The Inconvenient Duchess

soul.
    She shuddered. If only he would smile at her, perhaps the effect would not be so disturbing. There had been kindness on his face during the wedding. And when he put her to bed the night before. He had not seemed at all frightening to her then, when she had felt a protective warmth radiating from him, that had drawn her to him. Perhaps, when he returned from London, things would be different.
    If he returned.
    She tore her gaze away from her husband and walked a few steps further down the gallery to where St John stood before the portrait of another beautiful woman. When he turned from the painting and looked to her, there was a tear in his eye.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I did not mean to interrupt.’
    ‘Quite all right, Miranda, dear. It was I who brought you here, and then I was rude enough to forget that fact.’
    She looked up at the painting he had been admiring. It was of a beautiful blonde woman in a rose-coloured gown. But beautiful was too mild a word. The woman was radiant. Her hair was gold and her cheeks a delicate pink overlaying the cream of her skin. Her breasts were high and round,and outlined against the curve of her bodice. Her height must have been almost a head below Miranda’s own. And yet the painting was more than life size, and she felt dwarfed by it.
    ‘This is Bethany. She was quite the loveliest woman ever to grace this house.’
    ‘Is she an ancestor of yours?’ Even as she said it, she revised her estimate. The gown was only slightly out of fashion. This woman must be her contemporary.
    ‘No ancestor of mine. But you have much in common with her. You share a husband. Bethany was my brother’s first wife.’
    She stared in stunned silence. No wonder he was angry to find himself attached to a dowdy hen after losing this angel. ‘And she died in childbirth?’ She could see how it was possible. The narrow-hipped girl in the picture scarcely seemed large enough to bear a child.
    ‘That is what they say.’ His voice was strangely flat.
    She stared at him in curiosity. ‘Do you have any reason to doubt the story?’
    ‘Oh, she died in childbed, sure enough, but I always thought…’ he sighed ‘…had she married happily, the end might have been different for her.’
    ‘She was not happy?’ It seemed so odd that a woman such as this would not have been happy.
    St John’s smile was tight-lipped. ‘You have met my brother, Miranda. And seen his moods. It was like throwing a butterfly into a storm to wed the two together. They were married less than a year when she died, but her spirit had fled long before her body failed her.’
    ‘But, why—?’
    ‘Why did she marry him?’ St John sighed. ‘Why wouldany woman choose my brother? Be honest, my dear. For the same reason that you came to him.’
    Desperation, she thought, bitterly.
    St John continued as though an answer wasn’t required. ‘The title. Say what I might about him, my brother is a powerful and a rich man. There is much temptation in that. And she had much to offer.’ He paused, looking back at the picture. ‘This does not do her justice. Her eyes were bluer than that. Her hair more gold, and soft as silk to the touch. She sang like an angel, and her laugh itself was music. And she was delicate. To look at her made you think of a crystal goblet.’ His eyes grew hard. ‘My brother saw her once and knew he must have her. She was dazzled by his wealth and went willingly into his arms.’ His body tensed. ‘And when I saw her, just a few months after the marriage, she was desperate to get away. He terrified her. When I think of her, soft as a rose petal, in the hands of that—’ He choked on the last word, unwilling or unable to say what he was thinking. ‘But there was nothing I could do. I was only eighteen, had no power, no money to offer her.’ He gripped her by the shoulders and spun her to look at him. ‘I will not make the mistake again. Miranda. My means are limited, but, should you need them, all I have is yours to command.’
    She struggled for a response. Foremost in her mind were the words, too late . ‘If you had a warning to share, yesterday would have been a better time than today.’
    ‘Yesterday my brother was still in the house and the servants obey him, not me. He’s gone, now, and I can speak freely. Say the word and I will help you flee and you can be long gone before he returns.’
    Flee to where? There was no home to return to, no friend to take her in. ‘I am