Chapter 15
Phoebe asked to go to the village that morning for supplies the nursery needed.
She said it in the hallway outside the breakfast room, half to Mrs. Pritchard and half to the stack of linens in her hands, as if she were making a practical request and nothing more.
Leopold heard it before he saw her. He had been coming from the study with a memorandum in hand and paused on the landing just long enough to catch the last of the conversation.
Mrs. Pritchard looked thoughtful. “We can send for most of it.”
“I know,” Phoebe said. “But there are a few things I should like to choose myself.”
Leopold stepped into the corridor before he had quite decided to do it. Phoebe looked up at once.
He glanced at the list in her hand. “What do you need?”
She hesitated only briefly. “A few nursery things…a new brush, thread, more ribbon, a proper length of wool for the blanket I mean to mend. There are also supplies the kitchen asked me to remember.”
Leopold gave a nod. “I will come with you.”
Phoebe blinked. “My lord?”
Mrs. Pritchard’s expression moved by the smallest degree, the sort of shift that suggested she had already seen the shape of trouble and was not interested in interrupting it.
“You need not,” Phoebe said carefully.
“I know.”
Her eyes searched his face for a moment. “It is only the village.”
“That is precisely why I am coming.”
Phoebe looked as though she might object again, but before she could, Her Grace’s voice came from the breakfast room.
“If the two of you go together, the entire town will talk for a week.”
Leopold turned.
His mother stood in the doorway, her tea untouched in her hand and her expression already arranged into calm disapproval. She looked from him to Phoebe and back again.
“You may as well deliver the gossip yourself,” she said.
Leopold met her gaze. “Let them talk.”
His mother’s brows rose. “That is a careless answer.”
“It is an accurate one.”
“That is an invitation.”
He gave her a sharp look. “If the village wants to invent a story, it will do so whether I step outside or not.”
Her mouth flattened. “You are making no effort to help yourself.”
“I am making no effort to lie about walking into the village for supplies.”
She stared at him a moment longer, then said, with the tone of a woman who disliked being told no in front of other people, “Do as you like.”
Leopold inclined his head. “I intend to.”
Phoebe had been watching the exchange with a face that gave little away. Leopold looked at her then, and she looked back, her expression carefully neutral in the way it had become when she was measuring what was safe to say.
“You will need a coat,” she said.
He glanced toward the front hall. “I have one.”
She looked as though she might smile, though she did not quite allow it. “Then let us go before the weather changes.”
It was the first time they had left the estate together.
The carriage would have been unnecessary for such a short distance, and Leopold had chosen, perhaps deliberately, to walk, the road to the village dry enough underfoot though the edges still held the damp of the night.
Phoebe walked beside him carrying Cecily against her shoulder, and Leopold found himself aware, almost at once, of the way they must have looked to anyone passing by.
A duke, a nursemaid, a baby. More specifically, a reclusive duke, a nursemaid who came seemingly from nowhere, and a baby that had just appeared at his home rather than an orphanage.
People they passed on the lane looked at the three of them and then looked away too quickly.
A gardener near the turn to the lower field pulled off his cap and stared after them once they had gone by.
Two women carrying market baskets slowed to watch them from the far side of the road before whispering to each other and continuing on.
Leopold noticed all of it.
He also noticed, with some irritation, that he did not entirely dislike it.
Phoebe kept pace with him easily. Cecily, warm and content, stared over Phoebe’s shoulder at the world with bright seriousness and clutched at the edge of her sleeve.
At the first cottage they passed, a dog barked from behind the gate.
Cecily turned her head immediately and made a delighted sound.
Leopold glanced at her. “You approve of village life already?”
Phoebe said, “She approves of noise.”
“That explains the household.”
This earned him a brief look from Phoebe, though the corner of her mouth shifted as if she had nearly smiled.
They reached the village not long after.
It was still early enough that the road had a quiet look to it, though the market street was beginning to wake. The village shop had its shutters half open, the bakery smelled faintly of fresh bread, and a boy carrying firewood stopped to stare at Leopold before being shooed onward by his mother.
Phoebe was beside him now in full view of the village, and Leopold saw the change in the people around them almost at once. More than curiosity. Recognition. Assumption.
He had no idea how many of them knew who she was or what they thought she was to him. The answer seemed to alter every time a pair of eyes fell on them.
At the draper’s shop, a woman came to the counter while Phoebe was explaining what she needed. The woman looked from Phoebe to Cecily to Leopold and then, with the kind of confidence that came from speaking before thinking, said, “Good morning, Your Grace.”
Phoebe froze.
Leopold saw the reaction at once.
Phoebe’s head turned, her cheeks went faintly pink, and she said too quickly, “Oh. No, I am not. I mean, that is not...”
The woman blinked. “Pardon?”
Phoebe recovered so fast it would have been impressive if she hadn’t looked so flustered. “You mean Lord Belgrave. I am not...” She stopped, started again, and then let out a quiet breath that sounded as though she wished the floor might open beneath her. “I am not the duchess.”
The woman’s face sharpened into embarrassed understanding. “Of course. Forgive me. I was…I did not notice your…” She paused, gesturing down her body as if pointing out her own dress. “How foolish of me. I should have realized…”
Phoebe nodded once, still pink in the cheeks. “It is quite all right.”
Leopold, who had been standing by the doorway with Cecily on his hip, found himself smiling before he could stop it.
It was a small thing. Only that. A brief, unguarded smile at her embarrassment.
Phoebe looked up and caught him at it.
Her eyes widened a little.
Then she looked away at once, though not before he saw the color in her face deepen.
Leopold turned his attention to the shelves as if he had not just amused himself at her expense. It did not help. He was still thinking about it when they finished making their purchases and stepped back into the cold.
They stopped at the village green on the way home.
Cecily had begun to make small restless sounds in Phoebe’s arms, and Phoebe, after a glance at the patch of grass near the edge of the green, said, “Let me set her down.”
Leopold nodded.
She spread the blanket she had brought, placed Cecily carefully in the center of it, and sat beside her in the grass. The baby immediately reached for the daisies nearby with great concentration, pulling at the stems and then patting the flowers as though they were people she needed to question.
A dog crossed the green at a distance, and Cecily gave a pleased babble in its direction.
Phoebe watched her with open fondness.
Leopold sat down beside them.
For a moment, there was no speech at all. Only the village moving quietly around them at a distance, the faint sound of a cart farther down the lane, the occasional call of someone opening a door. The green was empty enough to feel private despite the world around it.
Cecily crawled toward one of the daisies and attempted to stuff the blossom into her mouth.
Phoebe gently removed it. “No.”
The baby frowned, then looked toward Leopold as if expecting a more favorable ruling from the higher authority seated beside her.
Leopold looked at the daisy, then at her. “I suspect your nursemaid is correct.”
Cecily made a small indignant sound and slapped the blanket.
Phoebe’s mouth twitched. “She is not accustomed to being denied.”
“That is a problem in the making.”
Phoebe looked at him. “She gets that from you.”
He let out a quiet breath that was almost a laugh. “That seems unfair.”
“It is accurate.”
He turned his head toward her. “You are beginning to sound very comfortable making judgments about me.”
Phoebe lowered her eyes to Cecily, who was now absorbed in the movement of her own fingers. “You are very easy to judge.”
He smiled despite himself. “A cruel assessment.”
“Not cruel,” she said. “Just accurate.”
They sat there with the baby on the blanket while the village moved around them and the sky stayed pale and undecided above. Leopold found the conversation easy in a way he had not expected.
They spoke about the village, about the shopkeeper who sold the best ribbon and had opinions on everyone’s family, and about how long it took to mend a nursery curtain properly.
Whether Cecily’s latest habit of pulling herself toward every interesting object was admirable or merely destructive remained an open question.
Phoebe remarked, with a dry look at the child trying to eat a leaf, “She has more opinions than sense.”
Leopold glanced at her. “That is hardly unique in this household.”
Phoebe looked at him with a flash of surprise, then laughed softly before she could stop herself.
It was a brief laugh, but it startled him more than it should have. He laughed in return, quiet and low, because her remark had deserved it.
She looked at him then as if she had not heard him laugh before.
That thought struck him oddly.
Perhaps she had not.
He did not laugh often. Certainly not like that, not here, not in a way that seemed to belong to the moment instead of to some remembered amusement. He saw, by the faint change in her face, that she had noticed it too.
Leopold looked away first.
The walk back was slower.