Chapter One #2
She ignored him entirely. "Did you see the puppet show? It was wonderful. The villain had the most magnificent moustache, he twirled it constantly, like this," she demonstrated with an imaginary moustache, and Miss Whitcombe laughed.
It was a good laugh. Warm and unaffected, without the careful modulation that characterized the laughs of London debutantes. The sound of it did that peculiar thing to Daniel's chest again.
He really did not like it.
"I missed the puppet show, I'm afraid," Miss Whitcombe said. "I was occupied with a small adventure involving kittens and a missing child."
"Oh, that was you?" Rosanne clapped her hands together. "I heard someone mention how marvelous! You must tell me everything. Was the child terribly frightened?"
"Not in the least. He was rather angry that I interrupted his attempts to establish a feline army."
Rosanne laughed again, and Daniel watched his sister's face transform with genuine pleasure; a transformation he saw all too rarely in London, where she moved through ballrooms like a ghost, pale and anxious and desperate to escape notice.
Here, with this woman, she was bright.
The observation settled in his chest alongside the other uncomfortable feelings, and he did not know what to make of it.
"Miss Whitcombe was just leaving," he heard himself say.
Both women turned to look at him. Rosanne's expression was incredulous; Miss Whitcombe's was... unreadable.
"Was I?" she asked, in that same mild, polite tone that somehow conveyed a great deal more than the words themselves.
"I..." Daniel stopped. He had no idea why he had said that. It had simply emerged from his mouth, as though some part of him had decided that the best way to deal with this unsettling woman was to remove her from his presence as quickly as possible.
"Daniel, really," Rosanne said. "Miss Whitcombe has not even had a chance to try Mrs. Hendricks's apple tarts."
"I do not care for apples," Miss Whitcombe said.
She was looking at him again with that steady, disconcerting gaze, and Daniel had the sudden, absurd conviction that she was laughing at him. Not outwardly, her expression remained perfectly composed, but somewhere beneath the surface, in a place he could sense but not see.
"Neither does Daniel," Rosanne said. "You have that in common."
"How fortunate."
The word was neutral but the delivery was not.
Daniel felt his jaw tighten. "If you will excuse me," he said, with a stiff bow that encompassed both women. "I have matters to attend to."
"Of course, Your Grace." Miss Whitcombe curtsied again, and this time there was definitely something in her eyes; something that made him feel as though he had been weighed and measured and found... What? Wanting? Amusing? He could not tell.
He did not stay to find out.
***
Lillian watched the Duke of Wyntham retreat across the village green, his dark coat cutting a severe line through the cheerful chaos of the fair, and allowed herself a small, private smile.
Your hem is dirty.
In her twenty-three years of existence, Lillian had received a great many conversational remarks from gentlemen of various ranks and temperaments.
She had been complimented on her eyes; adequate, her singing voice; terrible, and her dancing; passable, though only when she concentrated very hard on not stepping on anyone's feet.
She had been lectured on the weather, the state of the roads, and the lamentable decline of proper feminine accomplishment in the modern age.
But she had never, in all her years, been informed that her hem was dirty by a man who looked as though the observation caused him physical pain.
"You must forgive my brother," Lady Rosanne said, her tone a mixture of exasperation and apology. "He is not always so... so..."
"Direct?"
"I was going to say rude, but direct is kinder." Rosanne sighed, watching her brother's retreating form with the weary affection of someone who had spent a lifetime making excuses for him. "He does not mean to be. He simply... He is not comfortable with people."
"Most people are not comfortable with people," Lillian said. "They merely hide it better."
Rosanne laughed, but there was a note of surprise in it, as though the observation had caught her off guard.
"I suppose that is true. I am certainly not comfortable with people.
Not in London, anyway. Everyone is always watching, and judging, and waiting for you to make a mistake so they can talk about it behind their fans. "
"That sounds exhausting."
"It is." Rosanne's shoulders relaxed slightly, as though she had been holding them tense without realizing it. "That is why I prefer the country. Here, no one cares if I say the wrong thing or wear the wrong dress or forget which fork to use for the fish course."
"Is there a specific fork for the fish course?"
"Apparently. Though I confess I have never understood why fish require their own utensil. Fish are not that special."
Lillian found herself warming to Lady Rosanne Wynthorpe.
She had met the girl once before, briefly, at a card gathering hosted by the Vicar's wife, and had thought her shy and rather nervous, with the hunted look of someone who expected criticism at every turn.
But here, away from the social obligations that seemed to cause her such distress, she was quite charming.
"I agree entirely," Lillian said. "Fish are perfectly capable of being eaten with ordinary implements. I have done so, many times."
"Have you?" Rosanne's eyes widened. "What was it like? Did anyone faint?"
"No one fainted. The fish did not appear to notice the insult."
Rosanne laughed again, a real laugh this time, bright and unguarded, and Lillian felt something settle pleasantly in her chest. She liked this girl. She liked her nervousness and her earnestness and the way she laughed as though she had just been given permission to do so.
"I am sorry we have not had more opportunity to speak," Rosanne said. "After Mrs. Harrison's card gathering, I mean. I wanted to call on you, but Daniel said..." She stopped, color rising in her cheeks. "That is...I was not sure if..."
"I would be delighted if you called," Lillian said, rescuing her from whatever tangle of social anxiety she had gotten herself into. "Hartfield is not a big house, but we have adequate tea and a very comfortable settee."
"Truly?" Rosanne's face lit up. "You would not mind?"
"I would not mind in the least."
"Oh, that would be..." Rosanne caught herself, visibly tamping down her enthusiasm into something more appropriate to her station. "That is to say, I would enjoy that very much. If it is convenient."
"It is nearly always convenient. My schedule is not particularly demanding."
This was a diplomatic way of saying that Lillian's schedule consisted primarily of household management, occasional visits to neighbors, and long walks through the countryside during which she thought about very little in particular.
It was a quiet life, perhaps too quiet, for a woman of three-and-twenty who had once harbored rather more ambitious dreams, but it was hers, and she had made her peace with it.
Mostly.
"Then I shall call," Rosanne said, with a decisive nod that suggested she was committing the plan to memory before her courage could fail. "Tomorrow, perhaps? Or is that too soon? I do not wish to impose."
"Tomorrow would be lovely."
Rosanne beamed, and Lillian smiled back, and for a moment they simply stood there, two young women on a village green, united by mutual awkwardness and a shared indifference to fish forks.
Then Rosanne's gaze drifted over Lillian's shoulder, toward the spot where her brother had disappeared, and her expression shifted into something more complicated.
"He is not as cold as he seems," she said quietly. "Daniel, I mean. I know he appears... Forbidding. But underneath all that, he is..." She paused, searching for words. "He is kind. In his way. He just does not know how to show it."
Lillian thought of the duke's stiff bow, his clipped sentences, the way he had looked at her as though she were a puzzle he had not asked to solve.
"I am sure he is," she said, because it seemed the thing to say.
But privately, she was not sure at all.
***
Daniel did not stop walking until he reached the far edge of the green, where a low stone wall marked the boundary between the village and the fields beyond. He placed both hands on the rough surface and breathed.
In, and out.
In, and out.
It was a technique he had developed in childhood, during the worst of his parents' arguments; a way of steadying himself when the world felt as though it were tilting beneath his feet.
He had not needed it in years. He certainly should not need it now, standing alone at a village fair while his tenants made merry behind him.
And yet here he was. Breathing. Because a young woman with a dirty hem and an unsettling gaze had smiled at his sister.
Ridiculous.
He was being ridiculous. Miss Whitcombe was nothing; a neighbor's daughter, a passing acquaintance, a person of no particular consequence to his life.
She would call on Rosanne, or perhaps Rosanne would call on her, and they would drink tea and discuss whatever it was that young ladies discussed when left to their own devices.
And then she would fade back into the background of his existence where she belonged.
There was no reason, no reason at all, for the strange tightness in his chest, the peculiar awareness that had prickled along his skin when she had looked at him and the way his mind kept returning, again and again, to the curve of her mouth when she smiled.
Your hem is dirty.
He had said that. To a woman he had just met. As though he were some sort of deranged man who had temporarily forgotten how human conversation worked.
Daniel closed his eyes and resisted the urge to bang his head against the stone wall.
His mother's voice echoed in his memory: Cold, Daniel. You are so cold.
But that was not quite right, was it? He was not cold.
He was simply contained and controlled. He kept himself at a distance because distance was safe, because emotions were dangerous, because he had watched his parents tear each other apart with their grand passions and their violent reconciliations and their endless, exhausting drama.
And he had sworn, sworn on everything he held dear, that he would never, ever become them.
Control was not coldness. Control was survival.
And if that meant he occasionally said foolish things to young women at village fairs, well, that was simply the price of maintaining his equilibrium.
He would not think about Miss Whitcombe.
He would return to the fair, fulfill his remaining duties, and then retire to his study with a glass of brandy and a book about agricultural improvements.
Tomorrow, he would review the estate accounts and meet with his steward and write a strongly worded letter to his solicitor about the drainage problem in the east fields.
He would not think about the way Miss Whitcombe had looked at him; as though she could see straight through his carefully constructed walls to the chaos he kept hidden beneath.
He absolutely would not think about that.
Daniel took one more breath, pushed himself away from the wall, and walked back toward the fair.
The meat pie sat like a stone in his stomach the entire way.