Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
Dear Mama and Papa, Aurora’s letter began.
She flicked the end of the goose quill against her lips, hesitant to go any further.
Those pauses as she wrote her letters seemed to grow only longer with time.
She regularly sent letters home, using the moments before afternoon outings or visits to write quietly in her room.
She dutifully recorded what she did, what she wore, who she met, if anything of significance occurred.
Because the Season had now begun in earnest. There were dances and teas and concerts and rides in Hyde Park (both in the phaeton and on horseback). Ah!
There has been talk of a balloon ascension, provided the gentlemen in question arrive from France in time, she continued. Everyone is all abuzz. I should very much like to see such an equipage in actuality. The idea of taking to the skies—that would be a marvel!
Another pause.
She made another attempt.
The Duke of Selkirk—,
And then she set the quill down again. This topic was becoming too fraught. She did not wish to raise hopes in her parents or in herself. The very mention of his name had her brain and heart leaping about, and she found it increasingly challenging to corral them.
—has been most punctilious in his attendance of late.
That seemed safe enough. Or was it too much?
Well, through it all, the Duke of Selkirk was in punctilious attendance on her, and the Duke of Galloway was in punctilious attendance on Missie.
It was an accurate, nay, one could even state dispassionate, recitation of the facts.
She began writing again, He has been most obliging.
He pays me the courtesy of attending on me at many events.
Down went the quill. What else could she write after that?
Because where he was concerned, she was completely and absolutely at sea.
Down was up and up was down when she thought of him, and she did not trust herself to convey her confusion.
She attempted to distract herself. I confess I have become quite the lady of leisure.
Why, some mornings I even request my breakfast be brought to my room.
Aurora missed her morning cup of tea with Lucy more and more frequently.
That brought a pang. Her relaxed chats with the housemaid acted as a tonic to what sometimes felt was a hothouse atmosphere of gowns and scents and beaus and schemes.
And then her brain returned to whirling on the wheel of the topic which was never far away.
There was nothing to fault in his actions with her.
Her duke, as she persisted in thinking of him, remained both entirely proper and correct.
He was always unfailingly polite, was on hand whenever she needed him, and though he would occasionally slip and quiz her on some point or other, she sensed a wall.
She could not understand why. She had believed they were becoming at least friends.
The only thing she could conclude was that it was her—she was somehow, just, wrong or unacceptable in some way.
Which she could not disagree with; she was definitely uncomfortable in this new world.
Or Aurora forced herself to admit as she caught his admiring glances at Missie, she lacked the beauty, elegance, and refinement which he truly desired.
As my first introduction to an actual duke, he is everything one might imagine.
But please do not think I have let his attentions go to my head.
I am your ever-practical daughter. There.
That should round off that topic. It should keep her Mama’s ambitions in check along with any worries she might have about Aurora’s own behavior.
Yet this carefully worded statement was an utter and complete lie.
So back to worrying. The tip of the quill flicked back and forth under her chin.
His general reserve made her feel increasingly self-conscious and kept her from fully relaxing again in his company.
Her attempts at banter, with him, fell flat.
She hated the note of artificiality that was creeping into the tone she used with the other eligible men she danced with or discussed the weather with over dishes of tea.
But with him? Her attempts at conversational artifice had her stammering and blushing.
With him, being anything utterly than herself was impossible.
And being herself? Even more impossible.
No, she could not write that in her letter.
There were moments when he seemed to look at her and really see her, and she felt her heart leap up in response.
But that would send the wall up again. “May I get you a glass of punch, Miss Hardcastle?” he had asked her at Lady P’s supper dance.
Or “May I obtain something for you at the refreshment table, Miss Hardcastle?” he had asked at the Duchess of O’s musical soiree.
That was what he would say at such moments and then excuse himself to fetch them for her.
As the days passed, however, the longing to go back to what she supposed she had found only grew stronger.
Aurora remembered—over and over again, she remembered—their waltz at Almack’s.
The full experience of this event was something she most definitely did not include in her letter home about that evening.
The waltz, which she had danced only with him.
Him. She had ended that dance with a feeling of warmth that started in her belly and proceeded to heat its way through her entire body.
It was over a week later before she finally permitted herself to recall one additional detail she had refused to think on at the time: Aurora found herself perspiring at the reluctant (oh, how reluctant) end of the waltz, and as he had removed his hand from her waist, that hand continued to lift up until it looked as if he would touch the sheen of her upper lip with his gloved finger.
Then he froze, as if coming back to himself, realizing what he was doing.
They had pulled away, both of them faintly out of breath.
It was bewildering and wonderful and terrible, and she longed for it to happen again.
This was getting her nowhere. Because she most decidedly could not write home about that.
What could she write that would seem pleasant?
Encouraging? Entertaining? What would not send her mother into hysterics, or cause her father to charge pell-mell down to London to extract her before she had achieved what they wanted her to achieve?
And did she wish to achieve that for herself?
Oh, this was dangerous territory. She cast about for something safer.
But a safe harbor was not available for her on this day.
She dreadfully wished to slip in a word or two about how homesick she was, how both exciting and dreadfully boring the whole process was, the odd fluttering of her heart from time to time when she pictured a certain profile, and a longing to have a word or two about all that was going on with her father’s business. I dare not. I must not. Any of it.
She knew she was to put that—the workings of the cloth manufactory—all behind her.
Now that she was launched, her mother was the primary correspondent.
It was clear to Aurora that her mother viewed it as her tunnel-visioned goal to see her daughter successfully married to a titled member of the Ton.
This achievement was the only way to bring the family’s extraordinary financial attainment into society.
Money by itself would never allow entry.
Aurora knew she was holding other things back as well.
About how she was attempting to add flirting to her repertoire, for example.
Aurora never felt as though she was completely at ease with the latter, and she had given up on the Greeks entirely as providing her with any type of aid or succor in this situation.
She tried again. Both Missie and I enjoy the attentions of many beaux who send us flowers and boxes of the most elegant chocolates imaginable.
We are never without partners for dances or an eligible escort for dinner.
She did not add that said beaux tried to distract the young ladies from the attentions of their respective high-ranking ducal suitors.
She definitely did not share the episode of one over-confident and aging roué who had hinted quite broadly that his carriage would be ready at a moment’s notice to whisk her away up to Gretna Green and a marriage over the anvil, but he was (unfortunately for him but happily for Aurora) overheard by Lady Wentworth, and he found himself barred from ever coming within two feet of Aurora again.
She gave up and set down the quill. She would get no letter written today.
Her brain was hare-ing all over the place.
Well, not all over the place, exactly. Rather, more precisely, Scotland-ward.
Yes, straight as an arrow due north. To a certain ducal estate, which she was beginning to imagine in decidedly romantic terms.
Aurora rested her cheek on her hand and sighed.
Almack’s felt ages ago. That Alec Raeburn appeared to have vanished, as though she had conjured him from her dreams. But then the day at Hampton Court came.
Hampton Court. A day that shifted her world on its axis yet again.
Because suddenly, he was back, her duke from the night they had waltzed.
The two of them had sat so closely together, speaking in such sympathy.
She had been able to look him in the eye, and he had looked directly back at her.
She could have lost herself in looking at him, feeling as if she were reaching toward something, and seeing it reaching back towards her.
She had felt herself leaning in toward him.
Until they were interrupted. She should feel shocked at her forwardness.
Or was it his forwardness? Nevertheless, she desperately wanted it to happen again.