Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Anne turned sharply. She looked behind her to see the butler making his way across the garden path. The poor man was out of breath and nearly tripping over his own feet to catch up with the Duke, who was already looming over them.
“His Grace!” he announced unceremoniously, taking out a handkerchief and dabbing his brow. “The Duke of Dawnhurst!”
She looked up and saw him then.
Everyone knew of the scar. It was one of the first things people mentioned when the Duke of Dawnhurst came up in conversation, infrequent as that was. They spoke of the way his face was marked on the left side, the legacy of some incident in his boyhood.
The gossips had inconsistently attributed it to a duel, a hunting accident, a fire, and, in one ambitious column, a pirate. She had pictured something grotesque, something that would make one avert one’s eyes. It turned out, she had formed precisely the wrong image.
He was tall. Very tall, with the build of a man who did not merely attend a fencing instructor but listened to one.
He was broad across the shoulders, with strong arms meant for chopping wood.
He was dark-haired and with deep-set eyes that were, even in this light, an extraordinary shade of blue.
They made her think of the Aegean Sea, not that she had seen it in person.
He was not perfectly handsome. His face was too rugged to be considered typically attractive.
Striking.
That was the word that came unbidden to her, and with some force, as she felt butterflies flutter in her stomach the more she looked at him.
The scar ran from his left eyebrow down to his jaw in a line that was somehow more arresting than disfiguring. He had a face that had been somewhere, had done something, and survived. She was aware that she was staring, so she stopped.
She rose to her feet and dipped into a brief curtsy, hoping that time hadn’t stopped altogether with her inadvertent gawking.
“Your Grace. I am Miss Anne Barnet. Welcome to Kirklow Hall.”
He did not look at her. He did not reply.
He had already moved with decisive, controlled purpose around the table to Lady Felicity.
He stopped in front of her and looked at her with an expression Anne could not fully read.
His eyes trailed over her loose hair down to her torn sleeve, then to the grass stains on her skirt.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“No, Papa.” Felicity’s voice had gone very small.
“Good.” A pause. Then, still in the same level voice, he asked, “What were you thinking?”
“I… well…”
“Wandering off alone, in the dark?”
“It wasn’t dark when I started.”
“Felicity.”
“I know, Papa.” She pressed her lips together and gave a sad smile. “I’m terribly sorry.”
“He is being perfectly unreasonable about the whole thing,” Celia said.
There was a brief silence as the Duke turned his head slowly and looked down at her. It was the look of a man who was not accustomed to being interrupted by anyone. And of all people, the person interrupting him was knee height.
Anne was already at Celia’s side. She placed her hand gently on her sister’s shoulder. It was not a reprimand, but a warning that she prayed the girl would heed.
“Please forgive her, Your Grace,” she said with a forced smile. “She tends to speak her mind.”
“Clearly.”
The Duke looked at her now, and something shifted in his azure eyes. It was an assessment, Anne decided, the same kind he’d given his daughter, but different somehow. More complicated. Anne felt it the way one feels a change in air pressure. Not precisely uncomfortable, but present.
“You are Miss Anne Barnet.”
“Yes, I had introduced myself, Your Grace.”
“You should have sent her home the moment she turned up on your property.”
“I sent word to your household the moment I learned who she was, Your Grace.” She kept her tone very pleasant. “I thought that ensuring Lady Felicity had eaten something and was sitting safely in a lit garden was more immediately useful than bundling her out into the dark.”
He held her gaze. His expression did not change, nor did hers.
“She is my daughter.”
“She is, indeed, Your Grace. And she is quite unharmed, as you can see, which I hope provides reassurance.”
“It would have provided more reassurance if I had known where she was before I had turned the entire estate inside out to search for her,” he retorted.
“I understand that.” Anne did not back down. “The message should have reached you as soon as she arrived. I am sorry if there was a delay.”
“There was a delay.”
“Then I am sorry for it.” She looked at him steadily. “But she is safe, Your Grace, and she is here. She has also had her dinner, and if you would like to take her home now, please do so.”
His jaw tightened.
There it was. Just as Felicity said it would. He did not like being told things that were accurate but inconvenient. Anne had met enough men of that type to recognize one on sight.
“She got a bit lost, is all,” Celia spoke up once more. “It happens to everyone. I got lost in a shop once, and nobody made such a—”
“Celia!” Anne hissed.
“—such a dramatic thing out of it,” Celia finished, albeit at a slightly lower volume.
The Duke looked at her again.
This time, Anne saw—thought she saw, or perhaps imagined—a very brief twitch at the corner of his mouth. A smile, if that’s what it was, was there and gone so quickly she could not be certain. The hint of it made her stomach flutter once more.
“Your sister,” the Duke told her.
“My sister,” Anne confirmed. “Miss Celia. She is ten and has very strong opinions.”
“I can see that.”
“And you are the Duke of Dawnhurst,” Celia piped up, crossing her arms. “Felicity told us, Your Grace! She said that your house is right next door.”
“It is.”
“She said you’ve only just moved there this year.” Celia tilted her head. “We haven’t met before. Have we?”
“No,” he confirmed. “We have not had the pleasure.”
“I’m glad we have now, being neighbors and all,” Celia said, with a magnanimity that Anne found charming and slightly alarming. She would have to speak to her about that later. “Felicity is very nice. She says you know about constellations!”
“I know something of them.”
“Celia likes the stars,” Anne explained quickly.
“And horses.” Celia smiled. “And ancient history. I imagine that you have an excellent library, being a duke and all.” She paused. “Is there anything about ancient history in it?”
The Duke looked at the small, earnest creature before him with another expression Anne could not quite name. It was not impatience. It was not displeasure. It was something almost—
“Anne! Anne!”
The Duke was saved from having to answer by the sound of footsteps on the gravel path. Rapid footsteps. Multiple sets. And above them, a voice Anne would have recognized in her nightmares. She went still at the sound.
Uncle Benjamin…
“Girl, where in the devil are you?”
It happened in the space of one breath: the freeze, the calculation, the rapid, unhappy recognition.
She had thought they had more time. Clearly, she had thought incorrectly.
He stormed through the garden gate. He was red in the face and carrying rather more momentum than was elegant for a peer of the realm. His cravat had gone slightly askew, and he was already drawing breath for whatever he had prepared to say when he stopped. He saw the Duke.
The transformation was impressive. The momentum in his thunderous steps died on sight.
The redness remained, but rearranged itself into something that resembled a smile, if Uncle Benjamin could truly muster such a thing genuinely.
His eyes flicked from the Duke to Felicity to Anne and then back to the Duke.
Anne had to fight a smile as she watched him assemble a new version of the situation from the pieces available to him.
“Well, well, well! Your Grace.” He bowed too deeply, and his voice was now the timbre of a man at his pleasantest, his most obliging, his most thoroughly ingratiating. “What a remarkable and most welcome surprise. I had not expected to find you here. A surprise, indeed!”
“Lord Kirklow.” The Duke’s tone was neutral as he gave a nod.
“And at such a late hour, no less.” Uncle Benjamin chuckled, a jovial, fake sound.
“I must confess, we have been… That is to say, I was concerned about my nieces here… finding them outside at this hour! I apologize for the shouting, which may have sounded terribly dramatic. But you must understand how a man worries.” He laughed again.
“His Grace and Lady Felicity were taking an evening walk,” Anne offered, keeping her voice light as the night air. “They happened to pass by the garden. Lady Felicity had… met Celia before in passing, and I invited them to sit with us for a moment.”
Yes, that is good. Very good.
Her uncle’s eyes found her. It was a brief look, barely a second. Yet, in it was everything he was not saying out loud.
I know what you were doing. I know where you are going. We will discuss this later.
Then his smile returned in full force, aimed right at the Duke like a pistol. “How very neighborly! We are so pleased to have you close at hand, Your Grace. It is a privilege, a genuine privilege. And what a charming daughter you have!”
“Thank you,” the Duke replied, in a tone that did not invite conversation.
“Yes, well then.” Uncle Benjamin brushed a hand down his lapels, recalibrating. “We are, in any case, delighted to have you. Though I fear we must take our leave this evening. My niece and I are due in London at the earliest opportunity. Her fiancé is most eager to see her, as I understand it.”
“Fiancé?” the Duke asked, a hint of something in his tone that set Anne’s blood on fire.
“Yes, Lord Lambridge, the Marquess. Perhaps you know him?”
“Papa,” Felicity said softly, tugging at the Duke’s jacket. “Celia and her sister are going to Scotland.”
“We were planning to go to Scotland,” Anne spoke up after an awkward silence.
“We weren’t planning,” Celia corrected, with absolute clarity. “We were going.”