Chapter 6
Chapter Six
“Come enjoy the party, Sister!” Celia pleaded, tugging at Anne’s sleeve. “You look most fine.”
Anne looked at herself in the mirror. She did look fine, indeed. She was of average height, but lean with a hint of curves. The lilac gown she wore accentuated those hints. Her hair was pinned up in an elegant chignon, with small whisps of baby’s breath woven in it.
“Let’s go then,” she said.
They went down the stairs from their quarters, through the main house, and out the French doors to the gardens.
The garden party at Kirklow House was not, in the hierarchy of her uncle’s entertainments, a large affair.
Forty guests, perhaps. All the good families and the ones that aspired to be considered good families, the ones her uncle regarded with the careful attention of a man who regarded human beings primarily as social assets, were in attendance.
The day was fine. The garden was laid out with tables and parasols, and there was a string quartet playing something soft near the rose arbor. Anne turned her head, and there was Lambridge, wearing a new coat and sipping champagne as if he were the host.
She observed from a careful distance that Celia was behaving with exemplary caution. The girl had been briefed, quietly and without drama, that today required more decorum than usual. She had accepted this with the resignation of a person who disagreed but had chosen her battles.
She stood near one of the maids in attendance, drinking lemonade and watching the proceedings with the quiet intensity she brought to things she was studying.
“What in the devil is he doing here?” Uncle Benjamin muttered under his breath.
“Pardon, Uncle?” Anne asked, turning her head in the direction he was looking.
“Dawnhurst.”
The Duke stood by the weathered stone of the garden wall, deep in conversation with a lord whose face was entirely unfamiliar to her. He held a flute of champagne with a careless elegance, his head tilted at an angle that artfully cast his scar into the shadows.
Anne was sure that it was intentional. In that golden light, though, the rugged symmetry of his features was undisturbed, making him look so devastatingly striking that she found it difficult to look away.
“Eeeek!” Lambridge yelled most unbecomingly.
She turned around to find him engaged in a violent, flailing struggle with the interior of his coat pocket.
He had thrust his hand in and made contact with something he had clearly not expected to be there, and was now shaking his hand, and the coat was shaking with it.
His face had gone a very vivid shade of red.
“What in the devil? Get it off?”
“What is the matter?” Uncle Benjamin asked as he approached.
“There is something—there is something in my pocket! It’s ALIVE!”
Several guests stepped back in horror. Lambridge’s valet suddenly materialized out of nowhere with the trained alertness of a man who had learned to anticipate his employer’s crises. “My Lord!”
He pulled out a spider. It was not large, but extremely alive and quite determined. He flicked it away, and it disappeared into the lawn with the serene indifference of a creature that had finished its assignment.
Lambridge stumbled backward, collided with the champagne table, and grabbed it to steady himself, toppling two glasses in the process.
A brief and peculiar silence ensued. Then several guests started speaking at once, smoothing things over.
The string quartet resumed, and Lambridge straightened his cravat with the expression of a man who intended to have words with someone when he identified the right person.
Anne looked down at her lemonade with great concentration, because out of the corner of her eye, she had caught Felicity returning her hands to her sides and assuming the serene expression of a child who had been standing in one place all along.
And behind her was Celia.
Celia!
She pressed her lips together. She did not laugh. She was extremely proud of not laughing.
She looked up and caught sight of the Duke once more, who was looking at his daughter.
He shook his head. He had seen her do it. He knew.
Thank you, girls.
And then the Duke looked at Anne with an expression that was not amused, not exactly.
She wasn’t sure if the Duke of Dawnhurst could be amused, and yet his expression had a kind of depth to it.
They had a shared knowledge, and in the brief moment that they looked at each other, she felt a slight, involuntary pull.
She did not dislike it.
Her uncle had descended on Lambridge with a glass of champagne and the full force of his social diplomacy, and Lambridge was placated, and the party continued.
Anne looked away and resumed her duties. For the rest of the afternoon, she found that she was aware of where the Duke was in the garden, the way one was aware of a fire. Not by looking directly at it, but always knowing where it was by its warmth.
A few days later, in the afternoon, Anne took the girls down to the garden at Dawnhurst House to read, following Felicity’s invitation.
This was a planned outing, which was a welcome contrast to the prior engagements the girls had had. The day was warm, and the light filtering through the trees was very pleasant. It was the kind of afternoon that reinforced the belief that the world might occasionally be gentle.
The Duke was there, fencing with his instructor on the far side of the garden. Anne noticed him before he noticed her, which gave her approximately four seconds of observation that she later chastised herself for.
He had removed his coat. His shirt was clinging to his muscles, and he moved with the kind of controlled, powerful economy that was not usually on display when he was standing in drawing rooms, being careful about everything.
She looked down at her book.
“Papa is very good,” Felicity remarked, sitting down beside her without looking up from her embroidery. “His instructor says he’s the best student he’s ever had, but Papa says that’s because his instructor is trying to avoid being dismissed. He likes to best Uncle Rafe, too!”
“Mm,” Anne murmured.
Celia was not sitting. She was standing at the edge of the garden path, watching the fencing match with the focused, open-mouthed attention she usually reserved for battles in history books and horses. She began to pantomime the movements earnestly.
Anne saw her expression. She had seen it before. It was the expression of a child who had just discovered something she was going to want very much.
“Excuse me,” she told Felicity.
She walked to the fencing area. The instructor, who was a spare, rough-looking man in his fifties, noticed her approach and straightened. He bowed, and William noticed her a half-second later. He lowered his blade.
“Ah, Miss Barnet.” He waved to her.
“Your Grace.” She glanced at the instructor, then back. “My sister has been admiring the lesson. She has an interest in—”
“Fencing is not suited for ladies,” the instructor barked.
Anne kept her smile in place. “I see.”
“It requires—”
“A great deal of footwork,” the Duke finished.
The instructor paused.
“Fetch one of the practice swords,” the Duke ordered. “The light ones.”
Another pause.
“Your Grace, this is most unusual.”
“The light ones,” the Duke reiterated, in a tone that ended the conversation.
The instructor fetched the practice swords.
Celia, who had heard all of this from a short distance away, had gone very still in the way she did when something she wanted very much was about to happen. It was as if she was afraid to breathe, in case it went away.
“Come here, Miss Celia,” the Duke called.
Celia walked toward him with the careful, reverent gait of a child entering a museum. He crouched down slightly to put himself at a more sensible height and showed her how to hold the practice sword.
Anne returned to Felicity and sat down. She did not watch. She was very occupied with her book.
“You’re watching,” Felicity noted.
“I’m reading.”
“You’ve been staring at the same page for ten minutes.”
“I read quite slowly.”
“I find that hard to believe,” she whispered, making a small sound that was clearly suppressed laughter before returning to her embroidery.
From across the garden, Anne could hear the Duke’s voice but not his words. His tone was more important. He was patient and precise. He was saying more words than he normally put together in one stretch.
She could hear Celia too, surely asking questions in that rapid-fire way of hers. She could hear the Duke answering them thoroughly.
She read the same paragraph four times.
The morning before Lambridge’s ball, William sat down to play chess with Felicity after breakfast. It was a welcome distraction from the day’s agenda before a meeting with Rafe.
This was not unusual. He had taught her the game when she was eight, at her insistence, and she had taken to it with the methodical, slightly ruthless nature he shared. She was no match for him, not yet, but she was improving at a rate he found interesting.
They sat at the chess table by the window, the board between them, and they did not speak for several minutes.
“Miss Celia told me something,” she began.
“Move your bishop or lose it,” he warned.
She moved her bishop. “She told me that she and her sister hate Lord Lambridge.” A pause. “She said their uncle is forcing Miss Barnet to marry him.”
“Felicity, that is none of our business.”
“She did say it.”
“I do not doubt it.” He moved a pawn. “But it is not our business.”
“He is horrible.”
“Many men are horrible. That is also not our business.”
“But Miss Barnet is…” Felicity paused.
Our business.
She looked at the board, then she looked up at him with those bright blue eyes.
“What is it, Felicity?”
“Miss Barnet is kind. She is the kindest person I have met in a long time, and she doesn’t deserve to be married off to someone horrible.” A beat. “Your knight is in danger.”
He was aware of that. He moved his knight. Felicity captured his bishop.
Damn it, I cannot focus.
“She is also,” Felicity said, studying the board, “very beautiful.”
“Felicity.”
“I’m only saying.”
“You are only meddling.”
“So you do think she’s beautiful.”
“Felicity.”
“You didn’t say I was wrong!”
“Play chess.”
“I am playing chess, Papa. Quite well, it seems.” She moved her queen. “I am allowed to have thoughts while I play chess.” She paused. “She has green eyes.”
“I noticed.”
“She’s very good to Celia. And she’s good to me too, which she doesn’t have to be.” She looked up from the board, her gaze considerably more mature than her age would suggest. “She makes you talk more.”
He looked at her. He could not argue with that.
“At the park. And on Bond Street. You talked more when she was there.” She looked back at the board and shrugged. “I just noticed.”
William said nothing for a moment. He made his move.
“I understand what you are doing,” he muttered, “and I want you to stop. Now.”
“I’m playing chess,” Felicity said serenely.
“Felicity.”
“Checkmate in four,” she trilled.