Birdie and the Beastly Duke by Sofi Laporte
Chapter 6
Birdie awoke lying on a threadbare sofa in the great hall. She was wrapped in a thick, woollen plaid, feeling warm and drowsy. A fire roared in the massive fireplace across from her.
Crikey. She hadn’t fainted, had she? She never fainted. And if she did, how had she ended up here? Had he carried her?
“No, Higgins, I asked, did you take up her bags, not, did she eat haggis.” That was his voice. Deep and harsh. Birdie shuddered.
Had she really just married him? She’d dreamed he was a duke.
“Yes, Your Grace,” Higgins replied. “Haggis we have to order down at the village. Do you want me to get some? We have porridge now for the wedding breakfast.”
Your Grace.She hadn’t dreamt it. She’d married the phantom in the tower. Oh dear, what had she done?
She turned her head and watched as Higgins shuffled towards the suit of armour next to the staircase. Eversleigh reacted quickly, took the man by his shoulders, and gently led him to the left, to prevent a collision. “The door is here. Hold on to the rail so you don’t fall. The stairs down are tricky.”
Birdie turned over on the sofa to see where they were, bumped into a side table next to it and toppled over an oil lamp. It clattered to the stone floor.
Immediately, the men fell silent.
“Sorry,” Birdie mumbled. It hadn’t been lit, so there was no harm done.
“Miss Burns. Er.” The man she’d married not an hour ago cleared his throat. Clearly, he did not know how to address his new wife. “Cecily?”
Birdie swallowed. “Birdie, please.” She squinted at him. The man had retreated into the shadows. Where were her glasses? She saw something glint on the table in front of her. There they were. Relieved, she pushed them up her nose. She still couldn’t see him any clearer, because he’d retreated even further into the shadows. There was not much light coming through the stained-glass windows from above.
“Birdie?”
“M–my friends call me that.” Now would’ve been an appropriate moment for her to confess that she’d swapped places with the real Cecily. Yet she felt oddly reluctant to do so. “Did someone mention wedding breakfast?” She looked around for Higgins, who was setting the table rather noisily, dropping the plates and cups randomly on the table.
“There is some porridge, Higgins says.” Her husband looked like he was about to flee. Was the man frightened of her? How curious.
Birdie pulled out a rickety chair from the table and sat down.
“Well? Aren’t you going to join me?” Birdie pointed to the place across from her. She caught Higgins’ hand just in time before he poured the tea right into the bowl of porridge instead of the teacup.
“Thank you, Higgins, I can take it from here.” Birdie took the teapot from his skeletal hand.
“You want beer?” He squinted at her. “For breakfast?”
Birdie choked back a laugh. “No. Tea is fine.” She shook her head, and Higgins shuffled away, mumbling, “Beer she wants. For her wedding breakfast. What has this world come to.”
Tea, tea, my kingdom for a cup of tea. At least it smelled properly strong. Birdie took a sip and nearly spat it out again. It was the strongest tea she’d ever had in her entire life, pitch black and so bitter it burned her tongue. She topped her cup up with milk and added four spoons of sugar.
Her husband approached cautiously and sat down at the farthest end of the table. At this distance, they couldn’t properly converse; they’d have to shout at each other.
Without much ado, Birdie picked up her cup and wandered down to the other side of the table and sat down closer to him.
He clearly didn’t feel comfortable with this and edged away from his seat.
He’s a creature of shadows, it crossed through her mind.
From here, the fire flickered over his face, and she could make out the wounded side of his face.
Now that she had the comfort of warm liquid in her stomach and had got over the excitement of her wedding, she could’ve kicked herself.
It was merely a very bad burn. Some scars were thick and bulky, others red and blue. It didn’t look pretty. Scars were scars. But it wasn’t as monstrous as she’d first thought. Where she’d initially thought he had a hole for an eye was a black eyepatch. In the church, she hadn’t seen the covering; it had looked like the gaping eyehole of a skull. He had a bit of a pirate-like look about him. It made him look quite dashing. He also wasn’t old at all. She guessed him to be in his mid-thirties, at the most.
Birdie sipped her tea thoughtfully.
“Haven’t you had your eyeful of me yet?” he ground out.
Birdie flushed. “I apologise if I’m being rude.” She looked away, but her eyes found their way back to his face again immediately. It was odd how she found it impossible to look away.
To distract herself, she got up, fetched two bowls of porridge, poured milk and sugar over them and placed one in front of him. A peace offering.
The porridge was lumpy and half cold, but it was better than nothing.
“Who is Arabella?”
She looked at him with enormous eyes. “Arabella?”
“You said, before you fainted, ‘If only Arabella knew.’”
She fiddled with her spectacles. Under no circumstances would she tell her new husband, a duke, the silly story of the wishing well.
“She is a childhood friend of mine, now the Duchess of Morley. For some reason, Arabella desired all her friends to marry dukes.” Birdie shrugged and played with her cup. “She herself is the daughter of a duke, so perhaps it was natural for her to think along those lines. I, myself, never really cared much about it.” That was a half-truth. She’d not particularly cared about dukes, but she did want to get married and have her own family, her very own home. She had dreamed about it for as long as she could remember.
“Why did you return?” her husband asked abruptly.
Birdie stirred her porridge, carefully weighing her next words. After a moment of reflection, she decided to tell him the truth. “Because it was raining, and I had no place to go. I realised my reaction was overly exaggerated, that you clearly weren’t a phantom, and that I wanted to get married. Very much so.”
He looked taken aback. “Why?”
Why did a girl want to get married? Wasn’t that self-evident? “Independence,” she replied. “A married woman is freer than an unmarried one. I never enjoyed being a spinster. Existing at the charity of others. If you marry, you have your own household in which you can be in charge. Even if it’s just deciding what’s for supper.”
“You could’ve married someone else.”
Birdie uttered an involuntary laugh.
“I fail to understand what is so amusing.” The man’s black eyebrows came together in a scowl.
“It is simple. No one would have me. I have nothing to offer. Neither prospects, dowry, nor, alas, beauty.” Birdie pulled at a bedraggled lock of hair that hung limply down her face. She still had mud stuck in her hair. She looked candidly into her husband’s face. “And, as it turns out, you’re a duke. A somewhat eccentric one who seems to live the life of a hermit, but a duke, nonetheless. That’s not such a bad catch.”
“But you didn’t know I was a duke when you returned.” He emphasised the word ‘duke’ as if this seemed to matter to him.
“No, I didn’t. It came as a surprise.” She stirred her porridge slowly. She wondered whether Cecily would’ve liked to marry him after all, had she known he was a duke.
Her husband sighed. “I inherited the dukedom unexpectedly from a very remote relative. So distant, that the ‘relative’ is not even applicable. I had no idea there was such a title in my family. But it turned out there was, and he had no issue. So, I inherited.” He shrugged dismissively.
Birdie propped an elbow on the table. It all sounded wildly romantic.
“You inherited the castle and the title and the grounds. That’s rather fantastic. That doesn’t happen too often to people.”
His harsh laughter made her jump.
“I inherited more debt than anything else. This pile of stone here, and another degenerated estate further south. But never fear. My captain’s pension yields sufficient funds to take care of a wife.”
“So, what is going to happen next?” she asked conversationally. He still had not touched his bowl. Was he ever going to eat that?
“Next?”
“Yes. What happens now?”
“You finish your porridge, get back in the carriage and return to where you came from.”
Birdie dropped her spoon in the bowl with a clank.
“But we’re only just married!”
“Yes. Thank you for reminding me of that incontrovertible fact. I had all but forgotten.” His voice was dry.
“I don’t understand.”
He fiddled with something underneath the table and then thumped a heavy-looking velvet pouch before her. The contents inside clinked.
“What is this?” Birdie raised a perplexed eyebrow.
“Your allowance. You will receive this amount per annum from now on. You can do with it as you wish.”
“That is supremely generous of you, but—” Birdie shook her head. “You mentioned you wanted me to leave. Or did I misunderstand?”
He nodded tersely. “The condition is that you return to the vicarage. You may also stay at Sandmoore Hall, but I have been informed that it is in worse shape than this place here. London is another alternative. My father’s townhouse.”
Birdie pressed her fingers against her temple. “You are sending me away? This marriage is to be in name only?”
“Precisely.”
“You think that by marrying me,”––or rather Cecily––“you are fulfilling your promise, and you can simply dismiss me? I am your wife! What kind of promise-keeping is that?”
A faint blush covered the healthy part of his cheek.
“It is the only way for me to honour both our fathers’ wishes and take care of you, while simultaneously ensuring that you are not imprisoned here. You are free to go.”
“Imprisoned,” echoed Birdie. “I find it rather difficult to understand your train of thought.”
“You will have nothing to do with all this here.” Eversleigh gestured to the medieval hallway around them. “You can lead a trouble-free existence elsewhere. Return to your father’s town, if you wish. Or set up house in London. As Duchess of Dunross, all doors will be open to you. My pension won’t allow for a lavish lifestyle, but it’s sufficient for you to enjoy the season. Take lovers. I don’t care what you do with your life, as long as you leave me in peace here.”
Birdie’s mouth dropped open.
He wanted to get rid of her, did he? Well, he hadn’t counted on the stubbornness of Birdie.
“I think I shan’t,” she said, in a quiet but firm tone. “I think I’d like to stay here.” As she cleaned out her porridge bowl, she added, “I’d prefer to be properly married. With a proper family that comes with it. Children and all that.” She reached for his bowl. If he wasn’t going to eat it, then she would.