Chapter 29
Anna enjoyed Hyde Park most in the late morning, before the fashionable hour brought the carriages and the crowds.
The paths were still mostly given over to nursemaids and their charges, or old men walking dogs of equivalent antiquity at a leisurely pace.
As was her nature, Lady Oldbarrow moved through it at a pace that defied her years.
She moved with elegance, her parasol tilted against the sun, and Anna kept step beside her.
They had been walking for a quarter hour, and had covered, in that time, the Season’s more notable scandals, the iniquities of the current fashion for enormous sleeves, and they finally arrived at the question of Lord Wexford.
“He is a good man,” Anna said, which she’d said before, and meant no more now than she had then.
“He is a good man,” Lady Oldbarrow agreed. “Good men are not to be dismissed. I have known several in my lifetime. I married one.” She paused. “The first one, you see.”
“And the second one?”
“A great man. Considerably less comfortable to live with though. The two categories do not often overlap. At least in my experience.”
They continued to walk in companionable silence, a pair of ducks quacking loudly in the water beside the path. Despite the entertainment, Anna found her attention drifting where it had taken to drifting lately. Somehow even ducks in a small pond could not shield her mind from the Duke.
“You’re thinking about Frederick,” Lady Oldbarrow said, without looking at her.
“I was thinking about ducks,” she said too quickly.
“You were thinking about Frederick. I have been watching women not think about certain men for as long as I can remember. You have that look.”
Anna had no argument, and she adored Lady Oldbarrow too much to feign protestation.
“He is a complicated case,” Lady Oldbarrow said softly. “I have a particular fondness for him as his godmother… but I have never been able to decide whether I understand him or simply understand the shape of what he won’t say.”
“He doesn’t say a great deal.”
“No, I suppose he does not. It is not entirely his fault.”
“No?”
“He has his father’s exterior, poor thing, despite all he has accomplished in spite of that legacy. He has his same polish. Very composed, very correct, everything in its place.”
“I see.”
“People looked at the old Duke and saw a man of excellent manners and excellent breeding and never thought to look further. People tend not to look inside a powerful man’s heart.” Lady Oldbarrow’s parasol turned once, slowly, in her hand. “I looked further though. I am old enough that I tend to.”
Anna waited, knowing from that Lady Oldbarrow arrived at her points on her own terms and at her own pace.
“Frederick was very protective of his mother,” she said as they reached a turn in the path.
“More than the usual affection alone would account for. He was protective. And of Rachel, from a very early age, in a way that boys generally are not with younger sisters. That watchfulness.” She paused.
“I tried, once or twice, to give him the opportunity to speak of his father. He never took it. He is stubborn.” A slight, dry smile. “You may have noticed.”
“I may have,” Anna said, carefully.
“I don’t know what happened precisely in that house, but I can imagine…
I know what it looks like when a child has learned that composure is not a virtue but a survival, and I know what it looks like in the man that child becomes.
” She glanced at Anna then, sideways and sharp.
“It explains a good deal, I think. About why he keeps to himself, where he keeps himself. About why he has always been so guarded about what he allows himself to feel, and who he allows himself to feel it for.”
Anna was quiet. The ducks had resolved their dispute, or abandoned it, and the path ahead was empty and dappled with watery light.
“He will not say any of this himself, I should add,” Lady Oldbarrow said. “He would find a way to talk about estate management for three hours before he said any of it. But there are things worth knowing.”
“I think I understand,” Anna said.
“Good. Now tell me, when is your next outing with Lord Wexford?”
Thomas arrived at Frederick’s house on a Tuesday afternoon, turned down tea, sat down, stood back up again, accepted the tea after all, and then sat holding it without drinking it.
“You might simply say it,” Frederick said, at last. “Whatever it is.”
“I’m getting there.”
“You’ve been getting there for eleven minutes. I timed you.”
“You didn’t time me.”
“Very nearly.” Frederick set down his own cup. “Thomas. What is the matter? You’re beginning to worry me.”
Thomas stood again and moved to the window.
He looked out at the street below with his hands clasped behind his back.
Frederick watched bewilderedly as his oldest friend’s usually easy shoulders did something they almost never did.
They were high, tight, and rigid, with something that looked very much like fear.
“I am in love with Rachel,” Thomas said abruptly.
Frederick did not say anything. A pin could have dropped in the room.
“And I wish to marry her.”
Thomas turned from the window to face him, and the expression on his face was entirely naked. He had made himself vulnerable in a way Frederick could not remember seeing from him since they were children, if ever.
“I see,” Frederick said.
“That is… all you have to say?”
“I am considering what else to say. Give me a moment.”
Frederick really looked at him. Thomas’s jaw was set.
His hands, still clasped behind his back, had likely tightened to the point of white at the knuckles.
His jaw was as hard as a stone, his teeth clenched.
He was, Frederick realized, genuinely frightened.
The same boy who had sprinted into a burning stable at twenty to pull out a groom’s horse and didn’t bat an eye.
“Tell me how it happened.”
Thomas let out a breath, slow and unsteady. He marched back to his chair and sat heavily in it.
“I don’t know that I can identify the precise moment.
” He looked at the carpet, then at Frederick.
“I have known her for years. You know that. I thought I knew exactly what she was to me. Your sister, a pleasant girl, someone to make conversation with at Christmas, or in passing at the opera. And then…”
He paused.
“And then?”
“Last year I rode out to Rathbourne and was informed you were in London on business. It must have been late winter. She was in the garden, all bundled up against the harsh cold with a book… and she said something. I cannot recall what, but she made some keen observation that struck me. The sunlight curled around her face and she laughed, and…”
“What?” Frederick said.
“I thought, this is a person I could talk to for the rest of my life. I didn’t act on it.
I thought it was a passing thing, a momentary confusion, and I went back to London and waited for it to pass.
” He looked up at Frederick. “It did not pass. It has been eight months, and if anything, it has…” He cut himself off, and shook his head once as he looked back down at the carpet.
“I came twice more to Rathbourne that winter, when you were away again on business. We talked. For hours, some days. About everything. About nothing. She is… Oh, Frederick, she is extraordinary, and I do not believe I am telling you anything you don’t know about your own sister.
But I need you to understand that I know it too, and I am not speaking lightly. ”
The room was quiet. Frederick looked at his oldest friend, at the eight months of held breath sitting in his posture, and thought about Rachel laughing at his jokes at the dinner table.
Rachel in the park with a book, pretending to read but occupied elsewhere.
Rachel’s voice going careful and bright the way it did when she was trying not to show she was moved by something. He should have seen it.
“You have been afraid to tell me,” Frederick said finally.
“You are my closest friend, and she is your sister.” Thomas met his eyes squarely.
“Of course I was afraid to tell you. I have felt the dishonor of it every day. Wanting something from you without your knowledge, something of consequence, something…” He stopped.
“I would not have acted without speaking to you first. I want that to be clear. Whatever else I am, I would not have done that to you.”
Frederick was quiet for a long moment.
“I know,” he said at last, and the two words carried considerably more than they appeared to.
He looked at Thomas, the white knuckles, the unguarded face, the months of love conducted at a careful distance out of deference to a friendship, and felt something in himself ease, slow and certain, like a tension released at last. “I know you wouldn’t. ”
“Thank you,” Thomas said with a sigh.
“She is not a simple woman,” Frederick said. “You will not find her simple, and I will not pretend otherwise to be kind about it.”
“I know.”
“She has strong opinions, and she expresses them without much concern for whether the timing is convenient.”
“I know that too.”
“She reads at the table when she thinks no one is watching.” Frederick paused. “She will always read at the table. I have never once successfully discouraged it.”
Thomas’s expression shifted; it was something softening at the edges, something relieved and almost wondering. “I don’t want to discourage it,” he said quietly. “Quite the contrary.”
Frederick looked at him a moment longer.
“No,” he said. “I don’t suppose that you do.” He reached for his cup, which had gone cold, and drank from it anyway. “You’ll need to court her properly. She will expect it, and she deserves it, and if you intend to do this you will do it correctly.”
“I intend to do it correctly! I will do everything correctly!”
“And if you make her unhappy—”
“Oh, that I know.” Thomas held his gaze without flinching, his arms raised in mock surrender. “You don’t need to finish that sentence.”
“No, I don’t.”
He set down the cup, and Thomas was still watching him, still waiting, and Frederick understood that what was being waited for was not permission.
Even though he was a duke, Thomas was not a man who needed permission from him.
It was something older than that, something that had been between them since they were boys, a kind of connection that was older than time itself.
“You are my closest friend,” Frederick said. “She is the person I love most in the world.” He was quiet for a moment. “There is no man I would rather she chose. You should know that. You have my blessing.”
Thomas closed his eyes briefly.
“Thank you,” Thomas said at last as he opened them.
Frederick waved a hand, dismissing the sentiment before it could become anything either of them would have to acknowledge. “Now, finish your tea. It’s cold, but you should finish it. You damn near had a heart attack.”
Thomas laughed, a real one that was full of relief.
He picked up his cup, and they sat in comfortable silence.
There was nothing left to say at that moment.
Frederick watched the afternoon light move across the study floor when Percy appeared in the doorway.
He assessed the situation, shook his head, and withdrew.
“It appears Percy gives his blessing as well.”