Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
“Isimply cannot fathom what His Grace sees in her.”
The words were not meant for Lucien. They floated from a cluster of ladies positioned near the gallery’s second alcove, pitched at the volume that society women used when they wanted to wound without being held accountable for the blade.
Lady Langley’s gallery viewing was the sort of event that attracted the ton’s most discerning gossips, and tonight, their attention had settled on Elinor like birds on a wire.
“She squints behind those spectacles as though the world offends her,” another voice added. “And her interests. Astronomy, of all things. It is not becoming.”
Lucien’s hand tightened around his glass. Beside him, Annabelle had stiffened, her eyes narrowing in the direction of the voices. She opened her mouth, but Lucien touched her elbow.
“Allow me,” he said.
He crossed the gallery floor with the unhurried stride of a man who had all evening and intended to use it. The cluster of ladies noticed his approach and rearranged their expressions into various shades of delight, their fans lifting, their postures softening.
“Ladies,” he greeted, inclining his head. “I could not help overhearing your conversation, and I feel compelled to contribute.”
Their smiles brightened. Lady Forsythe, the eldest among them, touched her pearl necklace. “Of course, Your Grace. We were merely observing—”
“That my betrothed is the most accomplished woman in this room.” Lucien kept his voice pleasant, conversational, the tone he used when he wanted every word to carry the weight of a closed door.
“Lady Elinor’s knowledge of astronomy would put half the fellows at the Royal Society to shame, and her kindness toward children who have nothing would humble any person here, myself included.
” He paused, letting the silence do its work.
“As for her spectacles, I find them rather charming. They suit a woman who prefers to see the world clearly rather than through the comfortable blur that others seem to favor.”
Lady Forsythe’s fan stopped mid-flutter. The women around her exchanged glances, recalculating.
“I trust that puts the matter to rest,” Lucien said, smiling. “Please, enjoy the gallery. The landscapes in the east wing are fine.”
He walked away before they could recover. The satisfaction lasted only a moment before something heavier replaced it: the recognition that every word he had spoken was true, and not a single syllable had been part of the ruse.
Across the gallery, Belinda intercepted him. She had been watching, her position near a marble bust too deliberate to be coincidence.
“Your Grace,” she said, her smile wide and warm.
“You are so gallant, defending Elinor. I suppose somebody must. She makes it rather difficult for herself with her peculiarities.” She tilted her head, her voice dropping to something she clearly intended as conspiratorial.
“If you ever tire of the effort, I assure you, there are ladies who would require far less defending.”
Lucien studied her for a beat. She was beautiful, in the way a painting was beautiful: composed, deliberate, designed to be admired. There was nothing behind it.
“Lady Belinda,” he said, his voice even. “I do not tire of defending the people I care for. I suggest you adopt a similar habit. Starting with your stepsister.”
He left her standing beside the marble bust, her mouth slightly open.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Rebecca watching from across the room.
Her expression shifted as she absorbed the exchange, and Lucien watched the calculation happen in real time: the sweetness toward him deepening, the coldness toward Elinor banking itself for later, when he would not be present to witness it.
He found Elinor near the east wing, studying a painting of a night sky rendered in deep blues and silvers.
She stood apart from the other guests, her atlas-sized knowledge of the subject matter keeping her absorbed where others would have moved on.
Annabelle had joined Lord Callum and Joanna in conversation nearby, her back to them, and for a brief moment, Lucien and Elinor were alone.
“The painter has Cassiopeia wrong,” Elinor said without looking at him. She pointed to a cluster of stars in the upper right of the canvas. “The angle is off. It would never appear that way from this latitude.”
“Perhaps he painted it from somewhere else.”
“Or perhaps he simply invented it.” She turned to him. Her spectacles caught the gallery light, and behind the glass her blue eyes held a steadiness that made the mask he wore feel like a coat that no longer fit. “You did not need to say those things to those women.”
“You heard.”
“Annabelle told me. She was rather proud of you.” A pause. “As was I.”
The words landed in his chest and stayed there. He looked at the painting rather than at her, because looking at her while she praised him was not something his composure could manage.
“Tell me about Cassiopeia,” he said.
She blinked. “Now?”
“Now.”
“Cassiopeia has five stars,” Elinor said, tilting the slate so the children in the front row could see. “They form a W, like this. Can everyone see?”
Toby squinted. “It looks more like an M.”
“It does, sometimes. It depends on the season. The whole shape rotates through the year, tipping one way and then the other.” She set the slate down and turned to face them.
“Cassiopeia was a queen in Ethiopian mythology. She was so proud of her beauty that she boasted she was lovelier than the sea nymphs, and they were furious. As punishment, she was placed in the sky and forced to circle the pole for eternity.”
“That seems mean,” Billy said. “Just for being vain?”
“The ancient Greeks were not known for proportionate consequences.” Elinor smiled.
“But here is the useful part. If you find Cassiopeia’s W, you can follow it to Polaris, the North Star.
My father taught me that when I was Charlotte’s age.
He said if I could find Cassiopeia, I could always find my way home. ”
“Polaris,” Lucien repeated. “That is what I named my horse.”
Elinor’s face softened. “You named your horse after the North Star?”
“I did. He is steady, reliable, and always takes me where I need to go. It seemed fitting.”
She smiled, and it was not the careful smile she wore for the ton, nor the bright, practiced one she gave her stepfamily. It was the smile she wore at Lyra House, when the children said something that surprised her, when she forgot to be guarded.
Lucien felt the mask fall away. Not because he chose to remove it, but because she made it impossible to wear.
In her presence, the charming rake, the man who worked a room like a performance, went quiet, and what remained was someone he barely recognized: a man who named his horse after a star and took notes on constellations and sat on the floor with orphaned children because a woman with spectacles had made him want to be better than the person his uncle’s cruelty had shaped.
He did not know what to do with that.
“The renovations are complete.”
Lucien stood in the main hallway of Lyra House and heard the words come out of his mouth as though someone else were saying them.
The building had been transformed. Fresh plaster on the walls, sturdy floorboards beneath his boots, new glass in every window. The bedrooms upstairs were warm and clean, each child with their own bed, their own blankets, their own small shelf for whatever belongings they chose to keep.
It was everything he had promised. It should have felt like a triumph.
“That is wonderful,” Elinor said beside him. She ran her hand along the new wainscoting, and he watched her fingers trace the wood the way she traced the constellations on her slates. “The children will be so comfortable here.”
“They will.” He paused. “I have begun interviewing governesses and tutors. Proper staff. Women with credentials and references, who can provide the formal education these children deserve.”
The silence that followed was not empty. It was full of everything neither of them could say.
“That is the right decision,” Elinor said. Her voice held, but he heard the fracture beneath it. “They need more than what I can give them in stolen hours.”
“Elinor.”
“It is true.” She squared her shoulders. “I am not a proper tutor. I am a marquess’s daughter who sneaks out at night. They deserve someone who can be here in the daylight, openly, without risk.”
He wanted to tell her she was wrong. That what she gave these children, the love, the wonder, the way she made stars feel like friends, could not be replicated by any governess with a certificate.
But the words tangled in his throat, because the truth was more complicated than that.
She was right. The children needed stability, and stability could not be built on secrecy.
“The Season ends in three weeks,” he said instead.
The words sat between them. Three weeks until their arrangement expired.
Three weeks until the engagement would be publicly dissolved, and Elinor would return to being Lady Elinor Caverleigh, the wallflower, the marquess’s eccentric daughter.
Three weeks until he would have no reason to see her, to sit in this schoolroom, to watch her face light up when a child grasped something new.
Three weeks until he lost the only person who had ever made him want to be found.
From the schoolroom above, the children’s voices drifted down as they settled in for the night. Mrs. Neal’s footsteps creaked on the new floorboards.
“Shall we go up?” Elinor asked. “I promised them a lesson tonight.”
He nodded and followed her up the staircase. The lesson was about planets. Elinor taught with her usual fire, her hands moving as she described Jupiter’s storms and Saturn’s rings, and the children leaned toward her with the hunger of young minds being fed for the first time.
Lucien sat among them and wrote on his slate. He did not try to hide it this time. He did not angle the chalk away from the children beside him, nor tuck the slate behind his back when the lesson ended.
When Elinor came to collect the slates, she paused at his. He held it out to her.
“May I?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She took the slate. Her eyes moved across whatever he had written. He watched her face change: the slight parting of her lips, the way her breath caught, the slow blink that meant she was holding something back.
She pressed the slate back into his hands without speaking.
Their fingers overlapped on the edges of the frame, and for a moment, neither of them let go. The schoolroom was quiet. The children had filed out. The lantern burned low.
Then Elinor released the slate, gathered her cloak, and left.
Lucien sat alone in the empty schoolroom and looked down at what he had written and knew, with a certainty that felt less like discovery and more like surrender, that three weeks would not be enough.
Three lifetimes would not be enough.