Chapter 4
Chapter Four
The dinner table at Kirklow House was laid as it always was when her uncle was entertaining.
On display was the good silver, the Wedgwood china, candles in the tall candelabras, and flowers that cost more than the cook’s weekly wages. Lord Lambridge sat at her uncle’s right hand and occupied, it seemed to Anne, approximately three times more space than his person technically required.
There were various other peers in attendance, though they could scarcely be heard over Lord Lambridge’s voice.
He was a nice enough-looking man, she would grant him that. The dark hair and the strong jaw and the tailor’s art had conspired to produce an outward image that bore very little resemblance to the interior.
This was something Anne had understood within approximately four minutes of their first meeting, and had been unable to unknow ever since. He was also, at that particular moment, talking. He had been talking since the soup was served.
“Of course, the Lambridge stables are generally known to be the finest in all of Surrey,” he boasted. “Second, some would argue, to no establishment outside of Newmarket itself. I had Carrington. Do you know Carrington, Kirklow?”
“Somewh—”
“Well, I had Carrington come out last spring to look at my new stallion, and he was quite unable to find a single fault,” Lambridge interrupted. “Not one fault. He told me himself.”
“Remarkable,” Uncle Benjamin said simply, in the tone he reserved for men who could do him favors.
“The horse cost me three thousand guineas.” Lambridge picked up his wine and examined it with a slight frown.
Anne found that he always frowned at his wine before drinking it, as if it were a living thing. Then, he always drank it and set it down with a loud clink. That she found it maddening.
“I said to my man, ‘Alexander, a man of my position cannot afford to stable anything but the very best! People notice. They’re looking at a man like me, and they’re looking at everything that surrounds him.’” He glanced at Anne. “You’ll appreciate that, my dear, when we are happily married.”
I appreciate very little about that sentence.
“Indeed,” she forced out, her lips a tight, thin line as she sipped her wine, hoping the glass would steady her. “Celia,” she said, because Celia had gone very quiet over the course of the meal. “Would you like more peas?”
“No, thank you,” Celia replied quietly.
She was watching Lambridge with the focused attention of a small scientist observing something she had not yet figured out.
“Miss Celia.” Lambridge picked up the cue. “I understand you have an interest in horses.”
“I do,” Celia confirmed, sitting up slightly.
“How charming.” The word charming sounded like a compliment extended to a trained dog. “Do you ride?”
“Uncle Benjamin will not allow me. But I’ve read about it.”
“A book is quite different from a horse, my dear. Horses require a firm hand and considerable physical confidence. It’s quite demanding.
Ladies, of course, do very well with the more…
” He made a gesture with his hand. “The more ornamental aspects of riding. The sidesaddle. A gentle hack through the park. But the actual management of a horse… that is a rather different matter. Built for men.” He rolled his shoulders back.
Celia stared at him. “Anne manages horses perfectly well,” she said. “She told me that when we were at the country house, she rode every morning.”
“Every morning,” Lambridge repeated with a click of his tongue, then an indulgent smile that did not reach his cold eyes.
“Well, country riding, yes. A different matter entirely. When you are the lady of a great house, Miss Celia, you will understand that there are more important things to occupy one’s time with. ”
“Like what?” Celia asked.
“Like the management of a household. The duties of a hostess. The education of one’s children.” Lambridge turned to Anne. “Which brings me to something I have been meaning to raise with you, my dear. I have given considerable thought to the matter of heirs.”
The word dropped onto the table like a flopping fish Anne had not asked for, and she willed her wine to stay in her belly. She kept her face perfectly still.
“I feel I can say with some confidence that I am well-suited to fatherhood. I have always felt a natural… well, affinity for children, I suppose. They look up to a man of standing, you know. It shapes them. Gives them an example to follow.”
“You said,” Celia pointed out, “at the Whitmore party that children were tiresome.”
Uncle Benjamin motioned with a flick of his wrist for the footman to refill the wine goblets. The other guests sat in perfect silence.
“You told Lord Ashby that they should be kept out of sight until they were old enough to hold a sensible conversation,” Celia continued as she tilted her head, and Lord Ashby took a sip of his refreshed goblet. “I was behind the sofa because I had dropped a ribbon, and I heard.”
Uncle Benjamin let out a bright, loud chortle. “Oh, children. Don’t they have the most extraordinary talent for misunderstanding adult conversation, My Lord?”
“I understood perfectly well,” Celia said calmly.
“Celia,” Anne warned, very gently. “Would you like to take your pudding upstairs?”
Celia looked at her, then looked at Lambridge, then looked at her again. She took her pudding and left without a single word.
“Delightful child,” Lambridge said, in a tone that conveyed just the opposite.
Uncle Benjamin refilled his glass once more, not even motioning for the footman. He would be sloshed before after-dinner drinks, and had changed the subject to what Anne could barely listen to. She just sat at the table, her hands folded in her lap beneath the tablecloth.
Her thoughts drifted to her mother.
She had not intended to think about her mother, but it was the word “children,” or perhaps “heir,” that did it.
Or maybe it was the way Lambridge had said it with that proprietorial confidence, as though it were a simple matter, as though bringing a child into the world were no more complicated than ordering one of his three-thousand-guinea horses.
She thought about the study she had done, quietly and without announcing it, in the library at her uncle’s house.
She thought of the books she had found, the numbers she had tried to make reassuring and mostly failed.
She thought about her mother’s door, and the storm outside, and the long hours between when it started and when it stopped.
If I die in childbirth like Mama, who will take care of Celia? Who will protect her from our uncle, from men like Lambridge, from the world that has so little patience for small girls with strong opinions and a fondness for ancient history?
“And the Lambridge ball,” she heard Lambridge say, and pulled herself back to the present.
“A ball?” Uncle Benjamin repeated, swirling his glass. “How charming!”
“In honor of our engagement.” Lambridge gestured with his wineglass and clinked it against Uncle Benjamin’s.
“Something appropriate for the occasion. I shall handle all of the arrangements. I have some experience, of course, but I want it known in all the right circles. Miss Barnet.” He looked at Anne directly.
“She will be the most admired woman in the room. I shall make certain of it.”
Uncle Benjamin beamed.
Anne smiled as she must. She felt as though the lid had been closed on something.
Across the table, someone mentioned the Duke of Dawnhurst.
“He is back in town, apparently,” Lord Ashby was saying to her uncle. “Saw his carriage this afternoon. Wondered what brought him out after his disappearance last week. Can you believe the advertisement?”
“His daughter is the reason, I believe,” Lady Ashby interjected. “She’s been asking to come to London all spring, apparently.”
“And how do you know that?” Lord Ashby prodded.
“I have ears all over town, dear husband,” she laughed.
Anne kept her eyes fixed on her pudding. She was not thinking about blue eyes and a scar. She was not thinking about a voice that had come out of the dark saying, You’re not going anywhere. She was absolutely not thinking about those things.
“Dawnhurst,” Lambridge said, in a tone of mild disdain. “Reclusive fellow. Can’t imagine what brings him to town.”
“His daughter,” Lady Ashby repeated patiently.
“Yes, well.” Lambridge waved a dismissive hand. “A man of his unfortunate circumstances… well, one can understand the reluctance to mingle with the ton. Even if he is a duke.”
Anne looked up. She was not entirely sure she had intended to, but she looked up. Lambridge was looking at her with the satisfied expression of a man who expected her to agree with him.
She set down her spoon. “I believe His Grace has been in London several times this year for business. He is quite active in his various interests.”
A brief pause.
“Yes,” Lambridge muttered, “well.”
He changed the subject once more to something Anne could not listen to. She looked down at her pudding, the silver spoon heavy and cold in her hand. His voice became a rhythmic, senseless drone, like the buzzing of a fly against a window.
Persistent, irritating, and utterly trapped.
She traced the scalloped edge of her china plate, wondering how many more minutes she would have to endure before the silence of her own room would finally grant her some rest.
The morning sun in London always felt thinner to William than the light at his country estate, filtered as it was through a haze of coal smoke and the restless energy of Mayfair. Inside Dawnhurst House, however, the atmosphere was uncharacteristically bright.
“If you move that knight, Uncle Rafe, I shall be forced to take your castle,” Felicity declared, her small face set in a mask of grave concentration.