Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
“The master suite is at the end of the corridor, Your Grace,” Mrs. Alderton said as she led Anne and Celia through the upper landing of the grand townhouse.
Felicity, having inserted herself at the head of the tour with enthusiasm, was not unlike an estate agent who had not yet acquired the art of understatement.
Mrs. Alderton, however, was a woman who understood better than most the practical requirements of a household in a state of change.
An indispensable asset, she followed His Grace as he traveled between estates.
Anne learned that the older woman had been running the Redmond household for six years. Given her wry smile as they walked about, Anne realized that the housekeeper had long since accepted her unspoken partnership with Felicity. She decided then that she liked her.
“His Grace had this landing redecorated last autumn. The blue sitting room just over there connects to it on the east side.”
“It is my favorite room in the house,” Felicity declared. “The light is best in the morning. And there is a window seat that is exactly the right size if you sit with your knees tucked to the side.”
“I shall test that immediately,” Celia said, already heading toward the sitting room.
“Celia,” Anne called, then just shook her head.
Let her be excited.
She continued walking with Mrs. Alderton. The house was large and airy, and the light streaming through the landing windows was uncommonly good.
She drew to a stop, with her hands clasped, and looked at the corridor of doors, the soft carpet underfoot, the tasteful spare arrangements of a house that had been assembled with precision and inhabited with reserve.
It is a very fine house. It does not yet have the warmth of a country estate, but it could.
She stopped herself, because that sort of thinking was not particularly useful today.
The girls exited the sitting room in tandem, and they began walking toward the west wing.
“This is the library,” Felicity announced as they stopped in front of the room, throwing open the door with a flourish. “Papa keeps it very tidy, which I think is a shame. Libraries ought to have a slight disorder to them. That is how you know they are properly used.”
“Does he use it?” Celia asked.
“All the time. He reads in the evenings. Very fast. There are seventeen books about ancient battles alone,” Felicity replied.
Celia looked up at Anne with an expression of absolute delight. “Seventeen.”
“I’ll leave you to explore,” Mrs. Alderton offered, stepping back with the practiced discretion of a woman who understood when a little privacy was needed.
Anne drifted to the library window. The garden below was neat and still in the afternoon light, the shadows long across the lawn. Somewhere beyond the study windows at the far end of the house, the Duke of Dawnhurst was attending to his correspondence.
The Duke of Dawnhurst. She shook her head inwardly. He is your husband.
She let the word sink in.
Husband. No, not quite a husband. It was a practical arrangement. She had known that when she agreed to it, had weighed it with clear eyes, and she did not regret her decision. She did not regret any of it.
The relief of no longer being under her uncle’s thumb, of knowing that Celia’s future was secured, of standing in a house that was not Kirklow House, was no small thing. It was a tremendous thing.
Yet, she knew in the marrow of her bones that it was not all of it.
There was one particular thing she had been trying not to think about since approximately eight o’clock that morning, when Mrs. Alderton had helped her dress and given her a look that conveyed, with professional delicacy, a very particular awareness of what the night ahead should hold.
Consummation.
She had thought about it during the wedding ceremony.
She had thought about it during breakfast, underneath the conversation and the champagne and the rambling of her uncle.
She was thinking about it now, standing at this window, with the afternoon light going gold and the study door closed at the other end of the house.
The night would arrive soon enough.
The Duke of Dawnhurst is a gentleman, she reminded herself.
She had no reason to doubt it. He had been nothing but correct in all things. He would, of course, be correct in this as well. He would expect the arrangement to encompass the usual between a husband and wife. It was a reasonable expectation.
She had no objection to him as a person. She had, if she were being honest with herself, a great deal of feeling toward him that was not objection, which was a complicated matter in itself.
But she had also sat in a library once, three years ago, with a stack of books she had not told anyone about, and read what she had read. She had done the arithmetic quietly, in the way one did when the numbers were frightening and one still needed to know them.
Her mind drifted to her mother.
Her dear mother had died in childbirth. She had been strong and healthy at thirty-four years old, and yet she had died.
Anne had been eleven, and Celia had been one day old.
A crime of mass proportions, and the world had rearranged itself into a before and an after from which there was no turning back.
If I fall pregnant—when I fall pregnant, if something goes wrong, who would care for Celia, then?
Her stomach lurched at the thought of her sister being abandoned once more.
The Duke did not know Celia the way Anne did.
How could he? He was kind to her in his reserved and peculiar way, but Celia’s world was still mostly Anne.
A world in which she was not present was a world Anne could not contemplate without her chest constricting with a dread so cold it was almost physical.
“Anne?” Felicity prompted.
Anne turned.
Both girls were looking at her with great interest. Felicity had apparently learned, during their brief acquaintance, to read her in the same way she read her father’s jaw. Celia had long practice in such arts.
“I’m perfectly well,” Anne lied with a smile, hoping it was convincing.
It was, she suspected, approximately as convincing as a very fine dress.
“The kitchens are on the lower ground floor,” Felicity said when Mrs. Alderton returned to the room, resuming the tour with the practiced tact of a girl who had spent a great deal of her life pretending not to notice things.
“And Cook makes an extraordinary apple cake on Fridays. I have been campaigning for Thursdays as well for two years now.” A pause.
“Perhaps,” she added, with a glance at Anne that was not quite a question, “we could revisit the campaign?”
“I think that is a very just cause,” Anne said carefully.
Felicity’s answering smile was entirely sincere. It warmed Anne’s heart. “I knew that you would understand.”
“And I hope I always do,” Anne replied, feeling even more drawn to the young girl.
As the sun began to dip below the London horizon, casting long, amber shadows across the dining room, the new family gathered for their first formal dinner together.
The table was a testament to Mrs. Alderton’s impeccable standards, which Anne was coming to understand. There was fine china, polished silver, and a centerpiece of fresh spring flowers that seemed to mock the stiff air the Duke emanated.
Felicity and Celia sat side-by-side, their voices a constant, bubbling stream of consciousness that filled the gaps where adult conversation failed to take root.
“And then,” Felicity said, gesturing with a small silver fork, “the instructor told Papa that his parry was ‘serviceable but lacking in poetic flair.’ Can you imagine? Calling a duke’s parry unpoetic!”
Celia giggled, her dark curls bouncing. “I should like to see that! Anne says I’m not to use my bread knife as a sword, but I think a ‘poetic parry’ sounds much more interesting.”
Anne caught the Duke’s eye from across the table. He was sitting with his usual, rigid posture, his hands moving with the precise, controlled economy she had observed during his fencing match. The scar on his cheek caught the candlelight, a sharp, silvered line that mapped his history.
“Papa,” Felicity said, leaning forward and lowering her voice in a mock-conspiracy that was loud enough for the entire room to hear. “You haven’t said a word about the soup. Is it unpoetic as well?”
The Duke wiped his mouth with a linen napkin, his movements deliberate. “The soup is adequate, Felicity. As is the silence, which I find I am missing. It has been a long day. I merely wish to enjoy my meal.”
Felicity huffed, a sound that Anne recognized as a precursor to a tactical maneuver. “You are being stiff again. Anne, don’t you think he’s being stiff? Tell her about the ancient battles, Papa. Anne likes history, too. Don’t you, Anne?”
Anne smiled, though it felt slightly brittle. “I’m sure His Grace has had quite enough for one day, Felicity. We will have plenty of time for such talks in the future.”
“On the contrary,” William countered, his voice flat as he looked at his daughter. “The battles in the library are considerably more predictable than the ones currently being waged at this table.”
Anne felt a flash of the old defiance she’d shown him in the garden at Kirklow Hall, the shyness she felt after such a long day leaving her.
“Perhaps then, if you find our company so taxing, we should have dined in the nursery. We wouldn’t want to disrupt your predictable evening,” she said softly.
The idea of teasing him excited every fiber of her being.
William’s jaw tightened, and he looked at her, really looked at her. That was the telltale sign Felicity had taught her to read.
“That was not what I suggested, Duchess.”
“Wasn’t it? It sounded remarkably like a dismissal,” she retorted, her green eyes flashing as she batted them beneath heavy lashes.
The girls fell quiet, sensing the sudden drop in temperature between the adults.
William held her gaze, his blue eyes assessing and cool. Yet, there was something that smoldered just beneath the icy facade. He set down his fork gently, grabbed his napkin, and dabbed the corners of his mouth.
“I am unaccustomed to having my observations interrogated,” he said finally.
“Then perhaps,” Anne replied, setting down her spoon with a soft clink, “you should consider making observations that are less deserving of interrogation.”
The silence that followed was heavy. Until Celia piped up, “You know, I think the soup is better than a battle.”
“And why is that?” William asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Battles do not have cream.”