Chapter 19
“Your Grace, the carriage you have been expecting has just arrived.”
Frances was on her feet before Graves had finished his bow.
She had been sitting in the drawing room for most of an hour, pretending to read a volume of poetry that she had not absorbed a single line of, turning pages at intervals she hoped mimicked real reading speed.
The book was now on the side table, abandoned without ceremony, and she was already crossing toward the entrance hall with steps that were quicker than a duchess’ should be but slower than she wanted.
The front door stood open. Afternoon light spilled across the marble floor in a wide, pale rectangle, and through it, Frances could see the carriage—a sturdy traveling coach, dusty from the road—drawn up on the gravel drive. A footman was lowering the step.
A young woman emerged first. She was perhaps two-and-twenty, neatly dressed in a dove-gray traveling costume, her dark hair pinned beneath a modest bonnet.
She turned back toward the carriage and reached up, and a small figure appeared in the doorway—a girl, slight and careful, who placed her hand in the governess’ and climbed down with the deliberate movements of someone trying very hard not to trip.
Emily.
She watched them approach. The governess walked with brisk, purposeful strides, one hand resting lightly on the child’s shoulder. Emily moved beside her with the stiff posture of a soldier on inspection, her small gloved hands twisted together at her waist, her chin tucked, her eyes moving.
They reached the entrance hall, and the governess stopped and dropped into a neat curtsy. “Your Grace. I am Miss Sarah Bennet, Miss Penford’s governess. I trust we are expected.”
“You are indeed.” Frances came forward. “Welcome to Whitestone House, Miss Bennet. I hope the journey was not too tiring.”
“Not at all, Your Grace. The roads were kind to us today.”
Frances nodded, but her attention had already moved—pulled, as if by gravity—to the child.
Emily stood just behind Miss Bennet’s elbow.
She was small for her eight years with dark hair pulled back from a face that radiated watchfulness.
Her eyes—brown, serious, and a bit large for her delicate features—quickly scanned the entrance hall with an anxious assessment, as if cataloging possible exits.
The soaring ceiling. The marble columns.
The portraits in gilded frames gazing down from heights that, to a small child like her, might have seemed almost celestial.
Her gaze darted from the chandelier to the staircase to the footman by the door and back again, and her gloved fingers twisted tighter.
Frances knew that look. She had worn it herself, standing in this very hall not three weeks ago, feeling the house press down on her from every direction with the weight of its grandeur and its expectations. She had been one-and-twenty, and still the place had made her feel small.
Emily was eight.
Oh, sweetheart.
Frances smiled. Not the cautious, practiced smile she had adopted for formal introductions. A genuine one. Then she did something that would have made Lady Montfort faint outright.
She knelt.
Her silk gown—a pale rose morning dress that Miss Ripley had laid out with particular care that morning—pooled around her on the cold marble floor. She settled herself at the child’s level and looked up into those solemn brown eyes.
“Good day, Emily.” She kept her voice gentle. Unhurried. “I’m Frances. I’m very pleased to meet you.”
Emily said nothing. Her lips pressed together, and her hands continued their anxious twisting, and she looked at Frances with the guarded caution of a creature that had learned, through hard experience, that new people and new places did not always mean safety.
The silence held for a beat.
Frances tried again.
“Do you like books?”
The tiniest movement—a barely noticeable nod, more a dip of the chin than a real gesture, but it was there.
Frances felt something warm bloom behind her ribs. “In that case, I think we shall get along very well. We have a wonderful library here that I’m sure you’ll enjoy.”
Emily’s eyes changed. Not dramatically. The wariness did not leave them, but something behind the wariness shifted—a spark of interest, faint and cautious, like a candle flame guttering behind cupped hands.
“There are stories about knights,” Frances added. “And dragons. And a rather good one about a princess who rescues herself which I always thought was far more sensible than waiting about for someone else to do it.”
Nothing. Then—so slight that Frances might have thought it was her imagination—the corner of Emily’s mouth shifted. Only a little. Just enough.
There you are.
Frances rose to her feet, brushing the dust from her knees without looking at it, and turned back to Miss Bennet. The governess was watching the exchange with an expression that was carefully neutral but not unkind.
“Miss Bennet, Mrs. Wells, our housekeeper, will show you and Emily to your rooms. You must both be tired from the journey. I have asked for tea to be sent up.”
“That is most generous, Your Grace.”
“Is there anything Emily needs? Anything particular she is accustomed to?”
Miss Bennet glanced down at her charge. Emily had gone very still again, her eyes fixed on the staircase as though measuring each step.
“She likes quiet, Your Grace. She does not care for loud noises or sudden changes. And she...” A pause.
“She sometimes has difficulty sleeping. If she should wake in the night, a light left burning in the hallway helps.”
Frances filed each detail away with the care of a woman who understood that these small things were not small at all. “I shall see to it.”
“Thank you, Your Grace.”
Frances looked at Emily once more. The child had not moved.
She stood in the entrance hall with her gloved hands knotted together and her thin shoulders braced against the enormity of everything around her, and she looked exactly like what she was—a little girl who had lost everything and been brought to a place she did not know to live with people she did not trust and who was holding herself together with nothing more than silence and good posture.
I know what that feels like. I know it better than you can imagine.
“Emily,” Frances said and waited until the child’s eyes came to hers, “this is your home now. You may go wherever you like in it.”
Emily looked at her. Said nothing. But her hands loosened slightly, and her fingers uncurled from their tight knot, hanging at her sides.
It was not much. It was everything.
Alexander had not meant to watch.
He had come to the study doorway to verify the carriage’s arrival—a practical matter, nothing more.
He would confirm that the child and the governess had reached Whitestone safely, ensure that Graves had the situation well in hand, and return to his correspondence.
Five minutes, at most. An efficient use of his time.
That had been the plan.
The plan had not accounted for the Duchess kneeling on the floor of his entrance hall.
He stood in the shadow of the doorframe and watched her lower herself to the marble, settling at eye level with a child who had not spoken a single word since crossing the threshold.
The Duchesss skirts spread around her like something spilled.
Her back was straight. Her voice carried across the hall—quiet, unhurried, stripped of every formality she wielded so naturally in his presence.
“Good day, Emily. I’m Frances.”
He had prepared himself for this moment.
He had made the arrangements, as promised, with the thoroughness he applied to all things—correspondence with the governess, instructions to Mrs. Wells regarding the rooms, a schedule of meals and lessons drawn up and approved.
He had anticipated, with reasonable certainty, the range of possible outcomes when the Duchess met his ward for the first time.
Polite distance. Competent management. Perhaps a degree of awkwardness, the kind that attended any introduction between strangers, particularly when one stranger was eight years old and had spent the past year in a state of near silence.
He had not anticipated this.
‘Do you like books?’
The child’s chin dipped. A nod so small it was barely visible from across the hall, and Alexander watched Frances’ face change—watched something warm and fierce move through her expression—and the thing in his chest that he had been ignoring for days tightened like a fist closing.
The same woman who had stood in his study two days ago with fire in her eyes and told him that duty without love was empty. Who had called him a coward without using the word which was considerably more effective than using it would have been. Who had demanded that Emily come home.
And now, she was on her knees in a silk dress that cost more than most families earned in a month, talking about books, dragons, and princesses who rescued themselves while the child’s mouth moved.
Not a smile. Not quite. But close. Closer than anything Alexander had managed in a year of guardianship which the Duchess had so accurately described as conducted at a suitable distance.
You would take responsibility for a child who is not yours?
Of course.
She had said it without pausing. Without qualification. As though the question itself were absurd.
He stepped forward.
The movement carried him out of the doorframe and into the entrance hall, his boots sharp against the marble, and the sound of it reached the child before his shadow did.
Emily’s head turned. Her eyes found him, and Alexander watched her body change—watched the small, tentative loosening that the Duchess had coaxed into existence vanish like a door being shut.
Emily’s spine went rigid. Her chin tucked. Her hands, which had been hanging at her sides a moment ago, came together and clasped before her with the mechanical precision of a gesture rehearsed until it required no thought.