Chapter 5
Dear Alexander,
By the time you read this, I will be on my way to Scotland with Malcolm.
I understand you are angry. I acknowledge you may argue that I have been reckless and foolish and that I have solely considered my own interests.
Perhaps your assessment is correct. However, for several months, I have scarcely thought of anything else, and my conclusion remains unchanged.
I love him. I cannot choose otherwise and preserve my sense of self.
I apologize for the manner in which it occurred. However, I do not regret the decision made. Please do not come after me.
Yours, Eleanor
Alexander nearly crumpled the letter in his fist, but summoning great willpower, he set it on the desk and looked at it for a moment. Then he stood because sitting still was not something he was capable of at present.
Please do not come after me. As though he were the sort of man who could read that his sister had eloped to Scotland with a schoolmaster and simply sit in his study and carry on with the evening.
He picked up the letter, put it in the drawer, and closed the drawer.
He then left the study as the walls served no useful purpose, and he went for a walk.
The house was still being emptied; he could hear the distant sounds of carriages outside and the subdued voices of servants moving through the rooms, a typical scene after a large gathering.
The ballroom was starting to be tidied up. As he moved past, he noticed two footmen collecting glasses through the open doors, a maid picking up abandoned programs from the chairs along the wall, and the flowers beginning to look a little less fresh than earlier in the evening.
Everything is in disorder. Everything needs attention. He kept walking.
He turned at the end of the hallway and very nearly walked into Thomas, his youngest footman, who was carrying a tray of glasses, his expression focused on not dropping them.
“Your Grace,” Thomas paused and adjusted his stance. “Please forgive me.”
“My fault,” Alexander said, a phrase he used rarely enough to make Thomas look briefly startled. “Are the last of the guests gone?’
“Nearly, Your Grace. Mr. Graves is seeing to it.”
“Good.” He looked at the tray, then at the footman. “Well done tonight.”
Thomas blinked. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
Alexander moved on.
He ended up in the library. which was where he generally ended up when his thoughts needed room to arrange themselves. He stood at the window and looked out at the street below where the last few carriages were pulling away, and he let himself think about it properly.
Eleanor was gone. She had planned it carefully, more carefully than he had given her credit for, and she had left.
The schoolmaster had been waiting, and by morning, they would be well north of London.
He could send men after them, find them, and bring them back, undoing the whole thing before it became irreversible.
He had the means and the authority, and three hours ago, he would not have hesitated to act.
He thought about the letter. I love him. I cannot choose otherwise and preserve my sense of self.
He pushed the thought away and turned to the other problem, because there were two of them tonight, and the second was in some respects more immediately pressing.
Lady Frances Pembroke.
She had been in his gardens, dressed in his sister’s costume, at his ball. She had spent the whole evening there; now, with the uncomfortable clarity of hindsight, he revisited those events.
He pressed two fingers briefly to his temple.
Lady Montfort’s parting words on the terrace steps had been as clear as a legal document. I trust you understand what the proper course of action is.
She had spoken openly in front of witnesses, intentionally, with the calmness of someone establishing a foundation. She did not need to be more explicit than that. Neither did he.
He understood what was expected of him. He had always understood what was expected of him; that was, in many respects, the defining feature of his entire adult life.
A man of honor in his position, having been seen in a compromising situation with an unmarried young woman of gentle birth, had one course of action available to him.
She will refuse, said some part of his mind. She is not the sort of woman who is easily directed toward anything.
He was aware of that.
He was also aware that her choices were much more limited than his and that Lady Montfort, regardless of what else she might be, was not a woman who would let a niece forgo her only promising future over personal objections.
He stood at the window until the last carriage had gone and the street was empty then he climbed the stairs toward his bedchamber.
This was not how he imagined a night like this would go. Not only had his sister run away with a man he knew nothing about, but the course of his life had just changed in the most significant way.
He felt trepidation, and that was the strangest thing of all.
The Duke of Whitestone, renowned in society for his formidable reputation and impeccable conduct, was observed last evening in circumstances that can only be described as most irregular, in the company of a young lady whose identity, though masked, was subsequently revealed to the assembled company. ..
Alexander set the sheet down with the page face down.
He finished his coffee, declined the eggs offered, and spent twenty minutes at his desk going through correspondence that required attention, finding it rather more difficult than usual to give it any.
His thoughts kept sliding elsewhere—to Eleanor’s letter in the drawer, to the gossip sheets stacked at the corner of the desk, to the look on Lady Frances’ face when the mask had come away, and she had understood that there was nothing left to do but face the consequences of the evening.
She had not wept. He noticed that in retrospect.
She had been frightened, he had felt her trembling when he caught her, but she had not wept or pleaded.
When Lady Montfort took her arm, she walked up those steps with her chin held high and her gaze fixed forward.
Whatever she was feeling remained hidden behind her face, unseen by others.
Irrelevant, he told himself, and he turned back to the correspondence.
At half past ten, he set down his quill and went upstairs to his mother’s room.
She was awake, which was a better sign than yesterday, sitting up against her pillows with a letter of her own in her lap from her sister in Bath—he thought based on the handwriting he could see.
She looked up when he entered, and her expression went through its usual sequence of pleasure, assessment, and quiet understanding in about two seconds.
“You did not sleep,” she observed.
“We had a ball. I slept adequately.” He drew the chair to her bedside and sat. “How are you this morning?”
“I am the same as I was yesterday which is considerably better than last week.” She folded her hands over the letter in her lap and looked at him with the patience of a woman who had been waiting for something and was prepared to wait a little longer. “Tell me.”
He told her about Eleanor first. He had been turning over how to do it for most of the morning—how to deliver the news in a way that would not alarm her more than necessary, how to frame it so that the worst of it was softened without being dishonest. When he finished, she was quiet for a moment, looking at the window.
“I never imagined she would truly do that despite her jests,” she said.
Alexander’s brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”
His mother sighed. “Well, Eleanor often jested that if you did not allow her to follow her heart, she might elope.”
That explained why his mother was neither shocked nor surprised. He squeezed the bridge of his nose.
“She is safe?” Margaret asked.
“As far as I can determine. She should be halfway across England by now.”
Another silence. He watched her face and looked for the distress he had been bracing for, the worry, the alarm, and found instead something that was almost, though not quite, relief.
“She is happy,” his mother said, and it was not entirely a question.
“She believes she is.”
“Then I am glad.” She turned back to him, and her eyes were very clear and very steady. “She has a good heart, Alexander. She always has. And the man... Is he a good man?”
He thought of Malcolm Fraser at the charity school, sorting papers with a composure that had suggested someone who did not make decisions lightly. “I believe so,” he said which was not something he had expected to be saying and cost him something to admit.
His mother nodded slowly. “I only want her to be happy,” she said. “As I only want you to be happy. That has always been all I wanted for both of you.” She paused. “You know that.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” She was looking at him with that particular expression, the one he had never entirely learned to name, the one that saw more than he had shown.
“You have given so much of yourself to doing what is right, my dear. For so many years. The estate, Eleanor, myself, always duty first, always the correct thing, always the expected thing.” She reached out and covered his hand with hers.
“I wonder sometimes if you have ever allowed yourself to simply... want something.”
Alexander looked at her hand over his and said nothing.
“I read the papers this morning,” she said.
He looked up.
“I have been confined to this room, not this house,” she said mildly. “My maid reads to me. She is very thorough.”
He said nothing for a moment. “I see.”
“The young woman,” his mother said. “Lady Frances Pembroke. I have met her, you know, briefly, at Evermere, last spring. She is the Duchess of Evermere’s sister.” A pause. “I thought she was a good deal more than she appeared to be.”
“She impersonated my sister at my own ball,” Alexander said.
“Yes.” His mother seemed to consider this. “She did it for Eleanor, I imagine.”
“That does not make it—”
“No,” she agreed. “It does not. But it tells you something about her, does it not?” She squeezed his hand once and then settled back against her pillows, and her voice when she spoke again was gentle in a way that meant she was reaching her point.
“It is time, Alexander. Long past time if I am honest. You need a duchess. The child needs a home. And you need...” she paused.
“You need someone who will not simply agree with everything you say because heaven knows that has never done you any good.”
His mother’s hand stilled over his.
He did not look at her face. He looked at the fire and thought about what it was going to take to walk into Evermere Hall and say what needed to be said to a woman who had already told him, in terms that left very little room for interpretation, exactly what she thought of him.
He might have to seek creative ways to convince her to marry him.