A Love Match

4 - Nicholas

Your Grace.

My dear sweet little wife looked at me with the utmost contempt while she spat the honorific at me. What a mess I've made of things. My eyes were greedily drinking her in after we'd been deprived of her for so long. She looked pale and frail, like she'd been through a sickness and my heart clenched painfully at not having been by her side to nurse her to health. When that insufferable bastard Radcliffe had showed up here to tell me that his sister-in-law didn't want to see me, I destroyed half my room, but what I really wanted to do is kick myself repeatedly for causing my Sophie such hurt.

I didn't know how it happened, how the situation had escaped my control to such a degree. We had gone to the damned ball, and my Sophie was lovely as ever in her blue gown, although a bit pale; her eyes were shining with excitement while she was getting ready, then I bestowed many a kiss on her in the carriage, which was a tradition of ours – so how did I absolutely ruin not only our evening, but the feelings blossoming between us? I was under no delusions that she was a woman to suffer fools – every letter that she tossed into the fire was like a dagger to my heart, and now she was sitting in front of me, cold and distant, her eyes dead and devoid of their usual light. I looked down at my hands and could almost see blood on them, for I felt like a murderer, only I had murdered my wife's heart.

At the ball I was quickly surrounded by some of my old friends – Pratt, Stone, and the very worst instigator - Colin Talbot, the Duke of Norwich. We quickly fell into our old banter, made somewhat lewd comments about present company, commented on who owed how much, but then they turned on me, mocking me for being an unfashionable bore who was taken in by his young wife.

"We haven't seen you in months, Hawkins! Give the poor woman a break," Stone laughed. I just gritted my teeth but still felt the need to defend myself. These men had been among my closest friends at Eton, and have often supported me in the five years that I've been Duke.

"You know damn well I've been away at Ashbury," I shrug.

"Look at him following her with his gaze even now," Pratt mocked, "who'd have thought our little Nick would become such a lovesick puppy. I remember you being against marriage, and breaking married ladies' hearts left and right."

The men in our circles did not entertain ridiculously romantic feelings for their wives. Wives served certain established purposes – to elevate one's social standing with her title, to improve one's finances, to give one bragging rights if the lady was exceptionally beautiful, and of course, to provide one with heirs. No man my age held their wife's hand, gazed upon her adoringly, or spent all of his time with her. On the contrary, they spent it with other men at gaming hells, brothels, gentleman's clubs, or visited their married or widowed mistresses, who were more free and experienced to sate certain appetites a young man might have.

So why was I feeling this way? Was it the memories of my grandfather being exceptionally tender and loving to my grandmother? Until I was 10 years of age, I spent all my summers with them and they remained, to this day, the image in my mind that appeared when someone mentioned a happy family and love. My late father, on the other hand, had been a conventional Ton man. He had my mother on his arm for society functions, but bestowed his time and affection on other women for the entire duration of their marriage. While going over our finances after his death, I'd had to take a break several times to compose myself in order to not go destroy his tombstone. He'd spent so much on his mistresses over the years, it bordered on degenerate behavior. He'd also fathered a bastard daughter with one of them at the same time my mother had my legitimate sister, Charlotte, which was a blow I'd yet had to deal my mother and sister. I'd told Sophie though, and she put her arms around me and gently stroked my back, while murmuring softly in my ear that I was not like him, that I was an honourable, good man. And I had proven her wrong the first chance I had gotten.