Chapter Two #2
Rosanne laughed, a startled, delighted sound, and Lillian felt something warm unfurl in her chest. She liked making this girl laugh. She liked the way Rosanne's whole face changed when she was genuinely amused, as though someone had lit a candle behind her eyes.
"You are very easy to talk to," Rosanne said. "Has anyone ever told you that?"
"Occasionally. Though my mother would say it is because I am an excellent listener, which is simply another way of saying I am not particularly good at filling silences with my own chatter."
"I am excellent at filling silences with my own chatter. It is one of my few talents." Rosanne reached for another lemon biscuit, then hesitated. "May I ask you something? You need not answer if it is too impertinent."
"You may ask."
"Why are you not married?"
Lillian blinked. It was not the question she had expected, though in retrospect, perhaps she should have. It was the question everyone asked, sooner or later, when confronted with an unmarried woman of three-and-twenty who was neither hideous nor obviously insane.
"I suppose I have not yet met anyone I wished to marry," she said carefully.
"But surely there have been suitors? Prospects? Young men of suitable character and adequate teeth?"
"A few." Lillian smiled slightly. "Though I confess I never thought to evaluate their teeth."
"You should. It is important." Rosanne leaned forward, her expression earnest. "But truly, was there no one? No one at all who made you feel... I do not know. Something?"
Lillian considered the question. She had received two proposals in her twenty-three years; one from a curate with damp hands and earnest sermons, the other from a widowed farmer who needed someone to care for his six children.
Both had been decent men. Both had offered her security and purpose and a place in the world.
She had refused them both.
"I suppose," she said slowly, "that I have always believed marriage should be more than mere practicality.
That one should feel..." She hesitated, searching for the right word.
"Connection, understanding, a sense that one's life would be richer because of the other person's presence in it, rather than simply tolerable. "
"That is terribly romantic."
"Is it? I had thought it rather pragmatic. A lifetime is a very long time to spend with someone who does not truly see you."
Rosanne was quiet for a moment, her gaze drifting toward the window. When she spoke again, her voice was softer.
"Daniel says romance is a fiction. That marriage is a contract like any other; a negotiation of benefits and obligations, to be approached with logic rather than feeling." She paused. "But I do not think he believes that. Not really. I think he is simply…. Afraid."
Lillian thought of the duke's rigid posture, his controlled expression, the way he had retreated the moment their conversation had threatened to become personal.
"Afraid of what?" she asked.
"Of becoming our parents." Rosanne's voice was barely above a whisper. "They loved each other, you know. Desperately and passionately. And it destroyed them both."
The words hung in the air between them, heavy with implication. Lillian did not press for details; she sensed that Rosanne had already said more than she had intended.
"I am sorry," she said quietly. "That must have been difficult."
"It was." Rosanne's smile was sad. "But it was a long time ago. And Daniel has done his best to keep us both safe. In his way."
Before Lillian could respond, the door to the sitting room opened, and the Duke of Wyntham himself stepped inside.
***
Daniel had not intended to join them for tea.
He had, in fact, made a very deliberate decision to avoid joining them for tea. He had work to do, there was always work to do, and the presence of Miss Whitcombe in his home was absolutely, categorically, not his concern.
And yet here he was. Standing in the doorway of the blue sitting room, watching his sister and the woman with the dirty hem, though today her hem appeared to be perfectly clean, look up at him with expressions of surprise.
"Daniel." Rosanne recovered first, her tone a careful mixture of welcome and warning. "I did not expect you."
"I was passing." This was technically true. He had been passing. He had simply been passing rather more frequently than was strictly necessary, and the blue sitting room had somehow become the fixed point around which his trajectory orbited.
He was aware of how ridiculous this was but he chose not to examine it too closely.
"Won't you join us?" Rosanne gestured toward the empty chair near the fire. "We have plenty of tea, and the Cook has made the most wonderful lemon biscuits."
"I do not care for lemon."
"You do not care for anything," Rosanne said, with a flash of sisterly exasperation. "Sit down, Daniel. You are making Miss Whitcombe uncomfortable."
He glanced at Miss Whitcombe, who did not look uncomfortable in the slightest. She looked amused. That same quiet, private amusement he had sensed at the fair, as though she were observing a particularly entertaining play and had not yet decided what she thought of the leading actor.
"I would not dream of intruding on your conversation," he said stiffly.
"You are not intruding. You are joining. There is a difference." Lillian smiled; a small, serene curve of her lips that did something unpleasant to his equilibrium. "Please, Your Grace. Sit."
It was not a command. It was barely even a request. And yet Daniel found himself moving toward the empty chair as though his legs had made the decision without consulting his brain.
He sat.
"There," Rosanne said, with evident satisfaction. "That was not so difficult, was it?"
Daniel did not dignify this with a response. He accepted a cup of tea from the maid, no sugar, no cream, nothing that might soften the bitter edge, and fixed his attention on a point somewhere between the two women, where he could observe them both without actually looking at either of them.
"Miss Whitcombe was just telling me about her approach to marriage," Rosanne announced, apparently determined to include him in the conversation whether he wished to be included or not.
"Rosanne…" Miss Whitcombe's voice carried a note of gentle reproach. "I do not think His Grace is interested in my opinions on matrimony."
"On the contrary." The words were out before he could stop them. "I find myself....Curious."
Miss Whitcombe's eyebrows rose slightly—the first unguarded reaction he had seen from her. It lasted only a moment before her expression smoothed back into its customary serenity, but Daniel felt a small, inexplicable thrill of triumph at having surprised her.
"Curious?" she repeated.
"You have declined to marry, despite being of an age where most young women have accepted, or at least actively sought, a suitable match.
That suggests either an unusual level of discernment or an unusual set of priorities.
" He paused, aware that he was being more direct than was strictly polite. "I am curious which it is."
"Perhaps it is both."
"That is not an answer."
"No," she agreed. "It is not."
They looked at each other across the space of the sitting room; the duke in his chair, rigid and watchful; the country girl on the settee, calm and unmoved by his scrutiny. Rosanne glanced between them with an expression that Daniel could not quite identify.
"I believe," Miss Whitcombe said finally, "that marriage should be a partnership of equals. A meeting of minds and hearts. Not merely an arrangement of convenience or a transaction of social capital." Her gaze was steady on his. "I shall not accept anything less."
"That is idealistic."
"Perhaps."
"Most would say it is unrealistic."
"Most would say a great many things." She smiled; that small, serene smile again. "I have never been particularly concerned with what most would say."
Daniel felt something shift in his chest; a crack in the wall he had so carefully constructed, small but undeniable. He did not like it. He did not like it at all.
"Idealism," he said, his voice colder than he had intended, "is a luxury of the young. Reality has a way of tempering such notions."
"Perhaps." Miss Whitcombe did not look offended by his tone. If anything, she looked... thoughtful. "Or perhaps reality is simply what we choose to accept. Perhaps there are those who settle for less because they have been convinced they do not deserve more."
The words landed like a blow; soft, precise, and devastating in their accuracy. Daniel felt his jaw tighten, his hands curling involuntarily around his teacup.
She does not know, he told himself. She cannot know. She is simply speaking in generalities, as young women often do.
But the steadiness of her gaze suggested otherwise.
"I should return to my work," he said abruptly, setting down his teacup with more force than necessary. "Ladies."
He stood and bowed and walked out of the room without looking back.
It was only when he had reached the safety of his study, the door firmly closed behind him, that he allowed himself to breathe.
***
Lillian watched the duke's retreating figure with a mixture of curiosity and something that might have been sympathy.
She had struck a nerve. She had not meant to, she had simply been answering his question with the honesty it seemed to demand, but somewhere in her words, she had touched something raw.
The way his expression had shuttered, the abrupt coldness in his voice, the rigid set of his shoulders as he left. ..
He was not simply cold, she realized. He was wounded.
The observation settled into her mind alongside Rosanne's whispered confession: I think he is simply afraid.
"I apologise for my brother," Rosanne said, her voice a careful balance of mortification and resignation. "He is not…..He does not..."
"You need not apologise." Lillian turned away from the door and offered Rosanne a reassuring smile. "He was not unkind. Merely... uncomfortable."
"He is always uncomfortable." Rosanne sighed, reaching for her tea as though it might provide some form of fortification. "I had hoped…...But no. That was foolish of me."
"Had hoped what?"
Rosanne hesitated, her fingers tracing the pattern on her teacup. "I had hoped that you might... I do not know. Reach him, somehow. You are so calm, Miss Whitcombe. So steady. I thought perhaps..." She trailed off, shaking her head. "It was a foolish notion. Forgive me."
Lillian felt a strange flutter in her chest; not quite alarm, not quite interest, something in between. "You thought I might befriend your brother?"
"I thought you might be good for him. For us.
" Rosanne's voice was very low. "This house is so quiet, Miss Whitcombe.
So cold. Daniel keeps everything under such rigid control, and I understand why, truly, I do, but sometimes I feel as though we are both slowly suffocating.
As though we are trapped in a beautiful cage, too afraid to reach for the door. "
The imagery was striking. Lillian looked around the elegant sitting room, the perfectly arranged furniture, the carefully curated decor, the sense of everything held in careful, measured stasis, and understood, suddenly, what Rosanne meant.
"I cannot promise to reach your brother," she said gently. "I suspect he does not wish to be reached."
"No. He does not." Rosanne's smile was sad. "But that does not mean he does not need it."