This time, Mantheria took Sunny’s hand and led him out of the room and upstairs to the family apartments.She brought him to her own room, and it wasn’t until she saw the large four-poster bed with a silk canopy that she found her blood racing.Would the marriage act feel different with another man?One like Sunny?Or would it be just as strange and uncomfortable as it had been with Alexander a dozen years before?
Sunny sucked in a breath, and she wondered if his thoughts had wandered to the same awkward location.
How could she be thinking of such a thing when her son might be in peril?
Dropping his hand, she opened the wardrobe and took out a clean nightgown, shift, and a traveling gown, and set them on the table.Then she picked out the stockings and undergarments and placed them directly into a bandbox so that Sunny wouldn’t see them.Mantheria felt embarrassed enough already.She then carefully placed the items from the table into the bandbox.It was ridiculous, but at the age of nine and twenty, she had never before packed her own things.
Or anyone else’s, for that matter.
Picking up the bandbox, Mantheria tilted her head back and kept going.“Come with me.”
She led Sunny through the door that went to the master’s rooms.Alexander had not lived there in eight years, but the hint of his cologne was still in the air like a ghost.Or perhaps she was being overly imaginative.
In the end, she did not hate her late husband.But she did not love him either.They had become polite acquaintances.In another lifetime under different circumstances, they might have even been friends.
Mantheria opened the wardrobe and found the shirts that Alexander had left.She ought to have gotten rid of them by now.But she hadn’t.And she would not ponder why at this important moment.She picked up a couple of shirts and an extra coat and placed them in a matching bandbox.
“Is there anything else that you need?I am afraid I have never packed for a man before.”
“Only a toothbrush, but I can purchase one in Bath.”
He took both bandboxes and carried them from the room.When they reached the main level, Mrs.Scott gave Sunny his hat and gloves and helped Mantheria into a bonnet and pelisse.Matthew stood in the entry, and he placed a large purse of coins into Mantheria’s hands.“Hide part of it, just in case you’re held up.”
Swallowing, Mantheria took the purse.
Nancy held out a loaded pistol.“All you need to do is cock the hammer back, and this beauty is ready to shoot.”
“Thank you,” Mantheria said, taking it from her.Despite the fact that her family seemed to think that she was too ladylike to be useful, Mantheria knew her way around a gun.Papa had taught all of his children how to shoot one.Frederica, annoyingly, had a much better aim than her and everyone else in the family.But that didn’t matter now.
Mrs.Scott opened the front door, and before Mantheria could overthink the moment, she followed her housekeeper out to her traveling coach.The driver doffed his hat to her, and the groom took the bandboxes from Sunny and tied them to the back of the coach.Sunny opened the door of the carriage and assisted her into it.Mantheria placed the pistol in the holster under the window and then pressed the secret compartment that was hidden underneath it and dumped as many coins from the purse as it would hold.Then she shut it back into place with a snap and sat down.“Ready!”
The carriage jostled forward.
Sunny had taken a seat on the opposite bench, as was right and proper.But riding backward for fourteen to eighteen hours was most uncomfortable.Especially since he was trying to help her and her son.“Why don’t you move over and sit by me?We are old friends, and we need not follow such formality as sitting on opposite seats.”
He raised his eyebrows slightly before switching sides.They were close enough that she could smell the woodsy scent of his cologne, but not close enough for their legs to be touching.Turning to look at her, his lips curled upward.“I didn’t know that the very proper Duchess of Glastonbury broke any of Society’s rules or formalities.”
It was only a gentle tease, but Mantheria couldn’t help but feel attacked.All she’d ever tried to do was follow Society’s rules so that she would be safe.But her son wasn’t.Andrew was missing.Her husband had been unfaithful.Her sisters resented her.And her brothers had become so involved with their own happy families that they rarely spent time with her.
The rules might have kept her safe, but they hadn’t made her happy.
“I might have failed my late husband as a wife, but I did not fail him as a duchess.I always comported myself with dignity and distinction.”
Sunny smacked his lips together.“Forgive me, it was a foolish joke.I was only attempting to lighten the mood.”
Mantheria glanced down at her black gloves, pelisse, dress, and boots.There was nothing “light” about her.She wondered if Elizabeth would recognize her now—the woman that she’d become.In her mind, Mantheria had aged her twin sister as she herself had gotten older.She’d wanted to recognize her twin in heaven.Mantheria whispered, “Be good.”
Leaning closer to her so that their shoulders bumped, Sunny asked, “I’m not quite sure I caught that.”
“Be goodwas the last thing that my sister Elizabeth said to me before she died,” Mantheria said in a low, strained voice.“And I have tried very hard to be good.”
Sunny straightened in his seat.He didn’t speak for several minutes, and Mantheria turned her attention to the window.She tried to catch every detail as it went by, just in case she saw her beloved Andrew.She didn’t have the mental capacity to explore her other feelings.
Clearing his throat, Sunny broke the silence.“I’d forgotten that you were the mischievous twin when Elizabeth was alive....You and Wick took Charles’s and Elizabeth’s deaths the hardest of all the children in your family.Eight years ago, I urged your brother to let go of the guilt and move forward.And now he’s a changed man.He’s happier than I have ever known him to be, and he’s a great husband and father.My dear friend.My dear Mantheria, I have not experienced the depths of your losses, but I do know from the viewpoint of a son that I wished my widowed mother had been able to let go of her grief and chosen to live for me.”
Had Andrew run away because of her?The mourning rules that she had insisted on following to respect her late husband?Was she like Sunny’s mother, who used her grief like a weapon and her sorrow like a shield?
“I don’t know if I can,” Mantheria said, articulating something that she had not even allowed herself to think.“I buried part of myself with Elizabeth, and I have not felt complete since.”