Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Later that night, the house settled into a quiet that felt foreign to Anne.
She lay in the large, canopied bed in her new rooms, the fine silk sheets feeling cold against her skin. The blue sitting room connected to her chamber, and she had purposefully left the door ajar. She could see the sliver of moonlight hitting the window seat Felicity loved so much.
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
A faint noise sounded in the hall, and she sat up. Every creak of the floorboards outside her room made her heart skip a beat.
She had been told this was a marriage of convenience, a tactical alliance to protect Celia from their uncle’s schemes and Lambridge’s wet blanket personality. Yet, the memory of the Duke’s hand on her waist during the waltz, that exact right firmness, that heat, haunted her.
She listened to the sounds, trying to isolate what she knew as his heavy, rhythmic steps. The sound of his tall, strong frame hitting the floor. She expected him to come, to claim the rights the Church and the Register had granted him that morning.
She was, in all effects, his property.
Her chest constricted with a dread so cold it almost felt like ice. Yet, beneath it was a restless pulse of anticipation she refused to acknowledge, let alone name.
I cannot possibly want him to come to my quarters. That would be absurd. And yet…
She waited. One hour passed, then two. The moon moved across the sky, illuminating the room. Another hour, and still the door did not open. The Duke—William—did not come.
Eventually, Anne turned onto her side, staring at the door to the sitting room.
The silence of Dawnhurst House was, as William had intended, as much a part of it as the furniture. Yet, as she drifted into a fitful sleep, she found it was considerably lonelier.
The transition of Dawnhurst House from a bachelor’s fortress to a true family home was marked by the sudden, ubiquitous presence of ribbons, laughter, and the scent of jasmine.
In the sun-drenched morning room, the three ladies sat together in perfect harmony. It had become a sanctuary.
Felicity, usually so poised and defensive, was hunched over an embroidery hoop, her tongue sticking out in concentration.
“Is the French knot supposed to look like a tiny cabbage, Anne?” she asked, squinting at a particularly stubborn tangle of silk thread. “Because mine looks like a wounded spider.”
Anne laughed, leaning over to gently untangle the silk. “It takes a delicate touch, Felicity. Like a whisper on the fabric, not unlike a spider’s web. Here, let me show you.”
Celia, sprawled on a rug nearby with a picture book, looked up. “Can I whisper on the fabric, too? It sounds like fun.”
“In a year or two, sweetheart,” Anne promised. “You are nearly ready.”
“Tell me more about the Almack’s vouchers,” Felicity demanded, her blue eyes bright with a hunger for information she had previously only gleaned from dry etiquette manuals. “Is it true the Lady Patronesses can turn away a duke if his cravat is tied with insufficient gravitas?”
“It is less about the cravat and more about the soul,” Anne teased, though her smile turned thoughtful. “But the ton is a strange beast, Felicity. It prizes appearance above all. You must learn to navigate it like a ship in a storm. You must keep your sails trimmed and your eyes on the horizon.”
“You make it sound like a battle,” Felicity noted, a small smile playing on her lips. “Papa would like that. You two are more alike than you realize, I purport.”
“Do you?” Anne said rhetorically with a raised eyebrow.
The mention of William brought a sudden sharpness to the room.
He had been a ghost in his own house since the wedding, a presence felt in the heavy doors closing or the scent of cedar and expensive Scotch in the hallway, but rarely seen.
He had mostly taken his meals in his study, waking early for fencing lessons and various meetings in town.
“Speaking of Papa,” Felicity said, her gaze flicking to the doorway. “He is in the library today.”
“Is he now?” Celia asked curiously.
“Yes, he said he was looking for a book, but he looked very bored. Perhaps we should take him some tea? Or show him my wounded spider?”
“I am most sure His Grace is very busy, Felicity,” Anne interjected, her heart giving a traitorous thump. “A thoughtful idea, but best that we leave him to his work.”
“No one is ever too busy for tea,” Celia opined, jumping up. “And he likes it when Anne talks. His jaw doesn’t stay so tight.”
The girls exchanged a look, that tactical alliance that Anne was beginning to find formidable.
After lunch, the girls spent the rest of the afternoon orchestrating accidental meetings.
They dragged Anne toward the library on more than one occasion.
They even tried to convince her to consult with the Duke on the color of the new drapes.
Each encounter was a study in polite tension in which she avoided seeing him, until she didn’t.
On what must have been their sixth attempt, he emerged from the library.
“Good afternoon, Duchess,” he greeted with a polite nod. “I trust… you are enjoying this fine day.”
“Oh yes, she is very much,” Felicity said as she stepped between them. “Although I think a stroll around Hyde Park with you would better suit her. Wouldn’t you agree, Aunt Celia?”
“I would, indeed.” Celia nodded. “It is most fine, and we were just about to attend to our lessons.”
“Were you?” Anne asked.
“Yes,” the girls replied in unison.
“I fear that business takes me elsewhere this evening; I must dine in town with a solicitor.” The Duke left without another word.
Yet, as Anne listened to his steps retreat down the grand staircase, she felt the magnetic pull of his presence.
She had begun to hang onto the feeling, the way his blue eyes darkened whenever they lingered on her for a second too long, and the way his hand twitched at his side when around her.
Three days later, the house was filled with the sounds of a treasure hunt.
Felicity had devised a complex map with riddles that led them from the kitchens to the attic in search of prizes and glory.
The girls were so excited that Anne herself couldn’t help but throw herself into the joy of the hunt.
“The next clue is ‘Where the ancestors watch but do not speak,’” Celia shouted, racing down the hallway. “What could that mean, Anne?”
“Think, Celia. I am sure you can figure it out.”
“Ah, the gallery!”
Anne followed her, her skirts swishing around her legs. She turned a corner into a wing of the house she hadn’t yet explored but knew existed. The air here was cooler, smelling of wax and old dust. It hummed with a sort of untouched energy, as if waiting for her.
She pushed open a heavy set of double doors and found herself in a long gallery.
The furniture was draped in ghostly white sheets that stirred faintly whenever the floorboards shifted as she walked.
It felt as though something beneath them had only just settled.
The curtains, which Anne knew had once been a deep, costly green, hung heavy and sun-bleached at the windows, their hems trailing in gray dust. Where the fabric had parted, the corners were webbed by industrious spiders.
Every sound carried strangely in the room as she walked, the groan of a house holding its breath.
The room was frozen in time, neglected and cold. Yet, she could not help but notice the stunning art that adorned the walls.
“Is it in here?” she whispered to herself.
She spotted a large, rectangular shape leaning against a far wall, covered by a heavy linen cloth. Thinking the girls might have tucked the treasure—it was no more than a silver thimble—behind it, she reached out and tugged the sheet away. It fell to the floor with a soft sigh.
Anne froze. It wasn’t a hidden trinket. It was a portrait, familiar and new all at once.
The woman in the painting was breathtaking. She had a crown of soft brown hair that seemed to catch a painted sun. There was a vibrancy to her, a lightness in her expression that felt at odds with the current gloom of the house. She looked just like…
“Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, dear.”
The resemblance was undeniable. It was the late Duchess, the first Duchess of Dawnhurst. This was the woman William had lost, Felicity’s mother.
“Please cover it up!”
Anne jumped, spinning around to find Felicity standing in the doorway, her face pale as an alabaster urn.
“Felicity, you startled me. I was just—”
“You must put the sheet back, Anne. Quickly,” Felicity urged, her voice trembling. “If Papa sees it uncovered, he’ll be very cross. He’ll get that look in his eyes… the one that makes the whole house feel cold as the Arctic. Trust me on this.”
Anne frowned as a silent understanding passed between them. She slowly pulled the linen sheet back over the frame, hiding the radiant woman once more.
“But why, Felicity? It’s a beautiful portrait. It’s your mama, isn’t it?”
Felicity walked closer, her shoulders hunched.
Celia stood by the door. Her sister knew loss as well as she did.
“Yes. I found it only a year ago. I used to come here just to look at her because I do not remember her very well. But when Papa caught me, he… he didn’t yell. He just looked so hurt, and then he ordered the servants to lock the room. I found the key in his desk last month.”
“He doesn’t talk about her?” Anne asked softly. “Not at all? Not even stories at times, or…”
“Never,” Felicity said, a tear finally escaping and trickling down her cheek. It looked so foreign on her strong features.
“I am sorry for that,” Anne said, and she meant it.
“It’s like she never existed. If I ask, he just says, ‘That is in the past, Felicity.’ But the past is where she is. If he won’t talk about her, how am I supposed to know who she was?”
Anne’s heart ached for the girl. She saw the same dread in her that she herself felt when thinking of losing Celia. It pulled at her very core.
She reached out and pulled Felicity into a tight hug.
“Oh, my dear girl,” she murmured into her hair.
“He isn’t trying to forget her. I think…
I think he’s just trying to survive her memory.
Some people build walls because they are afraid that if they let one brick fall, the whole world will come crashing down. ”
“You are wise,” Felicity mumbled, looking up at her. “Thank you.”
A small sniffle came from the doorway. Celia was still standing there, her lower lip trembling as she watched them.
Seeing her friend in tears, she didn’t ask questions. She simply ran across the dusty floor and threw her arms around both of them. They were all part of a club no one wished to join, yet their respective losses only strengthened their bond with one another.
The three of them stood in the center of the dark, forgotten gallery, in a circle of shared grief and fragile love. Anne held them both tightly, her gaze fixed on the white sheet.
She realized then that the stiff, stuffy space William inhabited wasn’t just a choice. It was a tomb he had built for his heart.
Will I ever be strong enough to help him break out of it?