Chapter 28 #3
“Tell me what Lord Wexford said that was so funny,” Rachel said as she arrived at her side and ushered her toward a quiet spot near the windows.
“He made an observation about the violin player,” Anna said, trying to recall the details.
“What was the observation?”
“It was more amusing in the moment,” Anna said, unable to admit she had feigned laughter in an attempt to provoke her brother. “I think.”
Rachel shook her head, and they stood together in peaceful quiet.
Anna noted that Frederick had been claimed by Lady Fontaine herself.
Lord Larthby was nearby and caught Rachel’s eye across the room.
It was peculiar to Anna. A brief, unplanned thing, immediately corrected.
Rachel quickly looked at Lady Fontaine’s fireplace, her cheeks pink.
“Rachel,” Anna said, turning closer to her and moving a step closer.
“Mmhmm?”
“That is the third time this evening by my count.”
Silence.
“I thought I imagined it at first, but this confirms it.”
Rachel studied the fireplace as though she had developed a strong interest in its architecture. She did not look up at Anna, who stepped closer.
“I’m sure… I don’t know what you mean, Anna.”
“You do, though.” Anna kept her voice gentle. “You have been very careful not to look at each other all evening, and the effort of it is rather more obvious than the looking itself would be.” She paused. She knew the feeling.
“He came to visit Frederick a lot this last year, since you left,” Rachel said. “I had been lonely for a friend. It started as conversation, once Frederick wasn’t at Rathbourne and he…” She stopped.
“Stayed anyway?”
A very long silence.
“He was good company,” Rachel said. “I had not expected it. I had known him for years and thought I knew exactly what he was, and then we spent two afternoons in the garden talking about nothing, and it was everything! I…I…” She stopped again, and when she looked up at Anna, there was something in her face that may as well have been a looking glass.
It was likely the face she would make if she ever talked about Frederick.
“Please, go on,” Anna encouraged. “You know I am always here for you.”
“I know it is foolish. I know how it must look. My brother’s best friend and all…”
“It looks like he finds you considerably more interesting than Lady Fontaine’s fireplace,” Anna said. “He is looking at you right now in fact while you stare at it.” She took Rachel’s hand.
“Oh what can I do about him?”
“His feelings are not in question, you are the best judge of character I know. You know that.”
“I do not doubt him, but it might seem odd to others.”
“When have you ever cared what others think?”
“What would Frederick think?” She asked, her voice small.
“That is another matter—”
“He will hesitate,” Rachel said sharply.
“And Thomas will hesitate, because of Frederick. They have been friends since Eton, and Thomas will feel it dishonorable to pay court to his closest friend’s sister without his knowledge, and I cannot ask him to go against his own character simply because…
because I…” She pressed her lips together and her eyes watered. “He will hesitate.”
“Then he will hesitate,” Anna said. “And Frederick will be consulted and will give his blessing, because Frederick, whatever else he may be, wants you to be happy above every other consideration on this earth, and I know that as certainly as I know anything.” She squeezed Rachel’s hand.
“Your brother is a good man. Don’t borrow trouble ahead of schedule. It is an inefficient use of your time.”
Rachel laughed, slightly unevenly, and looked down at their joined hands. “You always do that. Make it sound perfectly simple.”
“Some things are simpler than they seem, when you stop looking sideways at them.” Anna glanced, once, toward where Thomas stood now at the edge of the room, nursing a glass he wasn’t drinking and watching their corner of the room with an expression he hadn’t thought to guard.
“Though I will say, whatever hesitation Thomas Larthby may have about Frederick, it appears to be in rather a competition with something considerably stronger.”
Rachel followed her gaze and then looked away with the haste of a woman who had caught herself hoping and wasn’t yet ready to be seen doing it. “You are impossible,” she said, but she was smiling.
“I am practical,” Anna said. “There is a difference.”
Across the room, the quartet announced the next set, and the company began drifting back toward their seats.
Anna watched Thomas cross the room and casually sit in the chair directly beside Rachel’s.
Anna found a seat rather further away, beside a perfectly pleasant woman who wanted to discuss the violinist’s technique.
Wexford found her shortly thereafter, and Anna somehow resisted the impulse to look toward the back of the room…
where she sensed a particular man was resettling himself into his chair.
She had done it. She was becoming, she thought with a bleak sort of humor, very accomplished at the things she was not doing.