Chapter 12
The following morning, during breakfast, the wedding was officially announced.
Valeria stood at the head of the table. She had chosen the blue dress again. Not the one Gordon had taken from her, the one she wore to the ball and never took out of her wardrobe again. This one was a different blue. A new blue. She wanted color. She wanted to walk into a room and be seen.
The breakfast room was full. The gentlemen had sorted themselves into the same clusters they had formed since the first night, territories staked and defended with the passive aggression of men who could not openly fight each other.
Sir Marcus sat near the head of the table, where he clearly felt he belonged, cutting his eggs with surgical precision.
Lord Barton sat at the far end with his wine, which at nine in the morning was a choice that Valeria had decided not to comment on.
Mr. Ashworth sat in the middle, notebook open, writing between bites of toast. The young Viscount, whose name she still could not remember, was eating porridge with the careful focus of a man who was trying very hard not to spill it for the fourth time.
Edward was standing by the window. Of course, he was. He did not sit at tables. He stood near the exits and watched the rooms, drank water, and waited for threats that were not coming.
Old habits.
He had a piece of bread in one hand and a glass of water in the other, and was leaning against the window frame in a way that managed to look both casual and alert, like a man who could leave in any direction and was deciding which one.
He saw her before anyone else did. His eyes roved over her dress, and his jaw shifted, barely, a movement so small that nobody else would have caught it.
But she caught it. She caught everything now.
She took her place at the head of the table.
Caroline was already seated, working through a plate of eggs and bacon and toast and what appeared to be a second plate of eggs that she had commandeered from Richard, who sat beside her looking thin and resigned.
John appeared in the doorway with a piece of toast and a grin.
Valeria stood up, and the room quieted.
“Gentlemen,” she began, her voice carrying. She was getting better at that. “Thank you for your patience and for your good humor yesterday. I was told the maze was quite difficult.”
Polite laughter rose. Sir Marcus looked smug. He had not gone into the maze at all.
“I have an announcement.” She folded her hands. “The Duke of Welford and I are to be married. The banns will be read this Sunday, and the wedding will take place in three weeks, at the end of the house party.”
Silence ensued, followed by murmurs.
Lord Barton put down his wineglass. Sir Marcus’s eyebrows knitted together, and the muscle in his jaw twitched.
Mr. Ashworth looked up from his notebook with the expression of a man who had just lost his muse but was already composing a poem about the loss.
The young Viscount turned an unnatural color.
“You are all welcome to stay as my guests,” Valeria continued. “The games will continue, and you are welcome to partake in them for entertainment. Everyone is welcome to attend the wedding, or you may leave in peace knowing you have fostered strong connections by just participating.”
Sir Humphrey Dalton raised his glass. “To the Duchess and the Duke. May they terrify each other less than they terrify the rest of us.”
Genuine laughter ensued. Even Edward’s mouth twitched.
John caught Valeria’s eye from the doorway. “About time,” he mouthed, then took a bite of his toast.
“Three weeks?” Sir Marcus asked, rising from his chair. “That is rather soon, Your Grace. Perhaps a longer engagement would allow the gentlemen to—”
“Three weeks is sufficient, Sir Marcus. I have spent three years waiting. I do not intend to wait any longer.”
Sir Marcus opened his mouth, closed it, and then sat down. His eggs had gone cold. He did not seem to notice.
Lord Barton raised his wineglass. “Well, I for one wish the happy couple every joy. And I hope the wine at the wedding breakfast is as exquisite as this one.”
“It will be, Lord Barton. I will make sure of it.”
“Then I shall attend with enthusiasm.” He drank. It was nine in the morning, but nobody commented.
Mr. Ashworth stood up. He had tears in his eyes. “Your Grace, I have composed a poem to mark the occasion. If I may…”
“You may not,” John called from the doorway. “Not before breakfast. House rules.”
“There are no house rules about poetry,” Mr. Ashworth protested.
“There are now,” John insisted. “I just made them.”
At that moment, a maid stepped into the room and curtsied. “Your Grace, your guests have arrived.”
“Guests?” Lord Barton gasped, alarmed.
Valeria smiled. She had arranged for the children from the local orphanage to visit so they could play and eat. It was what she and Edward had discussed in the study the night before, the first part of the work they would do together.
“Show them in, please.”
The children arrived in an uneven line. There were five of them.
The eldest was perhaps nine. The youngest could not have been more than three.
They came through the front door, scrubbed clean, hair combed flat, wearing clothes that had been mended so many times that the original fabric was a matter of speculation.
Their shoes were either too large or too small, and none of them matched.
The eldest girl wore a dress that had clearly been let out twice and was being held together at the seams with determination and possibly a prayer.
The matron who brought them was a stout woman with kind eyes and calloused hands and the resigned expression of someone who knew that clean clothes on children lasted approximately four minutes.
Her name was Mrs. Plimpton. She curtsied to Valeria and murmured something about the children being on their best behavior, then looked at the five of them with the weary hopefulness of a woman who knew that promise was already broken.
She was right. By noon, the youngest had grass stains on both knees, the eldest had torn a sleeve while climbing a tree, and two of the middle ones had found the kitchens and were being fed biscuits by Mrs. Grady, who had sworn loudly and to anyone who would listen that she did not like children, yet was currently cutting a scone into the shape of a horse for a boy named Thomas while telling him about the time she made a cake for the old Duke and the old Duke choked on a raisin and had to be hit on the back by a footman.
Valeria had planned games. Simple ones. The kind she remembered from childhood, before Gordon, before everything.
Blindman’s buff. Tag. A relay race around the garden path that devolved almost immediately into chaos when the three-year-old, whose name was Horace and whose legs were approximately eighteen inches long, sat down in the middle of the path and refused to move because he had found a caterpillar.
The caterpillar was green. Horace named it David.
David was not going to be moved, and neither was Horace, and the relay race had to be rerouted around them both.
Valeria played all of them. She ran. She hiked up her skirts and sprinted down the lawn with an abandon that would have made every governess in England reach for their smelling salts.
She let the eldest girl, a serious child named Ruth who had dark eyes and a mouth that rarely smiled, and who reminded Valeria painfully of herself, beat her in the relay twice.
Ruth ran with her jaw set, her arms pumping, and a focus that was not childlike at all. She ran like a girl who knew that winning was the only thing she could control.
Valeria understood that. She had been that girl.
She crouched behind hedges during hide-and-seek and let a boy named William find her and shriek with triumph.
She sat on the grass with Horace in her lap and told him a story about a fox and a hen that she made up on the spot.
The fox was clever but lonely, and the hen was brave but lost, and they found each other in a field of wildflowers and decided to be friends instead of enemies.
Horace listened with round eyes. William said the fox should have eaten the hen.
Ruth said the plot was predictable, but the characterization was strong. She was nine years old, going on forty.
John threw himself into the games with the enthusiasm of a man who had never fully grown up.
He organized the tag game and appointed himself referee and then immediately cheated, chasing children around the garden with exaggerated slowness, arms windmilling, making monstrous noises that were so ridiculous the youngest children shrieked with laughter and the eldest rolled their eyes, which was exactly the reaction he was hoping for.
He let Thomas tackle him and went down with a theatrical crash.
He lay on the grass, groaning, while three children sat on his chest and declared victory.
Caroline directed operations from a chair on the terrace, enormous and immovable as a docked ship.
She shouted instructions, critiques, and encouragement with the authority of a general who could no longer march but fully intended to command.
She told Ruth her running form was excellent.
She told William his hiding spot was obvious.
She told John to stop cheating. She told Horace that David the Caterpillar was very handsome and asked whether he would like a biscuit.
Horace said David would like a biscuit too. Caroline said David could have one.
Valeria looked at Edward from across the lawn. He was watching from the terrace, arms crossed, leaning against the stone railing. Not playing. Not speaking. Just watching.
Come down. Come down from your wall and play with us.
As if he heard her, he straightened. Ruth was already marching toward him.