The Duke's Headstrong Woman (Strong Women Find True Love 2)

"Gloomy? I suppose," he said half-heartedly, giving a forced smile.

"Are you... quite alright, Marshall? Has the rain storm or... some other manner, of happening, put you off of our conversation?" Nadia asked with worry, fearing she had perhaps not been what he had hoped in their intimate moments together, her own insecurities playing deep at the creases of her face.

"I'm quite alright, Lady Havenshire," he responded, dour. Lady Havenshire? She didn't enjoy hearing him call her that, no. She wanted to hear Nadia, the same way he had crooned it as they lay together, cloaked in need for one another.

"Are you worried my father will be cross with you, Marshall?" she whispered to him. He trotted along on lazy old Pierre, sighing and shaking his head.

"I've no worries about your father, no. He seemed quite agreeable to any... arrangements, being made between us," he spoke obliquely. Arrangements? What manner of trouble had befallen the duke to speak in such a manner?

"What manner of arrangements did you have in mind?" Lady Havenshire prodded at him as Shadow paced ahead.

"...We'll discuss it another time perhaps, m'lady," Marshall insisted. Silence fell; it remained with them as they paced back across the moors, through the grasslands, making the trip back to the stables. The entire trip, made in silence, and the doubts began to return to Nadia's mind. She had been so sure, in those loving and lusting moments together in the cabin, that she had finally found something special, but she began to fear for herself. She remembered Ms. Mulwray's urgings in her youth - men are animals, who will take from you what they wish, and you'll never know that they've selfishly availed themselves to you until it's too late.

Nadia thought and thought on it, with only the occasional horse-clops and whinnies to accompany her worried introspection.

When they arrived at the stable they remained silent; she had begun to wonder if these same doubts had been what had driven Lord Beckham to silence. Monsieur Therriault emerged from the stables with a yawn, welcoming the pair back with a tired grin.

"You must've 'ad quite a long day, what with the storm!" he proclaimed with a devious grin. Lady Havenshire gave him a sideways glance and a nervous smile; Lord Beckham simply dismounted poor Pierre, who laid immediately in the dirt, much to Monsieur Therriault's chagrin. "Lazy creature!" he exclaimed.

"We found an old cabin out in the wood and took refuge and... talked," Lady Havenshire commented, her words empty and distant.

"Ah, talked, eh?" the horse-keeper said. Lady Havenshire looked back and noticed that the duke had already left and begun to scale the path back to the manor; she hurried along behind him without another word, only hearing Monsieur Therriault berating Pierre with a string of French expletives.

"M'lord! I... I had wondered, how you intended to handle the conversation, with my father," Lady Havenshire said breathlessly, "about quite... what we had been doing, during the rainstorm? I had not thought on it, until the stable-keeper just asked," Lady Havenshire tried to pry more jokes, or conversation, or anything at all from Lord Beckham, who strode unfettered towards the manor.

"Your answer seemed to convince Monsieur Therriault just fine," he answered nonplussed, before returning to silence.

"Are you certain everything is fine? You don't seem to be fine," Lady Havenshire insisted, her worry beginning to transform into ire. What business had he to treat her so cross after the afternoon they'd had together? She began to fear she had failed him in some way, as they crossed through the garden, the doors to the manor opening wide. Lord Havenshire sat on the couch, as if he had spent the whole afternoon waiting anxious for the pair to return.

"Ah! Lord Beckham, Nadia, it's a pleasure to have you back," he announced, in a manner transparent enough that she could tell it had been rehearsed. Defeated and tired, Nadia began to feel like an actress, dragged through a disastrous production by some manner of trickery. With a bit of confused venom she glanced at Lord Beckham, who stood still in the doorway, watching her father; never looking into her eyes.

"Father, is Mary about?" Lady Havenshire asked.

"Here, m'lady," came a loud pronouncement from a young maidservant with bushy blonde hair, emerging from the shadows of rear of the foyer. "Have you need of something, miss?"

"Will you see me back to my bedchamber, please? I'm quite ready to retire after the day I've had," she announced loudly, looking back expectantly at Lord Beckham. She hoped to see something - anything, expressed in his eyes. Instead, he simply stood silent; unmoved. She sighed.

"Certainly, m'lady," Mary exclaimed, bumbling nervously towards the stairs. Lady Havenshire follows, each of her footsteps echoing, daggered,

through the hallway. She looked back once more - longingly, wantingly - and caught sight of Lord Beckham again, hoping to see anything. Please, she thought; please, just say something. Just say anything, Marshall. I thought I loved you... I want to love you.

He said nothing.

With a flourish and a humph Lady Havenshire stormed down the hall, Mary rushing along behind her. The young maidservant had a thousand questions, no doubt begging for tidbits of gossip to share with the rest of the house staff once Ms. Mulwray retired for the evening.

"M-m'lady! W-was that the man who—" Mary hurried along behind Nadia, nearly out of breath with how quickly Nadia fled the foyer. "The man who's interested in courting you? Lord Beckham?"

"You know his name, do you? Quite good ears the girls down in the maidservants' chambers have, don't they?" Nadia bit back quickly.

"He's—he's so handsome! I've never seen a noble with a face, or features, like that, not any around here, at least," Mary commented. "Do you think he's handsome, m'lady? I think he'd be quite the envy of any girl down in the servant quarters."

"Yes, he's far nicer to look upon than the normal sort of buck-teeth, cheap suit-wearing, wormish men one tends to find among the manors and dinner banquets around these parts," Nadia sighed. The serving girl giggled, certainly loving the titillation of learning something so scandalous about the madam of the house.

"Your father, when I was a little girl, he was the most handsome noble I had ever seen, but I think Lord Beckham is even more handsome," Mary chattered. They rounded a corner and Lady Havenshire pulled open the door to her bedchamber with a grunt, flowing into the room angrily, landing in a fluid, quick motion onto her bed, staring at the ceiling with a disaffected sigh. Mary entered after her, quickly pulling the door shut, hoping excitedly for a gossip session with Lady Havenshire. Instead, Nadia quickly and quite bluntly asked her own question.

"Mary, pardon the particularly personal query, but," Nadia said rather nonchalantly, "have you ever been intimate with a man before?" Mary giggled loudly, her cheeks blossoming in a bright burst of cherry-red embarrassment.

"M-m'lady! I'm..." she gasped, covering her lips. "I'm not... certain, if I am meant to answer that question, or if it's s... simply..."