mad.
He did not look to the assembled women, instead focusing completely on his wife, who watched him for a long moment before saying, “Well then. I imagine there is a great deal to do.”
Seraphina lifted her skirts in one hand and, clutching the cat basket in the other with all the grace she might have if she were carrying a scepter, climbed the steps of the home to which she was mistress. He remained on the drive, watching her, transfixed by her smooth, fluid movements, even as she stilled on the threshold, turning to look down to him. “Why is your mother not playing this role?”
He did not hesitate. “The dowager is dead.”
Seraphina revealed no emotion. “I am sorry.”
“Are you?” He couldn’t help himself.
“Not really, no.”
Her sisters let out a little collection of surprised breath at the frank reply and, for the first time since he’d seen the carriage turn up the drive, Malcolm understood that even they were unsettled by this new, strong Seraphina.
But he, too, had changed. He was no longer afraid of the truth. He nodded once. “No, neither am I.”
He didn’t know what he expected her to say. He didn’t know what he expected from her at all—actions, words, both, neither. She did not speak. Instead, she took what seemed to be a long, full breath, and turned her back on him, entering the house.
And Malcolm realized that she might never do what he expected ever again.
She should have chosen a different bedchamber.
In the moment, with her sisters chattering like magpies, it had been the most natural thing in the world to climb Highley’s wide center staircase and turn left into the massive family wing, assigning them each one of the manor house’s most luxurious chambers, as richly appointed as she remembered.
It was only once she was finished with the task that she realized that the only room left in the cradle of her sisters’ security was the chamber that she had been assigned years earlier, when she was duchess.
When she was duchess. Sera always thought of the title in the past, as she did everything to do with Haven. After all, it had been two years, seven months since they’d last seen each other, and more than three since they had actually shared civil conversation, and so the past seemed the best place for them.
Even now. As she stood in the window of the rooms reserved for the Duchess of Haven, watching the sun creep up over the eastern edge of the estate, chasing black sky to grey that might have been lavender, if someone wished to call it that.
Seraphina preferred the safety of grey.
And the room was grey, after all, with memories, muted and aged, as though decades had passed instead of years, and with them, promise.
It had been a mistake to choose this bedchamber, because it had once been hers. And she was no longer that woman. In fact, in mere weeks, she would be free of that woman, and this room would belong to another.
The room. The house. The husband. The bed.
But three nights of fitful sleep in that bed had done little to dissuade her from the fact that she should have chosen another room.
“You are awake.”
Sera started, whirling toward the words, spoken from the connecting doorway to the ducal bedchamber, where Haven stood as though she’d summoned him with her thoughts, perfectly turned out, looking like it was mid-morning instead of dawn. Looking like color in the grey. She narrowed her gaze on him. “That door was closed, Duke. You are not invited to use it.”
He raised a brow and made an elaborate show of straightening his shirtsleeve. “I was not aware I required an invitation, as it is my door.”
“As it is the door to my chamber, I prefer you think of it as belonging to me.”
One side of his mouth kicked up, and she hated the way he looked. Handsome and young and entirely too dangerous. “What say you we share it?”
Something shot through her at the teasing in the words. Something like memory. The echo of what seemed like an eternity past, when he was a man and she was a woman and that was all that seemed to matter.
What was his game?
She straightened her shoulders. “I say you are out of your mind if you think I am interested in sharing anything with you. Particularly close quarters.”
“You chose the room, Angel,” he said, his voice low and still tinged with the disuse of sleep. “Did you forget that it had the door?”
Her lips flattened into a thin line as the words threaded through her with an emotion unwelcome and long out of use. “Do not call me that.”
“There was a time when you liked it.”
A lifetime ago. “I never liked it. It’s a silly name.”
“The seraphim are the highest order of angels,” he reminded her. “You’re named for them.”
“You understand enough of my mother to know that she has never in her life had a spiritual thought, and you think she named me for an angel.”
He leaned against the door frame, folding his arms across his broad chest, as though it were perfectly normal for them to converse first thing in the morning. Casually. Like husband and wife. That half smile flickered again. “I think it, nonetheless.”
She gave a little laugh and returned her attention to the window. “I assure you the angelic was not in my mother’s mind when she named me. She thought it sounded aristocratic. That was her goal. Always.” She stopped, then added, “You know that goal intimately.”
The silence that fell between them should have been uncomfortable, full of that day long ago in this very house, when she and her mother had landed a duke. But it was not uncomfortable, not even when it summoned the memory of the horror on his face as he realized that they’d set a trap for him.
And they had trapped him. She’d trapped him. Because she’d never wanted anything more than him, and she’d believed that he wouldn’t have her without it. That he was too high and she too low, and happiness was not for them.
And happiness, it seemed, was not for them.
I would have married you.
We could have been.
The words had crashed around her, filled with his fury and betrayal. And the past tense. Everything with them, always in the past tense. Ephemera.
“Why are you awake?”
The change of topic did not unsettle her. It had been the hallmark of their short-lived relationship, quick movement of thought, rarely without the other easily following. “I wake early.” It was either that, or stay abed and let memory rattle. “And your future wife arrives today.”
“Not for hours.”
The sky had edged through grey and into pink, a deep, magnificent color that seemed too bright to be natural. “It’s going to rain,” she said, regretting the words the moment he moved, coming to stand behind her and follow her gaze to the sky.