Chapter 16
Idislike waiting.
Alexander’s fingers drummed against the marble mantelpiece in a rhythm that had begun measured and was now approaching something closer to mutiny.
The clock on the wall showed a quarter past seven, but the Duchess was absent downstairs.
Meanwhile, the carriage had been ready for ten minutes.
Alexander stood in the entrance hall, appearing as if he had nowhere better to be though in reality he had a very specific destination.
The reason he was not there was that someone upstairs was occupied with whatever women typically did that took this much time.
He glanced at the clock again. Sixteen minutes past seven.
Right.
He pushed away from the mantelpiece and turned toward the stairs, fully prepared to ascend them and knock on her door and inform her, with all the civil restraint he could muster, that Lord and Lady Halford’s dinner would not postpone itself on her account.
He turned, and she was standing in the doorway.
Everything came to a halt. Not the clock, the house, the footman by the door, the candles in the sconces, or the carriage in the street—they all kept going.
What halted was something inside him, in his chest, that clenched and lingered, refusing to let go.
This was because Frances stood just six feet away in a deep blue velvet dress, and the color seemed to do something to her eyes that should have been impossible.
The blue of the dress caught the blue of her gaze and held it there, amplifying it, turning it into something vivid and arresting, and Alexander felt the ground beneath his feet shift to the side, as though the hall itself had tilted and he was the only one who had noticed.
He recovered quickly. Years of discipline were good for something.
“You are late,” he said.
The Duchess smiled genuinely, not the reserved, delicate smile she usually kept during breakfast or in the drawing room when they were being polite.
This expression was warmer and carried a hint of mischief he had not seen before which made his stomach tighten in a way he decided to ignore entirely.
“I had to look like a duchess,” she said.
Alexander looked at her again. He could not help himself.
The velvet caught the candlelight and transformed it into something rich and deep, and the cut of the dress was—Madame Leclerc.
He silently and sincerely thanked the heavens for Madame Leclerc’s talent.
The woman was worth every franc of her exorbitant fees.
The dress sat on Frances as if it had been sewn onto her, which it probably had, and the neckline was modest and proper but somehow still drew the eye to her collarbone in a way that was entirely unfair.
Stop looking at her collarbone.
He cleared his throat and offered his arm. “Shall we?”
She crossed the hall, her skirts whispering against the marble floor, and placed her hand on his sleeve. Light. Proper. Exactly the amount of contact the gesture required and not a fraction more.
And yet...
Her fingers pressed against his forearm through the layers of coat and shirt, and Alexander sensed their pressure with an unexpected clarity, despite the fabric in between. He guided her toward the door, and as they moved, an involuntary memory surfaced.
The masquerade. How she had moved amongst the guests with grace and danced as if the floor and the music was made for her.
This woman.
How in God’s name did she manage to trick me?
Alexander handed her into the carriage and climbed in after her. They sat opposite each other, the door closed, and the carriage lurched forward.
The interior was dim, illuminated only by the faint glow from the carriage lanterns outside, and the space between them was quite narrow.
Alexander could have easily reached across and touched her knee without fully stretching his arm.
However, he chose not to. Instead, he folded his hands in his lap and looked out the window.
The streets passed. He counted three lampposts before his eyes moved, entirely of their own accord, back to her.
She was looking at her gloves. Adjusting the left one, smoothing the kid leather over her wrist. She did not look up.
He looked away briefly then back again. Four more lampposts passed by before he turned to see her looking at him.
Their eyes met and held, and the carriage jolted over a rough patch of road.
Neither looking away, the tension between them grew, thick with warmth and a pulse of its own.
Her lips were slightly parted, and the candlelight outside flickered across her face, creating shifting patterns.
Alexander’s chest stirred inexplicably, a feeling he refused to analyze at that moment, especially not in a carriage en route to a dinner party where he needed all his focus.
She dropped her gaze first. Her cheeks had color in them that had not been there before.
Good. I am not the only one.
The thought arrived before he could stop it, and he crushed it before turning his attention to the window.
Silence lingered between them. It was not the acute silence of their early days, nor was it comfortable.
Instead, it was tense, like a string stretched to its breaking point, humming with unspoken things that neither of them was ready to address because doing so would mean having a conversation neither of them wanted.
“You look well this evening,” he said because the silence was becoming dangerous, and he needed to fill it with something that was not the sound of his own pulse.
“Thank you.” She smoothed her glove again. “You look as you always do.”
“And how is that?”
She glanced up. Something moved at the corner of her mouth. “Very proper.”
He almost smiled. Almost. He caught it in time and turned it into a nod instead which was safer. “I shall take that as a compliment.”
“You may take it however you wish.”
The carriage slowed. Through the window, the lights of the Halford residence shone brightly against the evening sky, and Alexander was aware, with a clarity he did not welcome, that he was about to spend an entire evening in public beside this woman and that the dress was going to be a problem.
But the way she had looked at him just now was going to be a much bigger one.
He stepped out first and offered his hand.
She took it.
Frances sat beside him at the dinner table, and Alexander told himself, firmly and with conviction, that the dress was no longer a distraction.
This was a lie. The dress was a major distraction. He reached for his wine.
The table was long and well-appointed, set for eighteen.
Lord and Lady Halford had assembled the sort of company that announced itself—a viscount and his wife, a baron with political ambitions, two members of Parliament, a retired admiral who had seen action at Trafalgar, and an assortment of their wives and relations.
Alexander knew most of them. He had dined with half of them before.
He knew the shape of the conversation before it began—estates, Parliament, the weather, hunting.
What he did not know, what he had not anticipated, was that his Duchess would open her mouth and rearrange the entire table.
The admiral’s wife, a woman of considerable years and sharp opinions, turned to the Duchess and asked whether she had traveled abroad.
“I have not had that pleasure,” the Duchess said. “Though I have studied several languages. Italian, a little French, and some German.”
“German!” The admiral leaned forward from three seats away. “Whatever for?”
“Because it is beautiful,” she said. “People think it harsh, but that is because they have not heard it spoken well. German poetry, read aloud—there is nothing quite like it.”
“I confess I never thought of German as beautiful,” the baron said.
“Then you have not been listening carefully enough.” She smiled at him.
Not the polished, measured smile she wore in Alexander’s drawing room, but something warmer, something with life in it.
“Every language carries something particular. Italian has music in its bones. French has precision. German has depth. They are not interchangeable.”
The baron looked at her as though she had said something remarkable which, Alexander conceded privately, she rather had.
I never knew of all that.
He took another sip of wine and watched her over the rim of his glass. The woman who sat beside him at breakfast, spreading cream cheese on scones in pointed silence, was currently holding the attention of half the table, and she was doing it without effort—without strategy, without calculation.
“And music, Your Grace?” The viscount, a man of perhaps forty with an easy manner and rather too much interest in Alexander’s wife, set down his fork and turned toward her. “I understand you are an accomplished musician.”
“I do play the pianoforte,” she said. “Whether that makes me accomplished, I leave to others to judge.”
“False modesty does not suit you,” Alexander said.
She turned to look at him, and her eyes held a spark of surprise that pleased him more than it should have. “I do not think you have ever heard me play.”
“I have not, but you do not strike me as a woman who does anything by half measures.”
Something shifted in her expression. A softening, brief and unguarded, that went through him like a hand pressed flat against his chest. Then she turned back to the viscount, and the moment passed.
“Music is a curious thing,” she said. “Most people hear it. Very few listen to it. There is a difference.”
“And what is the difference?” the baron asked.
“Hearing is passive. Listening requires attention—real attention. When you truly listen, music does not simply enter your ears. It reaches something deeper. It touches the heart. But only if you allow it to.”
The table fell silent. The viscount was watching her.
So was the baron. So was the admiral, who had put down his spoon entirely.
Their attention rested on her like light pooling on a single point, and Alexander sat beside her and felt something move through his chest that he identified, after a moment, as pride.
She is extraordinary.
The thought was there before he could stop it. He picked up his wine glass, drank, and told himself that pride was a reasonable response. She was his duchess. She was representing the Whitestone name at a table full of influential people. Of course, he was proud. It was appropriate.
It was also, if he was being honest, not the only thing he was feeling.
The viscount leaned closer. “You must play for us sometime, Your Grace. I should very much like to hear what music sounds like when it has been truly listened to.”
Frances’ laugher echoed—the one from the schoolroom and the carriage, the kind that filled any space and altered its temperature.
Something tightened behind Alexander’s ribs.
“You are very kind,” she said. “Though I warn you, I am partial to Beethoven, and he requires patience.”
“I have a great deal of patience,” the viscount said, and smiled at her in a way that was entirely too warm, and Alexander set down his wine glass with more force than he had intended.
The conversation continued. Frances answered questions about Italian opera and the differences between Handel and Mozart with an ease that suggested she had forgotten she was at a formal dinner and had simply begun talking about things she loved, and the effect was magnetic.
The baron asked her opinion on a concert he had attended.
The admiral wanted to know whether she sang as well as she played.
The viscount continued to lean, continued to smile, continued to direct his attention at her as though she were the only person at the table worth seeing.
She is free to speak with whomever she wishes. This is an arrangement. Nothing more.
Alexander repeated this to himself as the second course was cleared and the third arrived.
An arrangement. She owes me nothing beyond propriety. These men are being polite. That is all.
The feeling in his chest did not go away. It sat there, hot and tight and entirely unreasonable, and it grew worse every time the viscount spoke to her, worse still every time she answered him, and worst of all when she laughed again at something the man said that was not even particularly amusing.
This is foolish. You are being foolish.
He knew it was foolish. He knew it with the same clarity he applied to estate accounts and parliamentary strategy. The knowledge made no difference whatsoever.
By the time the pudding course arrived, Alexander’s jaw ached from clenching.
He set down his spoon, deciding to put an end to this nonsense once and for all.