day, he would have to answer to Julien Greenfield.
Even she might consider marriage under such circumstances—being well treated, with an army of staff at her command to look after the household. As it was, soulmate or not, marriage would mean an endless cycle of scrubbing, mending, and grafting for a whole family, with the added obligation of letting a man use her body for his pleasure . . . Her fingertips dug into the velvet of the coach seat. What would be worse? Sharing a bed with a man she didn’t care for, or with one who had the power to grind her heart into the dirt?
“Annabelle,” Hattie said, inevitably. “Tell us about your soulmate.”
“He seems occupied elsewhere, doesn’t he? It’s just as well that I mean to rely on my own half.”
She evaded Hattie’s disapproving eyes by glancing out the window again. A village was drifting past. Honey-colored stone cottages lined the street, looking edible with the snow icing roofs and chimney tops. A few fat pigs trundled along the pavement. The duke took care of his tenants, at least.
By the gods. “Is that Claremont?” She touched a finger to the cold windowpane.
Hattie leaned forward. “Why, it is. What a lovely house.”
House and lovely did not describe the structure that had moved into view in the far distance. Claremont rose from the soil like an enchanted rock, huge, intricately carved, and implacable. Sprawled against a gently rising slope, it oversaw the land for miles like a ruler on a throne. It was utterly, frighteningly magnificent.
* * *
The clop-clop-clop of the horses’ hooves seemed to die away unheard in the vastness of the cobblestoned courtyard. But a lone figure was waiting at the bottom of the gray limestone stairs leading to the main house. Peregrin Devereux. He was bleary-eyed and his cravat was rumpled, but he had a firm grip when he helped them out of the carriage.
“Utterly splendid to have you here, ladies,” he said, tucking a blushing Catriona’s hand into the crook of his one arm and Aunty Greenfield’s into the other as he led them up the stairs. “The gentlemen have eagerly awaited your arrival.”
The entrance hall of Claremont rose three dizzying stories high beneath a domed glass ceiling. Statues adorned the balustrades of the upper floors. The marble slabs on the floor were arranged in black and white squares like a giant chessboard. Apt, for a man known as one of the queen’s favorite strategists.
Annabelle took a deep breath and straightened her spine. All perfectly normal. She would make it through a weekend here. She knew how to pick up her knives and forks in the right order and how to curtsy to whom. She was proficient in French, Latin, and Greek; could sing and play the piano; and could converse about the history of Orient and Occident. Her antiquity-mad father and her maternal great-grandmother had seen to that; with Gallic determination, her petite grand-mère had passed on Bourbon etiquette to her descendants all the way to the vicarage. It had made Annabelle an oddity in Kent, awfully overeducated, as she had told Hattie. Who knew that it would now help her to avoid the worst pitfalls in a ducal palace?
Lord Devereux led them to a cluster of servants at the bottom of the grand staircase.
“We are about to be snowed in,” he said, “so I suggest we go for a ride around the gardens within the hour.”
Catriona and Hattie were enthusiastic about this plan, but then, they knew how to ride. Annabelle’s experience was limited to sitting astride the old plow horse, which hardly qualified her for thoroughbreds and sidesaddles.
“I will pass,” she said. “I’m of a mind to work on my translation.”
“Of course,” Peregrin said blandly. “Jeanne here will show you your room. Don’t hesitate to ask if you need something; anything you fancy, desire, want, it will be given.”
“I shall be careful what I wish for around here, then,” she said.
He grinned a by-now-familiar grin.
“Devereuuuuux.”
The inebriated bellow reverberated off the walls, and the smile slid off Peregrin’s face quick smart. “Eh. Do excuse me, miss. Ladies. It seems the gents have found the brandy.”
* * *
The four-poster bed in her guest chamber was almost indecently lush: oversized, the emerald green velvet drapes thick as moss, with a heap of silk cushions in brilliant jewel colors. She could not wait to stretch out on the soft, clean mattress.
Two stories below the tall windows was the courtyard, at its center a dry fountain circled by