Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
As it was, Alice had kept to her word and was currently riding in Hyde Park, enjoying the feel of the late spring sun on her face and Fortuna’s strong back under her legs. There was a lot to be said about the outdoors, particularly now she could enjoy it at her leisure.
Sometimes, bitter, angry thoughts still crept in.
She’d learned compassion for Frederick, but that didn’t erase five years of grief and anger.
But now, she felt guilty when she considered how much pain he, too, had been in.
And days like these, she could accept it all as water under the bridge.
He had given her so much. She could restore his reputation in return.
They could forge a life together.
A voice halted her in her thoughts. “Miss Ravenshire?”
Alice turned to see one of her oldest friends from her first Season. “Charlotte Clarence?”
“It is Charlotte Norburry now!” her friend laughed, a dimple popping on her cheek. She was a blonde, buxom lady to whom the passing five years had been nothing but good. “I married four years ago.”
“I am now Alice Blackwell,” Alice laughed too. “I, too, married, although rather more recently.”
“To the Duke of Langford?” Charlotte’s eyes shot wide. “Heavens, Alice.”
“It is not what you think…”
“You don’t know what I think.” Her old friend shook her head. “I haven’t seen you in a long time. Not since…” She paused.
Those early days after the accident were a blur, but she remembered Charlotte coming to visit her even when she screamed at her not to.
Alice had wanted nothing more than to be left alone, but Charlotte had not given up on their friendship.
Even after she moved into the country with her aunt and uncle, Charlotte had persisted, sending weekly letters.
At the time, Alice had been tired and frustrated, wanting no reminders of her old life. Now, she felt the guilt of that dismissal pressing in on her.
“I should apologize,” Alice began rather hesitantly. “For not taking the time to write back.”
Charlotte waved a cursory hand. “No need to apologize, dearest. You were suffering in your own way, and you needed time and space to find your way back out of it. But look at you now. A Duchess!” Alice expected Charlotte to reference who the Duke was to her—the man who had caused the accident that had changed her life—but she made no such reference.
“He is not the man I thought I would marry,” Alice admitted with a grimace. “But he is kind to me.”
“Every wife wants a kind husband!” Charlotte asserted. “My husband is a delight. I, too, did not think I would marry him, but it transpires I cannot always be right about what I want.” She giggled, a tinkling sound, but it faded into silence after a few moments. “I’m glad he’s kind to you.”
“He feels he has a lot to make up for.” Alice fidgeted atop her horse, and eventually gestured that they should begin walking again, keeping Fortuna at a very sedate pace beside Charlotte.
“I would walk beside you, but I fear my leg would not allow it. While I am recovering very nicely thanks to His Grace, I am not there yet.”
“That you’ve come even this far is… remarkable.” Charlotte blinked several times. “As I recall, many doctors thought you would never walk again.”
Alice nodded somberly. “In many respects, I have been remarkably lucky,” she murmured and stopped, the truth of that statement hitting her all at once. She’d never once considered herself to be lucky—in fact, she had been focused for so long on all the ways in which she had been deeply unlucky.
But that wasn’t the whole story. She had been fortunate, too. So, so fortunate in so many ways.
Losing her parents had been a tragic accident; hurting her leg had been terrible.
But for years, she had only seen that. She hadn’t appreciated that her survival had also been a gift.
She’d kept her life when her parents hadn’t been too lucky.
Yes, her leg had been damaged, but she still had the ability to walk, at least a little.
And more than that—she was now in a secure marriage with one of the highest-ranked peers of the realm.
She was learning to walk again, without the necessity of her stick.
Frederick had granted her the ability to ride.
He had gifted her with a horse, with the means to ride her, and he supported her freedom.
How many other gentlemen would offer their wives such boons?
For so long, she had been searching for the negatives, when there were so many positives to be found. So many silver linings to the dark clouds that she’d thought made up her life.
How blind she had been. How foolish and short-sighted.
She was excessively fortunate for things to have played out the way they did. And she had the audacity to feel hard done by?
How foolish.
“Are you happy?” Charlotte asked. “I tried to visit you, you know, but your aunt and uncle always turned me away. They said seeing me would distress you.” She cast an assessing glance at Alice.
“I think they would have been right. But now, you seem… brighter. More resilient. I am glad.” She gave a brilliant smile.
“You think I wasn’t resilient before the accident?” Alice teased, arching a brow.
Charlotte pursed her lips as she considered. “You’d never experienced hardship. I don’t think you knew what it meant to be resilient. But no, I don’t think you were. You had to learn it.”
Alice pondered that. “You think I have now?”
“Well, you are sitting there on a horse when the last time I saw you, you were lying in a bed telling the world not to interfere with you any longer.” She gave a long, slow smile. “And I’ve heard stories about the bold Duchess of Langford. She doesn’t care what others think of her.”
Alice grimaced. “I am positive they said less flattering things about me.”
“Perhaps,” Charlotte allowed, then grinned. “I’m delighted to discover they were talking about you. They were saying they disapproved of you, but I think I heard envy in their voices.”
“Envy...?”
“You married one of the most eligible bachelors in the country—oh, to hell with his reputation; he is still a Duke—and then proceeded to take the ton by storm. Before the year is out, I predict it will be fashionable to walk with a cane and a limp.”
“Nonsense!” Alice snorted.
“You became everything we discussed when we were children. Do you remember?” Charlotte’s smile softened as she drew into their past. “We were troublemakers. Rogue fireworks they’d call us.
And we always talked about turning the ton on its head.
Being the source of a small scandal and coming out the other side. ”
“I remember,” Alice mused, feeling the smile at her mouth despite herself. “We said that no man would ever be able to control us.”
“Foolishness,” Charlotte smirked, shaking her head. “But you must admit, you have done admirably in that respect. Still.” She considered Alice on her horse. “You would never have been brave enough to go ahead with it back then.”
“No?”
“Truthfully, you were far too concerned with what people thought of you. I was always the one persuading us to get into trouble.”
“Small amounts of trouble,” Alice protested. “Like going out onto the balcony when we knew there were gentlemen out there.”
“You were still worried about your reputation.”
“Look where that got me,” Alice shrugged.
Charlotte raised her brows. “Yes, now you’re married. How truly shocking. What a disgrace.”
“Be serious.” Alice gave a sideways glance.
“I am!” Charlotte shielded her eyes as she looked up at Alice. “Tell me, would you be afraid to enter a balcony with a gentleman?”
“In this scenario, am I unmarried?”
“Yes.”
“And this man, do I like him?”
“Obviously. Why else would you go out there?”
Alice laughed and considered. As a girl, it was true, she would have been always thinking about what others thought of her. Her parents, in particular. But now, if she was unmarried, what would she choose to do?
If she liked the gentleman in question—or rather, if the gentleman in question was Frederick, the answer was obvious.
“Worst case scenario, he would be honor-bound to offer for me,” she murmured, then shrugged. “If I liked him that much, why would that be a problem for me?”
“And there you have it. You see? That is not what you would have said six years ago.” She grinned. “And I rather like this version of you. Let’s live up to our former dream.”
Any other time, she would have adored the idea of turning London on its head and being the center of every scandal. But now she thought about Frederick and the rumors that still abounded even now. In part, because of her.
“Married life has made me respectable,” Alice said. “But perhaps we could see each other again? I miss our friendship.”
Charlotte laughed, holding onto her hat with her hand as she looked up at Alice. “I thought you would never ask.”
Alice arrived home before Frederick and retired to her room to write in her journal. When she’d first had her accident, she’d relied on her journal as a means of recording her thoughts and feelings—a way of processing them and coming to terms with her new reality.
After a while, she hadn’t written in it as much.
Her days were monotonous with less to look forward to.
But upon the occasion of her marriage, she had taken up the habit again.
She sucked the tip of her pen as she contemplated whether to write about meeting Charlotte.
A piece of her old life in with her new.
So many things had changed. According to Charlotte, she had changed. For the better, it seemed, but the thought that her parents may no longer recognize her came as a blow. She’d lost so much; did she have to lose this, too? It felt as though by moving forward, she was leaving them behind.
Grief was strange. It came in waves, and she couldn’t always predict when it would hit.