Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
An emerging new normal. I am not sure how I feel about that.
By the usual standard of Dawnhurst House, dinner that evening was most irregular. But it seemed that was the new way of things.
The change had first shown itself when Celia had announced, despite William’s request for quiet after their outing, that she had a pressing question. It was about the Romans, and it could not wait until tomorrow. She had been permitted to ask it on the carriage ride home.
That question had produced a second question, which had produced a third. Such was the way with questions and Celia. By the time they arrived at the house, the third question was still pending.
“Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes,” Mrs. Alderton informed them as they entered the house.
“Thank you, Mrs. Alderton. Let us all refresh ourselves for dinner, then,” Anne said. “The grand inquisition will need to wait, or at least have a brief respite.”
“All right,” Celia sighed. “At dinner, then.”
“Agreed,” William said.
Twenty minutes passed quickly, and the question followed them to the table, as he had expected. They took their seats.
“But if the Romans built roads everywhere,” Celia asked, accepting the breadbasket from the footman without looking at it, “and the roads were so excellent, why did the empire still fall?”
“Many reasons,” William replied as he began to eat his salad.
“Name one.”
“Celia,” Anne scolded softly. “Mind your manners at the dinner table. His Grace has been most patient with your inquiries, and I—”
“I only want to know one. I will look up the others in the book, I promise. I just want to hear His Grace explain it. He does it so well.”
“Political instability,” William offered with a small grin that he could not hide. “The empire became too large to govern from a single center. The farther the borders, the harder it is to control.”
“I completely understand now. It’s like…” Celia considered as she tore her bread with vigor. “Like if you were trying to manage something very big from only one room and you could not see the other rooms at all!”
“That is,” William said as he took a sip of wine, “a reasonable analogy.”
Celia looked pleased with herself and smiled at her sister. “Anne, it is like when you try to manage the house from the morning room, and then something goes wrong in the kitchen, and you never know until it is already a problem.”
“Thank you, Celia,” Anne drawled. “I had not previously compared myself to the later Roman Empire.”
“I meant it as a compliment, Sister,” Celia said earnestly. “You do very well with the parts you can see.”
Felicity looked at William across the table and smiled. He looked down at his soup.
All of it was so new, so overwhelming, so—
“Papa,” Felicity spoke up, with the air of a person changing the subject for the good of all involved, bringing him back to the present moment. “I have been thinking about the bronze horse.”
“Have you?”
“I want to make one. Mrs. Alderton says there is clay in the schoolroom for modeling. I think I could make a horse if I tried very carefully.”
“You could try.”
“I would need a reference, though. Something to look at while I work.” She considered. “Is there a book with pictures of Greek bronzes? In the library?”
“Third shelf, left-hand side. There is a volume on ancient metalwork with plates.”
“I shall need to borrow it,” she said, her blue eyes sharp.
“You may borrow it.”
“And perhaps,” she added, as though the idea had come to her only now, “if the model turns out well…”
“I am sure it will be wonderful,” Anne assured her.
“… I could put it on the mantelpiece,” Felicity finished, her chest puffed out at the compliment.
“The mantelpiece?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“Which one? We have many.”
“In the drawing room.”
William looked at her. She looked down at her soup.
“Felicity.”
“Yes, Papa?”
“Make the horse first.”
She pressed her lips together and nodded. “Yes, Papa.”
“We will discuss its placement once it is complete.”
“Yes, Papa.”
Celia, who had been following their conversation like it was a very interesting chess match, turned to Anne. “Do you really think she can make a horse?” she asked, in a whisper she believed was quiet but was not.
“I think that Felicity can do anything she sets her mind to,” Anne replied.
“That’s true.” Celia turned to Felicity. “Anne thinks you are very capable.”
“I heard her,” Felicity said with a knowing look, her head tilted to the side.
“Good.” Celia reached for more bread. “It is nicer when people say things, and you get to hear them rather than hearing them by accident.”
There was a brief silence.
“Celia,” Anne sighed as the next course was served—a plate of pheasant and rich, buttery roasted vegetables.
“I’m just saying.” Celia turned the bread over in her hands and picked up her fork. “Sometimes, people are kinder than they think they are, and nobody tells them. I like saying what I mean!”
William looked down at his plate. He was not going to respond to that. He was a man of forty-one who had managed a duchy for fifteen years. He had no need for the observations of a ten-year-old on the subject of unspoken kindness, poignant as they might be.
The soup was excellent, and the pheasant will be, he told himself, hoping it would distract him not only from the conversation but from Anne.
His wife had changed quickly into a lovely pink gown that made her look so radiant, so beautiful. It also did not hurt that it was cut perfectly on her body, accentuating her delicate curves.
“More wine, Your Grace?” the footman asked.
“Oh, yes,” William said too quickly. “Thank you.”
The girls were in bed by half past nine, which was an achievement in itself after the excitement of the day, as well as the sugar.
Celia had requested one more question about Rome and had been given a firm but affectionate no from Anne, which she received with the resignation of a seasoned diplomat.
Felicity went up with her, which had become a routine in the weeks since the wedding. The two of them would disappear up the staircase in a conference of whispers that they did not trouble to conceal.
Anne suspected she was being discussed in those whispers.
She suspected William was, too. She knew better than to think that the whispers were always flattering.
She had chosen not to investigate, allowing the girls space to be girls.
She reveled in the fact that she had never seen her sister quite so happy as when she was with Felicity.
William was lounging in the parlor with a glass of brandy when she walked in.
She had changed out of the blue walking dress into something simpler for dinner, a soft pink gown that was not quite for company and not quite for sleep.
It fit her well. Her hair was partially down, one loop of dark chestnut still pinned at the back of her neck, and the rest of it loose around her shoulders.
She was carrying a small glass of sherry.
She settled into the chair across from him, tucking her feet beneath her in the way she did when she thought no one was looking, or when she had decided she did not care who was looking.
“Thank you,” she said, looking at him. “For today.”
“It cost me an afternoon of business and four ice creams.”
“Four,” she said. “You had one yourself.”
“Yes, I was included in the accounting.”
“Just an observation,” she teased.
She looked at him. The firelight caught her eyes and made them warmer, an echo of the desire she tried so desperately to keep at bay.
Try as she might to keep things simple, her body craved his touch, perhaps even more than ice cream. She had purposefully stayed several steps behind him at the museum, as she did not trust her body when it came to him.
“I mean it,” she insisted. “It was a very good outing.”
“It was.”
She looked at the fire for a moment.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, swirling his drink.
Shall I open up to him?
She sipped her sherry, her thoughts drifting to the past.
“I will not bite,” he added softly.
“My parents used to take me on outings. Before.” She paused.
“What was it like?” William asked as he refreshed his glass from the drinks cart, a curiosity edging his voice that encouraged her to elaborate.
Anne felt that he truly wanted to hear the story.
“My father had the most extraordinary ability to make any outing feel like an expedition. The market was an expedition. A walk to the milliner’s was an expedition. The museum…” She stopped again.
“Was an expedition?”
“Yes,” she said with a soft laugh.
“Did you use to go often?”
“We went to the museum twice a year. He would prepare a whole itinerary and read us things in advance so we knew what we were looking for, and then he would act very surprised when we found them, as if we had discovered them ourselves.”
She said this to the fire, not to him. Still, he listened, and she was grateful for that.
“He was a wonderful father,” she said as William refreshed her sherry before sitting back down. “I find I am grateful, even when it is painful to remember. I am glad I had him as long as I did.”
William was quiet for a moment. “How old were you? When he passed…”
“Eleven. He died quickly, in the end. Consumption.” She smoothed a hand over the armrest, wishing it were her father’s arm. “I find days like today remind me of him. In a good way.” She looked up. “I hope Felicity will remember this day like that.”
“In a good way.”
Something moved in her chest at those words.
William held his brandy glass carefully, as if examining it.
“She will,” Anne assured him. “I am certain of it.”
He looked at her. She looked back.
“It is difficult,” he sighed, “to know what she remembers. Or how. She does not always tell me.”
“No, she wouldn’t.” Anne considered. “She protects you, the same way you protect her. You are very much the same,” she said without any hint of accusation in her voice.
“Poor girl,” he muttered.
“It is rather a lot of protection for two people in the same house,” she said, ignoring his comment.
He looked at the fire, then back at her. She had not moved from her seat, but the distance between them had shifted in a way.
“She was very engaged today,” he said. “In the museum. I had not…” He stopped. “I had not seen her like that in some time.”
“I noticed her interest as well.” Anne’s voice was quiet. “The horse.”
“The horse.”
“She is going to make a very determined horse out of that clay.”
“She will.” He nodded. “She is stubborn when she decides on something.”
“So I am learning.”
She licked the side of her lip out of habit, which she noticed him looking at. Her heart fluttered in her chest.
“You should tell her that,” she could not help but add.
“Tell her what?”
“That you noticed. That you were glad.”
“She knows.”
“She would like to hear it.”
She is right. Why is she always right?
William turned his glass slowly in his hands. The fire settled, a log shifting with a soft plume of ash. Outside, Mayfair was going about its late business, the sound of a carriage on the cobblestones growing louder and then fading.
“She whispered to me,” he admitted, “on the ride home, that the visit to the museum was the best outing of her life.” He looked at Anne. “She said it was because of you and Celia. She was very confident about it. I am not sure I had so much to do with it.”
Anne shook her head, eyeing him steadily. “She said that because of you. Because you took the time. Because you knew the name of every object in those rooms and you were not condescending and you did not make her feel small for asking questions that had obvious answers.”
She set her sherry glass on the side table.
“She watches everything you do, William. You know that. You know she does. And she has spent the day seeing a father who was entirely, unambiguously glad to be there.” She paused. “That is not something she will forget. Nor will Celia. And… nor will I.”
He looked at her for a long moment. He was not used to receiving certain things without wanting to set them aside immediately, the way one sets aside a piece of news that requires time before it can be examined. He had been this way when it came to most things of consequence.
He was finding that Anne had a way of saying things that made the setting aside harder.
“It was easier,” he said finally, “with you both there.”
The words were out before he had decided whether to say them or not.
He did not take them back. He did not wish to. Instead, he held her green gaze, and she held his.
The fire was warm against the cool summer night, pleasant and ambient. The room seemed to hold its breath, waiting, like a living thing.
“Well,” Anne murmured, “we are here.”
He did not say anything.
He did not move toward her. She did not move toward him either. And yet the stillness between them was not that of distance. Everything around them seemed to hum, to breathe, to push them closer.
“Yes,” he rasped. “What are you thinking?”
There was a particular light in the room that he had not permitted himself to notice until this moment. It was the one that caressed the line of her jaw, the hollow at the base of her throat, the amber hue in her hair when she tilted her head.
It is unjust, really, that a woman should look this attractive.
He had known she was attractive and had thought of little else since he had first seen her in that garden.
One registered such things the way one registered weather.
This person was attractive; this was not.
But the word “attractive” was too thin and insufficient.
Yet, he had been using it as a way of not looking any further, as a way to protect himself.
Now, he found there was more than he had let himself notice. The steadiness of her mouth, her soft, pouty lips, the faint lines at the outer corners of her eyes that suggested she had laughed a great deal in rooms he had not been in.
The thought made him angry.
Then there was the green of her eyes, which in this light was not the green of drawing-room descriptions, but something closer to glass held up to a candle, or in a church. It was almost lit through, darker at the edges. Her lashes were so thick and full.
Beauty?
That was another word he did not trust. It had been used to describe faces he had found wanting, arrangements he had found hollow. But there was no better word for what was before him.
And perhaps the word had not failed. Perhaps he had simply never before had to mean it entirely. Perhaps one earned the word only by being willing to look long enough to risk it.
She was waiting. He had asked her a question, and she was waiting with that patience of hers.
Say it, he urged silently. Say what you see.
“I am unsure what I am thinking,” she said softly, her cheeks tinged a light pink.
“I know what I am thinking,” he said sharply.
“What is that?”
“Where do we go from here, Anne?” he asked, his voice hungry and rough.