Chapter 6
Dinner at Ashbourne that evening was, by any measure, a civilized affair.
The dining room was well-lit, the food was excellent—at least the cook had not given her notice—and the company was familiar enough that conversation required no great effort.
William sat to James’s right, Cecily across from him, and Isadora at the far end of the table with the composed, slightly distant expression she had worn all day, which James had noticed and said nothing about.
She had not looked at him directly since breakfast.
He had noticed that too.
“The east wing needs significant repairs,” William was saying, in the tone of a man who had walked an estate that morning and had some things to say. “The third floor, particularly. Have you had the roof assessed?”
“My steward is arranging it,” James replied. “Along with approximately forty other things that apparently could not wait until my tenure as Duke was more than three weeks old.”
“It never waits,” William said, without any sympathy. Ever since James became Duke, he had been especially insufferable. “You learn to do three things at once and be grateful when it’s only three.”
“Encouraging.”
“I do not deal in encouragement. I deal in accuracy.”
“So I have always found.” James reached for his wine, took a sip, and set it down.
Across the table, Cecily was speaking quietly to Isadora about something—the nursery schedule, he thought, or possibly the gardens.
She had returned from her tour of the gardens that afternoon, looking impressed.
Isadora was listening with the attentive composure of a woman whose thoughts were entirely elsewhere and who was managing not to show it.
Almost managing.
He looked away.
“The tenants seem steady,” William continued. “The Hargrove situation is more pressing than Henderson let on, but manageable. The north field boundary dispute—”
“William,” Cecily said in the tone she used when she was trying to steer her husband from something he could spend the entire meal discussing. “James looks as though he has heard enough about the north field boundary today.”
William considered this. “He’s going to have to hear about it eventually.”
“Tomorrow is eventually,” Cecily reasoned pleasantly.
William looked at her for a moment. Then he picked up his fork. “Fine.”
James looked at her gratefully. For the first time that day, he found himself almost smiling.
The table settled into the comfortable half-silence of people who knew each other well enough not to require constant conversation. The candles burned steadily. Outside, the summer evening was still light, the long dusk of late June stretching the day past when it had any right to continue.
James looked at Isadora. She was cutting her food with very focused attention, devoting more concentration to the task than it strictly required. She had eaten perhaps a third of what was on her plate. She was still not looking at him.
He reached for his wine, glancing at her above the rim.
He had spent the afternoon with the estate papers and the evening with his own thoughts, and had arrived at dinner with a plan that he was not certain was correct and was going to execute regardless, because it was the only remaining instrument available to him, and those waiting to sink their teeth into Violet’s inheritance were not going to wait indefinitely.
He set down his wine glass.
“I have been thinking about the household situation,” he began.
William looked up. Cecily stilled almost imperceptibly. At the other end of the table, Isadora continued staring at her plate as if her life depended on it.
“Henderson raised some points this morning that have been on my mind ever since,” James continued, keeping his tone conversational, the one he used when he needed a room to receive information without immediately reacting to it.
“About the guardianship and how the household appears to outside parties.” He paused.
“I have given it considerable thought today, and I believe I have arrived at a practical solution.”
“We’ve discussed this,” William said. “You need a duchess. It’s been the obvious answer since—”
“Yes.” James reached for his wine again. “I’ve come to the same conclusion.”
“Good.” William looked vaguely relieved. “So who—”
“I intend to invite Lady Pembley and her daughter to Ashbourne,” James cut in. “For an extended visit.”
The table went still. Not dramatically—no one gasped or knocked over their glass. But the air shifted in the way it did when something had been said that everyone present needed a moment to process.
William put down his fork.
Cecily looked at James with a carefully neutral expression. She set her glass on the table, buying herself a moment.
“Lady Pembley,” William repeated.
“And Miss Caroline.” James kept his tone casual. “Yes.”
“Caroline Pembley.”
“Yes, William. Caroline Pembley.” James took a measured sip of his wine. “I intend to propose to her.”
Silence.
Then William sat back in his chair and exhaled. “Well,” he said with the gruff relief of someone who had been waiting for a sensible decision and had begun to doubt one was coming. “It’s about time.”
“I thought you’d see it that way.”
“She’s a perfectly suitable choice. Good family, steady character. She’s been—” William broke off. “Yes. Good. It’s the right decision.”
“I thought so,” James said.
“The household needs—”
“Precisely.”
Cecily still had not spoken. She was looking at him thoughtfully. Then her gaze moved briefly to Isadora.
James did not look at her. He took another sip of wine.
William picked up his fork with the satisfaction of a man whose advice had finally, albeit belatedly, been followed.
He looked at James with something akin to approval, which was not an expression he deployed carelessly.
“Her mother will be insufferable about it, of course. Lady Pembley has been angling for this for a while. She’ll consider it a victory. ”
“She’s welcome to do that,” James said dryly, “if it achieves the result.”
“It will.” William was warming up to the subject. “The announcement alone will redirect most of the gossip. A formal engagement to a woman of Miss Caroline’s standing—”
“You cannot do this.” The voice came from the end of the table.
James looked up at Isadora.
The whole table turned to her.
She was staring at him for the first time that evening, her glass hanging midair, a faint color in her face that had not been there a moment ago.
She looked, James thought, as surprised as anyone by what she had just said.
* * *
Everyone was looking at her.
William, with a frown that was deepening by the second. Cecily with concern and surprise. James, with the composed, attentive expression of a man who had just asked a question and genuinely intended to wait for the answer.
Isadora set her glass down.
William frowned. “Isadora—”
“Why not?” James asked.
“Caroline Pembley,” she said, her voice even, each word placed with deliberate precision, “is entirely wrong for this household.”
William’s frown deepened. “That is not—”
“Miss Caroline,” she spoke over him, “has made it very clear across two Seasons that her interest in you is mainly the title and the life that comes with it.”
“Most people’s interest in a duke involves the title,” William pointed out. “That is rather the nature of a title.”
“There is a difference between a woman who sees a man who happens to hold a title and a woman who sees a title that happens to be held by a man,” she argued.
The table was very quiet.
William opened his mouth and closed it again.
“She is cold,” Isadora continued with focused calm. She had no intention of stopping. “She is ambitious. She has no warmth to speak of, and warmth is precisely what Violet needs.” She looked at James steadily. “You cannot bring a woman into this house who will treat that child as an inconvenience.”
The candles flickered.
James looked at her across the length of the table. She almost wished for the floor to open up and swallow her whole.
“Miss Caroline,” she said, her voice steadier now, finding its footing, “is accomplished and beautiful and will stand beside you at every occasion society requires. She will manage this household efficiently. But she will look at Violet and see an inconvenience she did not agree to inherit. A problem attached to the position she wanted. A child who complicates the life she imagined for herself.”
James said nothing.
“Violet does not need efficiency,” she stated. “She does not need management. She has lost everything familiar to her, and she—” She stopped, her jaw tightening.
William turned to her. “Isadora,” he said quietly. “This is not your—”
“She deserves better,” Isadora said hotly.
“Violet deserves better than a woman who would come here to become a duchess and consider her an obstacle to the life she imagined. She needs warmth. Genuine warmth, not performed warmth, not the warmth of a woman who would decide it is required of her because the Duke expects it.” Her voice had lowered slightly.
“She will know the difference. Children always know the difference.”
More silence.
Cecily set her glass down very carefully and looked around the table.
William pinched the bridge of his nose. “Isadora, you have met Miss Caroline on perhaps four occasions.”
“Five.”
“Five occasions. That is not sufficient to—”
“I am a woman,” Isadora interrupted, looking at him. “I have sat in the same rooms as Miss Caroline and watched her watch other women, and I am telling you that what I saw was not warmth.” She paused. “I could be wrong. I am allowing for the possibility. But I am not wrong.”
James had not looked away from her once.
She made the mistake of meeting his eyes.
There was something in them she had not expected—not irritation, not the cool dismissal of a man whose plans were being thwarted, but something more attentive than that.
More still. The attention he gave to things he was genuinely trying to understand.
And it was fixed on her with an earnestness that made the back of her neck warm and her composure considerably more difficult to maintain.
James held her gaze. She held his.
He looked at her for a long, quiet moment before she looked away.
“Violet deserves better,” she said to the table. “That is all I am saying.”
The moment the words left her mouth, something happened underneath them.
A sharp and unwelcome feeling twisted in her chest that had nothing to do with Violet and everything to do with the image her own mind had just conjured without her permission—James at the altar beside Caroline Pembley, who was beautiful and accomplished and would stand in exactly the right way and look at him with exactly the right expression, and who he had agreed was very pretty in a ballroom two weeks ago with the easy certainty of a man who had already noticed.
She pressed her fingers flat against the tablecloth.
She had refused him. She had refused him clearly, calmly, with excellent reasons that she stood by entirely, then had walked out of the nursery with her head up and her composure intact.
She had not regretted it then.
She did not regret it now.
She simply wished, with a force that was becoming increasingly difficult to attribute to concern for the child alone, that James would look at the idea of marrying someone else with slightly less equanimity.
“I think,” Cecily spoke up, with the serene timing of a woman who had assessed the room and decided an intervention was required, “that the fish course has been sitting for a long time. Shall we—”
“Yes,” William said quickly, reaching for his fork with the relief of a man offered an exit. “Yes, let’s.”
The conversation moved. James allowed it to. He said something to William about the estate, easy and unremarkable, and the table reassembled itself into the appearance of normalcy.
Isadora ate the rest of her dinner without tasting any of it.