Once a Duchess by Elizabeth Boyce

mother, telling her a divorce was only what an overreaching nobody like her deserved.
    A dozen memories tumbled through her mind, each and every one of them pointing to a single, horrible conclusion.
    Isabelle didn’t feel her knees give way. Marshall was suddenly crouched beside her on the floor, rubbing his hand across her back. Then she became aware of her position, on her knees, curled into a ball.
    “Have you fainted?” Marshall asked, his annoyed tone tinged with concern.
    “No,” Isabelle said into the rug. “I rarely faint. You know that.”
    “It looked for all the world like you fainted,” Marshall said. “Your face went ghastly white, and you fell to the floor. What does that sound like to you?”
    Isabelle straightened to sit on her heels. “Listen to us,” she said smiling sadly, “arguing over whether or not I fainted.” Marshall regarded her with a bemused expression. She looked at her hands in her lap and concentrated on keeping them still. “Just as well your mother had us divorced.”
    She could have recited the first three pages of The Mirror of Graces in the ensuing silence.
    At last, Marshall said in a carefully even voice, “That’s quite an accusation, Isabelle.”
    She lifted her chin. “I do not make it lightly.”
    “On what evidence do you base such claims?”
    Isabelle shook her head. “There is no evidence. The dowager duchess always hated me, because I committed the sin of being born to a man without a title and a French peasant. No evidence, as you say. There was only the word of the woman who hated me, and the word of your wife.” She shrugged. “You chose to believe her.”
    Marshall sat down on the floor with his arms resting on his knees. He looked at Isabelle for a long moment, searching her face. After a while, his eyes were still settled on her, but she could tell he was no longer looking at her. She saw anger and hurt in his expression, but also introspection.
    The clock on the mantle chimed one o’clock in the morning. She’d been in his room for almost an hour. Mr. Davies would be furious with her for neglecting the kitchen for so long, especially if he found out she’d gone to a bedchamber with a guest.
    “I have to go,” Isabelle said. Marshall seemed not to hear her. She retrieved her cap from the floor, twisted her hair into a hasty knot, and pulled the cap over it. She crossed to the door, but the sound of his voice stayed her hand.
    “Even if what you say is true,” he said, “what do you expect me to do about it?”
    He looked disarmingly charming sitting on the floor — nothing at all like the forbidding aristocrat he’d been downstairs.
    She had no idea what sort of answer he wanted. She hadn’t thought that far ahead herself. “Nothing. What’s transpired is done.”
    He nodded slowly.
    They exchanged one last gaze — Isabelle in her cook’s garb and Marshall a disheveled duke sitting on the floor — and then she walked through the door and back to her duties. There were still dishes to be done before she could have her own supper.
    • • •
    For a long time, Marshall remained sitting on the floor. He didn’t know why — perhaps it had something to do with his affinity for being close to the earth. Whatever the reason, sitting on the floor had always been his preferred posture for serious thinking. He didn’t do it often, for reasons of propriety, but at a time like this, a chair was too confining for the large, troubling thoughts lumbering through his mind. A field would have been even better, but the open expanse of the sitting area floor would have to do.
    Several truths had made themselves evident this evening. First, his former wife was living in anonymous exile and poverty, working to support herself. She was also an excellent cook, which he hadn’t known when they were married. It bothered him that he had not known this about his wife. She was well aware of his love affair with botany and the work he was involved in with the