Chapter 5 #2
“How coincidental,” he said as they drew rein beside them. He tipped his hat, the sunlight catching the sharp angle of his scar and the faint silver at his temples that made him only look more distinguished. “Miss Barnet. Miss Celia.”
“Your Grace,” Anne replied, her cheeks flushed pink from the ride. She looked at him, not the way others did, gawking at his scar. She really looked at him.
“Felicity!” Celia chirped, already maneuvering her pony closer. “We were just going to see the ducks again. Anne says I’m not allowed to gallop, but she didn’t say anything about a brisk trot!”
Felicity looked at her father, then at Anne, her expression one of saintly helpfulness. “Papa, may Celia and I trot ahead to the water? I am an excellent rider, and we shall stay strictly within sight. You and Miss Anne can follow at a… more dignified pace.”
Anne opened her mouth, perhaps to protest, but the girls were already leaning into each other and whispering.
“Go on then,” William allowed, his voice dropping an octave without his permission. “But stay where I can see your plumes. That is an order.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” Celia said, and they were off.
With one last synchronized cheer, the girls nudged their mounts forward. Within seconds, they were twenty yards ahead, their laughter trailing behind them like a bright ribbon in the sunlight.
Silence fell between the adults. It was a heavy, comfortable, and slightly dangerous silence. William nudged his stallion closer to Anne’s bay until their stirrups nearly brushed.
“I suspect,” Anne said, looking straight ahead, though a smile played at her lips, “that these girls have missed their calling in politics the way they scheme.”
“Indeed,” William remarked dryly, though he had to bite back a smile.
The horses moved in a slow, synchronized rhythm, the rhythmic creak of leather and the soft thud of hooves against the earth filling the space between them.
After a few minutes, William slowed his horse to a crawl, and Miss Barnet instinctively mirrored the movement, as if it were a dance all its own.
They were passing beneath a canopy of ancient oaks, the light filtering down in dappled patterns across the path.
He adjusted his grip on the reins, and his black stallion tossed its head, but he steadied it with a subtle, practiced tug.
“I found Felicity drawing a map of the Serpentine this morning at breakfast,” he admitted, breaking the quiet. “I suspect it was a tactical diagram. She has spent much of her life in the company of tutors and shadows. Seeing her… scheming is a relief, in a way. Even if I am the main target.”
“It is a heavy thing, I imagine,” Miss Barnet replied. “To be the sun around which her entire world orbits. She clearly adores you, but every child needs a peer to whisper secrets to.”
“And what of you, Miss Barnet?” he asked, his blue eyes catching the light through the trees. “You navigate your sister’s whims with the patience of a saint, yet I sense you are not merely a passenger in her wake. You have a certain… sharpness.”
“A sharpness, Your Grace? Is that… a compliment?”
“It is an observation.”
“Well, I have had a great deal of practice.” Anne shrugged. “When one’s world is small, one learns to look very closely at the details. The way a person stands, the cadence of their voice, the things they do not say.”
William stopped his horse entirely. The question he asked next was direct and out of his mouth before he could overthink it, stripped of the usual aristocratic armor. “And what do you see when you look at me?”
Miss Barnet looked at the faint scar near his temple, then met his eyes. She did not flinch. “I see a man who is very tired of being looked at… and would very much like to be seen for who he is.”
“You are a dangerous woman, Miss Barnet,” he murmured, his voice like velvet over gravel as he processed her brave words. “Most people take great pains to look away from what is uncomfortable, nor do they speak to a duke in such a manner. It is refreshing. You, it seems, prefer the truth.”
“The truth is usually more interesting,” she whispered.
A sudden shriek of laughter erupted from the direction of the water. They both looked up to see the girls racing their mounts toward a cluster of swans.
“We must intervene,” William said gruffly. “Before they attempt to negotiate a treaty with the waterfowl.”
“I believe the swans can hold their own.” Anne smiled. “It’s the rest of London I’m worried about.”
He let out a low huff that might, in a less guarded man, have passed for a laugh. “A fair point. I suppose I should pity the swans, then.”
“You should pity yourself, Your Grace. You are about to be conscripted into refereeing a duel between a pony and a goose.”
“I have presided over worse in the House of Lords.” He nudged his stallion forward, but only a step, as if reluctant to close the distance entirely. “Tell me, Miss Barnet, do you always speak so freely, or is it merely the fresh air that loosens your tongue?”
Anne considered him, her gloved hands quiet on the reins. “I speak freely when I find myself in fair company. It happens less often than you might suppose.”
“I might suppose it happens never,” William said, “given how poorly society rewards candor.”
“And yet here we are. Trotting along beneath the oaks, exchanging dangerous truths.” She glanced at him sideways. “I shall have to write to my aunt and warn her that I have been corrupted by a duke.”
“By a tired duke,” he corrected. “There is a meaningful difference.”
“Is there?”
“A tired duke is a far less interesting villain. He cannot muster the energy for proper villainy.”
A small laugh escaped her, so quick, bright, and entirely unguarded. It changed her face, the way her shoulders eased forward in the saddle as though the sound itself had freed something deep inside of her.
“Miss Barnet.”
“Your Grace?”
“I find I am not as eager to reach the water as I was a moment ago.”
She did not answer at once. Ahead, Felicity’s voice carried back to them, instructing Celia in some matter of grave equestrian importance. A breeze stirred the leaves overhead, and a pattern of light moved across Anne’s face like the turning of a page.
“Then we should walk the long way,” she said quietly. “Around the bend. The girls will not notice for at least another quarter of an hour, and by then they shall have forgotten we exist entirely.”
“That is a tactical suggestion.”
“I have been studying Felicity’s example. She has been well taught.”
He turned his stallion onto the softer path, and the bay followed without prompting, as though the horses themselves had decided the matter between them.
The trees here grew closer together, and the noise of the Row dimmed to something distant, almost pastoral.
William let the reins rest loose in his hand.
A few days later, returning from the milliner’s on Bond Street, Anne and Celia turned a corner and walked directly into Felicity and the Duke.
“Good morning,” Felicity said cheerily, as though it were the most natural meeting in the world. “Fancy meeting you here!”
Anne looked at Celia, who merely shrugged and then looked at Felicity with an expression of wide-eyed innocence.
“What a coincidence,” she said, throwing an arm around Felicity.
“Isn’t it?” Felicity agreed, putting an arm around her in turn.
“Indeed.” The Duke looked at his daughter with a raised eyebrow.
Anne assessed the situation. Both girls had requested outings to the Bond Street area on the same morning. Both had rounded the same corner at the same time.
“Celia,” Anne said.
“Yes, Sister?” Celia asked, all wide brown eyes, still clutching Felicity.
“Did you by any chance arrange this?”
A pause. “Define arrange. I am unfamiliar with the word.”
“You are ten years old and incredibly well-educated. You know the meaning of that word.”
“I am almost eleven!” Celia protested. But then she hesitated, and the innocent facade cracked.
Beneath it was the real thing, a little abashed, but fundamentally unrepentant.
“Felicity said she was going to ask His Grace to go to Bond Street! I said I would ask you too, but thought it might be easier this way. We thought that perhaps…”
“We only wanted to see each other,” Felicity chimed in, with the earnestness of a child who believed, not incorrectly, that the aim justified the means. “We all had so much fun at the park the other day, didn’t we?”
Anne looked at the Duke, who had an unreadable look in his bright blue eyes. He was impossibly striking in daylight, and she was powerless to resist the lure.
“Yes, I suppose we did, Lady Felicity,” she said with a smile. “Since we are all here, perhaps we might walk together?”
Felicity’s lips did a thing that was not quite a triumphant smile but was close to one. Anne had learned in their few meetings that the girl was too proper, too guarded for that.
The Duke looked up at the sky for a moment. Then he offered his arm, with the resigned air of a man who had decided to accept his circumstances. Anne took it, and the air left her lungs in a whoosh. She leaned into the broad muscles of his strong arm as much as was acceptable.
They walked the length of Bond Street in the pale morning sunshine, the girls ahead of them, heads bent together, discussing something with great animation.
The Duke walked with the quiet awareness of someone who was accustomed to being looked at in public and had long since made his peace with it.
People did look. Anne assumed it was at the scar, mostly, though some looked simply because he was the kind of man people looked at.
He noticed every glance, yet acknowledged none of them.
“Did you let her arrange this?” she asked, after walking for a while in the comfortable half-silence.
“She is aware of my limits,” he replied. “She operates within them. It would be unsporting to pretend otherwise.”
“You are wise.” Anne glanced at him. “That is a very measured way of describing it.”
“It is an accurate one.”
“Most fathers would simply say no.”
“Most fathers,” he said, with dry precision that she had come to crave somehow, “have not met Felicity.”
She laughed at his wry humor. It was a genuine, unguarded laugh, and she did not bother to suppress it.
He looked at her when she laughed. She could feel it as much as the sun on her face. It was the intensity of his attention, and yet she could not look back in fear of breaking the spell. And so they walked in comfortable silence along the cobblestone street.
“It seems our planners have reached the end of their tether,” the Duke remarked as they came to a stop. “For now.”
“Or at least the end of the street,” Anne replied, slightly breathless as she realized how much time had elapsed. She turned to the girls. “Celia, let us say our farewells.”
Celia let out a dramatic, long-suffering sigh that would have done a stage actress proud, but she stepped back. “Will I see you at my uncle’s garden party, Felicity?”
“If I am very good, I am sure Papa will allow such an opportunity,” Felicity promised, though the twinkle in her eyes suggested good was a relative term. She turned to Anne and bobbed a perfect curtsy. “Thank you for the walk, Miss Barnet. It was much more agreeable than walking with just Papa.”
“Let’s be on our way, Felicity,” the Duke warned as he pulled out his pocket watch, though there was no bite in it. He looked down at Celia, offering her a nod of genuine respect. “Miss Celia, it was a pleasure to see you.”
Celia beamed, undaunted. “The pleasure was mine, Your Grace.”
Finally, the Duke turned his full attention back to Anne. For a moment, he simply looked at her with a piercing clarity that made her feel as though the Bond Street crowds had vanished entirely.
“Miss Barnet,” he said, reaching out to briefly take her gloved hand. The contact was fleeting, but the heat of it lingered even after he let go. “Until the next coincidence.”