Chapter 5
Chapter Five
The following morning arrived with the brightness of a London day that was most fine. Anne and Celia were collecting their bonnets and shawls for their morning walk along the cobblestone streets to Hyde Park.
Anne found the daily hour of not being inside her uncle’s house was necessary for her sanity. She was tying her hat in place when the front door opened… and Felicity Redmond walked through it.
Like her father had been that fateful evening, the girl was slightly ahead of the announcement.
As if on cue, behind her and filling the doorway with the easy confidence of a man who had spent the night thinking about the correct angle of approach and had arrived at one, was the Duke of Dawnhurst himself.
The butterflies returned to Anne’s belly with a vengeance, and she tried not to blush.
“Good morning!” Felicity greeted with the warmth of someone who had been planning this and was very pleased with how it was going. “I was barely able to sleep when thinking of today’s walk!”
“What a coincidence, I had the same experience,” Celia said with a wink.
“Good Morning, Your Grace.” Anne bobbed a curtsy. “To what do we owe this pleasure, Lady Felicity?”
“The pleasure is mine,” Felicity said with a smile. “Celia had sent a letter inviting us!”
“Did she now?” Anne’s cheeks flushed in surprise. She cast a look at Celia, who just shrugged. “Very well, it is such a fine day. We will be glad to have company.”
“Good Morning, Miss Barnet,” the Duke returned, keeping his voice even. “The day is most fine.”
“It is.”
“Shall we go?” Celia asked, already pulling on her bonnet.
“Mary,” Anne called to her maid. “We are ready!”
“I am here, Miss Barnet,” Mary said, before escorting the girls out of the townhouse.
Hyde Park on a clear morning was one of the few things London did with a grace that rivaled the countryside. Anne found a rare, quiet joy in the vast diagonal lanes of amber light cutting through the ancient trees.
There was something restorative in the city’s cheerful indifference, the way the world hurried along its edges while the ducks paddled with absolute serenity across the glassy skin of the Serpentine.
To Anne, the park had always felt like a sanctuary, a green-tinted ghost of the mornings she had spent there trailing after her mother’s silk skirts.
Felicity pulled Celia toward the water with the confidence of someone who had identified a destination. Celia followed her with the expression of someone pretending to be dragged somewhere she was intending to go anyway. Mary trudged behind them, hiking up her skirts.
“Do not go too far,” the Duke called to Felicity. “Remember your orders.”
“We won’t, Papa,” Felicity called back, already several feet away. “I promise!”
They watched them go and stood for a few moments in comfortable silence.
“Lady Felicity is quite determined,” Anne noted.
“She is,” he agreed.
“Has she always been this way? Such a spirited young thing?”
“Yes.”
“Well…” she trailed off, pulling her shawl tight around her body for something to do as she awaited a response.
“Miss Celia is spirited as well,” he offered.
“Yes, they are quite a pair. I have not seen Celia so happy in a long time. Thank you for coming.”
“Indeed.”
Another silence.
The Duke did not, Anne had learned, fill silences as a matter of course. A welcome change from her uncle’s blabbering and Lambridge’s boasting.
He let them stand, which was unusual and which she oddly found herself not minding. She tilted her head up and felt the warmth of the sun on her face.
“She has a unique fire inside her,” she said softly, her eyes following Felicity as they chased the ducks. “Where does such a spirit come from?”
“Her mother,” he replied, turning his gaze toward her for a fleeting second. “Certainly not from me. She is… she is everything to me.”
Anne caught the slight catch in his voice and smiled.
He looked back toward the water, granting her the luxury of observing him unobserved.
The scar no longer seemed an intrusion. It had become an essential part of his unique face, inseparable from the man himself. In the curve of his profile, the guarded mask he wore for the world had slipped, replaced by a look of raw, uncertain tenderness that made her breath hitch.
It was the look of someone who loved someone and was not quite sure how to show it without exposing something he couldn’t afford to expose. She recognized that, too, from a different angle.
Suddenly, from the direction of the water, Celia let out a sharp, startled gasp. It was not quite a shriek, but the high-pitched sound of a child caught off guard.
Anne and the Duke moved as if pulled by the same tether, both crossing the distance in a single, panicked breath. At the bank, a large duck paddled away with indifference to the chaos it had caused. Celia remained steady, her eyes wide with the simple shock of the encounter.
Anne reached for her sister at the exact moment the Duke did the same from the opposite side. Their hands met over Celia’s back. It was a brief, gloved touch that seared Anne to the core.
The world seemed to narrow to that small point of contact.
Anne withdrew her hand, not with a startled jerk that would have betrayed her, but with a slow, deliberate calm that felt like pulling a thread through silk. She tried to memorize the sensation.
“She startled me!” Celia scoffed, slightly indignant, pointing at the offending duck. “It came right up to the edge. How rude!”
“The ducks are quite forward in this part of the park,” Anne cautioned. Her voice was steady, which she considered an accomplishment.
The Duke had straightened. He was looking at the water, as if the touch had been her imagination entirely.
“Keep back from the edge,” he said to the girls, in a voice that was steadier than Anne had expected, which meant either he had not felt it or he was considerably better at this than she was. “And please, watch them more carefully,” he instructed Mary.
“Of course, Your Grace!” Mary said with a deep curtsy. “Shall we press on?”
“Indeed,” the Duke said, and they were off.
The girls walked together as the adults trailed behind. Felicity took center stage, launching into a discourse on the merits of various waterfowl. Celia, usually so quick to flit from one thought to the next, listened with a gravity that Anne found touching and unexpected.
The children drifted a few paces ahead, their voices a bright, melodic counterpoint to the heavy silence between the adults.
Beside Anne, the Duke moved with an unhurried grace that seemed to claim the very air around him. He did not speak, nor did he offer his arm, yet his presence was as bright as the sun.
Anne kept her gaze fixed firmly on the path ahead. She did not look at the silvered line of the scar that mapped his cheek. She did not allow her mind to dwell on the electric pressure of his hand against hers on Celia’s back. She remained perfectly, exquisitely indifferent to him.
“Your sister is a most attentive listener,” the Duke said finally. “Felicity is not often granted such a patient audience for her avian lectures.”
“Celia has always had a heart for smaller things,” Anne replied. “And Felicity’s enthusiasm is quite infectious. It is a rare gift to find a companion so well-matched in spirit.”
“It is,” he agreed.
He paused, his stride faltering for a fraction of a second before resuming its steady beat.
“What is your favorite book?” He asked, surprising her.
“I am surprised you have time to ask such things, being so busy, Your Grace.”
“Even the busiest of men must be well-read.”
“I have read The Mysteries of Udolpho more times than I dare count.”
“A fan of Gothic literature, then. Ann Radcliffe is a talent.”
“You have read it as well?”
“To quote, “A well-informed mind is the best security against the contagion of folly and vice”.”
“I am impressed, Your Grace.”
“I am glad.”
“And I find I am glad we opted for the park this morning, Your Grace.”
“As am I, Miss Barnet. The air is quite… restorative.”
“Papa, please. It truly would be a most fine activity for you. I only have your health in mind.”
Felicity had been practicing her most persuasive tone since breakfast, and now she had evaded Miss Grantham and was sitting in William’s study. She may as well have been a barrister pleading her case.
“Is that all, Felicity? I am quite busy with correspondence.” He gestured to the piles of paper on his mahogany desk.
“The stable hand said the chestnuts need the exercise, and the air is so much finer than the study’s dust. Besides,” she added with a tactical tilt of her head, “you said yourself you missed the saddle. That is what I am referring to.”
William looked down at his daughter. He knew precisely what she was doing, and doing it well.
“Very well,” he sighed, though his eyes betrayed a glimmer of relief. “But if you attempt to race the phaetons, we are returning immediately. Tell Miss Grantham to dress you properly. I will take you myself.”
He knew that his daughter was right, that the fresh air would do him well. He also knew that he had spent the last three hours staring at the same page of a ledger, his mind stubbornly drifting to a person he’d seen in Hyde Park just the day before.
The rhythmic thud of hooves against the soft earth was the only sound for a while, until the Row opened up near the Serpentine. There, framed by the vibrant green of the spring leaves, were two familiar figures on horseback.
Miss Barnet rode a sturdy bay with a grace that suggested she was as comfortable in a saddle as she was anywhere else. Beside her, Miss Celia was mounted on a small, spirited pony, her legs kicking with excitement.
“Oh, look!” Felicity cried, her voice ringing with too much surprise. “Is that Miss Barnet and Celia? What a coincidence!”
William steered his black stallion toward them, his heart doing a strange, uncharacteristic skip against his ribs that he attributed to the exertion.