No matter how badly Kate longed for an explanation, she refused to gossip about her husband to their servants. He wanted a proper duchess. She was trying her best to be the sort of wife he might have actually chosen.

It meant keeping quiet. It meant staying out of his way. Above all, it meant keeping her personality as bottled up as possible.

She yearned for their marriage to succeed, and yet kept managing to push Ravenwood further away, without even knowing why. Every time she risked being herself, it only made things worse.

As soon as her cherished possessions had been stuffed back into crates and summarily returned to Kate’s townhouse, she paid a visit to the one person who might have answers.

Lady Amelia.

“Did you ask him about it?” was the first thing Lady Amelia said after pouring a fresh cup of tea.

Kate shook her head. The moment had been too awful. She hadn’t seen him since. Her heart twisted. “If you could have seen his face… No. It was not the moment for questions.”

Lady Amelia nodded as if that was what she’d expected to hear. “I imagine not. It’s…complicated.”

Kate waited. She was not hungry for tea. She wanted to understand her husband. To make him happy.

“You have a fine eye for decorating,” Lady Amelia said presently. “How would you describe the interior style of Ravenwood House?”

Dreary was the first word to come to Kate’s mind. She opted not to share it.

“Staid. Classic,” she said instead. “I imagine it looks much the same now as it did twenty or thirty years ago when your father was duke.”

“It looks exactly the same.” Lady Amelia sighed. “Down to the button. Every carpet, every nightstand, every sconce upon every wall. It is like walking into the past.”

“Your brother kept it that way as a shrine to your parents?”

Lady Amelia’s smile was mirthless. “If only it were that simple. Uncle Blaylock—the one you did not meet the other day, and likely never will—was our guardian after our parents died. He was merely heir presumptive, but he acted as though the dukedom already belonged to him. His first act was to remake Ravenwood House into his own.”

“He…redecorated?”

“He gutted our home,” Lady Amelia said flatly. “Uncle Blaylock fancies himself the world’s greatest hunter. Down came cherished heirlooms and Mother’s collection of watercolors. Up went Uncle Blaylock’s trophies. The room you described was once our favorite room in the entire estate. Father had commissioned custom-carved furniture as a special gift to the family, so we would have somewhere to read together. Uncle Blaylock sold every piece in order to put boar’s heads upon the walls, bear carcasses upon the floor, and fill the shelves with stuffed chipmunks with marble eyes that Uncle Blaylock stitched himself.”

Kate shivered. “It’s empty now, the parlor. Save for a single portrait upon the wall.”

Lady Amelia nodded. “That portrait was painted in that very room, and is the sole extant memory of how the parlor used to look. The missing pieces were sold, or broken, or lost. There’s no chance of ever having them back again. Of recreating the room that housed our happiest childhood memories. Ravenwood has spent the past many years restoring the rest of the manor to the exact condition it was when our parents were still alive, but the thing he wants the most is the one thing he cannot have.”

“To restore your family’s sitting room.”

“To be happy. He thinks the only way to create happiness in the future is by resurrecting the past. It doesn’t work. I tried it. The only way to be happy in the future, is to be happy now.”

“How?” Kate asked dully. Her stomach sank. Their problems weren’t as simple as her having a horror of childbirth and him needing an heir. He didn’t want just any family. He wanted the one he used to have. He wanted to rewrite time. “For better or worse, he’s stuck with me.”

“For better or worse,” Lady Amelia agreed and took a sip of tea. “When I set out to get a husband, Lord Sheffield was the furthest candidate from my mind. Just because you didn’t plan to end up with each other doesn’t mean you’re wrong for each other.”

Kate smiled as if this advice had bolstered her spirits, and thanked Lady Amelia for her time.

After she climbed back into the coach, she stared blankly out of the side window for a long moment before remembering to give the driver directions for the next stop.

When she had set out that afternoon, her initial idea had been to start visiting artists and performers in order to develop interest in participating in her upcoming patronage event. Her passion for the arts was the one thing capable of keeping her mind off her husband, or what they were going to do about their marriage.

And yet, she was no longer thinking about opera singers or classical violinists, but rather how she might do the impossible and bring Ravenwood’s empty room back to life.

Perhaps if she could do the impossible, the one thing even he had been unable to achieve, he would finally realize how much she yearned to please him.

She realized she was not part of his past. That she might never matter half as much to him as the portrait hanging in the empty parlor.

But if she could give him back his memories, perhaps he would no longer need to long for the past. Perhaps then they could work together toward their future.

Her theatre connections that society so disparaged meant that Kate personally knew a set designer so talented, she had no doubt he would be able to recreate furniture from a painting.

The problem was the painting itself.

She had been forbidden from entering the sitting room. Allowing Mr. Devonshire to use the parlor as his workroom while he carved each piece was likewise not a possibility.

Besides, she suspected such an unusual gift would be much better received as a surprise. If she asked Ravenwood outright, he might say no. That recreation was not the same as restoration. That if his mother had never sat on that precise chair, it simply wasn’t good enough.

Just like Kate wasn’t good enough.

As soon as they arrived back home, she trudged back up to her escritoire and resumed studying the journals. Tomorrow, she would take a break for a moment. Play a game with her aunt.

Tonight, she would concentrate on Ravenwood.