Chapter Eighteen #2
"So," Charles said around a mouthful of sandwich, "how's married life? Are you a proper duchess? Do you have to wear a tiara to breakfast?"
"Charles," Ophelia said warningly.
"What? I'm curious! Our little Phee, married to a duke. It's like something out of one of those novels Mother pretends she doesn't read."
"It's nothing like a novel," Alexander said coolly.
"No? No romance? No passionate declarations?"
"Charles, stop," Ophelia said, but the damage was done.
"I suppose not," Edward said thoughtfully. "Hard to be romantic when you're covered in sickness."
The silence that followed was deafening in its intensity.
"Edward!" Ophelia gasped.
"What? Everyone knows about it. It's all anyone in London talks about. The wedding of the century, they're calling it. Though not in a good way."
Alexander set down his teacup with excessive care. "If you'll excuse me, I have correspondence to attend to."
"Alexander," Ophelia started, but he was already leaving.
"Was it something I said?" Edward asked, genuinely puzzled.
Ophelia put her head in her hands. This was going to be a very long visit.
But then, through her fingers, she saw something unexpected. Alexander had paused in the doorway and turned back.
"Dinner is at eight," he said formally. "We don't dress formally. Just normal dress. Or rather, dinner dress, but not..."
He was actually flustered. The Duke of Montclaire was flustered by her brothers.
"We understand," she said softly.
He nodded and left, and she turned to face her brothers, who were looking uncharacteristically guilty.
"We've ruined it already" Charles said.
"Rather spectacularly."
"We'll apologise at dinner."
"Please don't. That will make it worse."
"Then what should we do?"
"Just... be less yourselves."
"That's helpful."
"Be the selves that Mother would approve of. Can you do that?"
The twins exchanged looks. "We shall try."
It was the best she could hope for.
She spent the afternoon showing them around the estate, keeping them away from Alexander, who had barricaded himself in his study.
They were actually relatively well-behaved, though Charles did try to ride the statue of a horse in the garden and Edward picked several flowers he definitely shouldn't have touched.
"The place is enormous," Charles observed. "You could fit our entire house in your entrance hall."
"It's excessive," Ophelia admitted.
"But it's yours now."
"Is it? It doesn't feel like mine."
"Give it time," Edward said with unusual wisdom. "Rome wasn't built in a day."
"Rome wasn't built by Coleridges trying to be Montclaires."
"No, but we're good at adapting. It's the merchant blood. We see an opportunity and we take it."
"I'm not an opportunity, Edward. I'm your sister."
"You're both. And that's not a bad thing."
Dinner was less catastrophic than anticipated, though that was a low bar. The twins managed to use the correct forks and didn't tell any truly mortifying stories. Alexander maintained rigid politeness, and Ophelia tried to bridge the gap between her two worlds with limited success.
"Excellent wine," Charles commented. "What year?"
"1794," Alexander replied.
"Good year for wine. Bad year for French aristocrats."
"Charles," Ophelia warned.
"What? It's history. Can't argue with history."
"You can avoid mentioning revolutions at dinner."
"Where's the fun in that?"
But he subsided, and they made it through the rest of the meal with only minor incidents—Edward knocking over a salt cellar, Charles laughing too loudly at his own jest, both of them eating with more enthusiasm than elegance.
After dinner, in the drawing room, things relaxed marginally. The twins told stories about home—carefully edited stories that avoided mention of trade or anything too merchant-class. Alexander even contributed a few observations, though he remained carefully distant.
"We should visit more often," Charles said as they prepared to retire. "Phee needs family around her in this museum."
"It's not a museum," Alexander said coldly.
"Of course not. Museums are warmer."
"Charles!"
"What? Look at this place. It's beautiful but it's like... frozen in time. Nothing personal anywhere. Except..." He paused, looking at a small vase of violets on a side table. "Those are Phee's touch, aren't they? She always did love violets."
Alexander looked at the flowers as if seeing them for the first time. "She arranged them?"
"Every week at home. She said they were cheerful. Tiny little spots of color where you didn't expect them."
Something shifted in Alexander's expression, though Ophelia couldn't read what.
"It's late," she said quickly. "We should all retire."
The twins bid them goodnight with more enthusiasm than grace, and soon she and Alexander were alone in the drawing room.
"They're not what I expected," he said finally.
"Better or worse?"
"Different. They're... young."
"They're only five years younger than you."
"It seems like more."
"That's because you've been preparing to be a duke since you were seventeen. You've never had the chance to be young."
"Is that what you think?"
"It's what I see. You've been responsible for all of this"—she gestured at the grand room—"for so long, you've forgotten how to just be."
"And your brothers never learned to be anything but."
"They're not bad people."
"I didn't say they were."
"You think it, though. Every time you look at them, you see Coleridge merchants. Climbers. Threats."
"Don't you see Montclaire pride when you look at me? Cold, dismissive aristocracy?"
"Sometimes."
"Only sometimes?"
"Sometimes I see a man who's as trapped as I am."
They stood there, two people beginning to see each other as more than just their names, when Edward's voice rang out from upstairs:
"Phee! There's a portrait of a man with the most enormous mustache I've ever seen! Come look!"
The spell broke. Alexander's expression closed off again.
"Your brothers," he said, as if that explained everything.
"Yes," she agreed sadly. "My brothers."
She got up to go and find the twins, but at the door, she turned back. Alexander was still standing in the drawing room, looking at the little vase of violets with an expression she couldn't quite read.
Tomorrow her brothers would leave, and they'd go back to their cold war. But tonight, for just a moment, she'd thought maybe...
"Phee!" Charles called. "You have to see this mustache! It's magnificent!"
She went to find her brothers, leaving Alexander alone with the violets and his thoughts.
Later, much later, when the house was quiet and she was lying in her enormous bed, she heard something through the connecting door. Footsteps, pacing. Alexander was awake, restless.
She thought about knocking, asking if he was alright. But that would cross a line they'd carefully maintained. So she lay there, listening to him pace, both of them awake and alone with only a door between them.
Tomorrow they'd return to their careful distance.
But tonight had shown her something—they were capable of more than cold formality. When pushed by circumstances (or chaotic twins), they could actually interact almost normally.
It wasn't much, but it was progress.
She fell asleep to the sound of his pacing, and her last thought was of violets and the way he'd looked at them, as if flowers could hold answers to questions he didn't know how to ask.