Chapter 7 #3
Margaret had danced at regimental dinners, county assemblies, and one disastrous officers’ ball held in a storehouse because the intended venue had lost its roof.
She knew the formal measures required of a respectable woman.
She had never danced as a duchess before donors deciding whether her marriage was fraudulent.
Henry placed his right hand low at her waist, avoiding the higher angle that strained his shoulder. The contact was correct, public, and more intimate than the room understood.
“Three boards from the east carpet,” she said as they began. “Do not turn sharply there.”
“I was assured the ballroom had been repaired.”
“It has.”
“Your tone suggests the word has suffered legal qualification.”
“Repaired means the known hazards have been reduced to a useful number.”
“What number?”
“Two.”
“Does one stand beneath the rosemary?”
“Yes.”
“And the other?”
“You are holding her.”
His dry amusement reached his eyes before his mouth. “I was not warned the trustees counted among structural risks.”
They moved through the first turn.
The dance was slower than fashion preferred and better suited to them both.
Henry guided without forcing pace, adjusting the length of his steps to protect his knee rather than pretending symmetry.
Margaret followed where the floor allowed and redirected him with a pressure of her fingers where it did not.
Guests who had requested cloaks paused in the doorway.
Joseph seized the attention the dance had gathered.
“First lot,” he called from the east tables. “Two walnut dining chairs. They bear the weight of a gentleman, his dinner, and most opinions expressed after it.”
The banker’s wife laughed and offered the opening bid.
Henry and Margaret passed the sale tables as Joseph raised the amount. The chairs attracted a second bidder, then a third. People who had been leaving returned far enough into the room to see the duke and duchess turn between repaired floorboards while a carpenter refused to lower his price.
“This is undignified,” Henry said.
“The chairs?”
“Our part in selling them.”
“You are a duke dancing with your wife. Society has endured worse displays.”
“I was referring to being used as a decorative inducement.”
Margaret looked up at him. “You may sit beneath the windows afterward and speak naturally of gratitude.”
His hand shifted at her waist. The movement remained within the dance and carried private laughter beneath it.
They passed the musicians’ screen.Two evenings earlier, in the closed portrait gallery at Rothbury House, she had chosen to kiss him where no room expected it. The memory followed her into the music, and Margaret fixed her attention upon the repaired boards.
Henry said, “The west join is sound.”
“Yes.”
“The musicians are masking us from the reporters.”
“For three steps.”
“Then I will use them carefully. Do you regret what happened at Rothbury House?”
His voice remained low beneath the violins. The question arrived without demand, but Margaret felt the precision with which he had chosen the only portion of the floor where no guest could read their mouths.
She looked past his shoulder. Joseph accepted another bid. Lady Georgiana had detained one reporter by asking whether he understood dovetail joints.
“No,” Margaret said. “I do not regret it.”
Henry’s pace did not alter. “Thank you.”
“That is a restrained response.”
“You owe me no enlargement upon the answer.”
“Do you not wish to know whether I intend to repeat it?”
“Yes.”
The honesty warmed her more efficiently than flirtation.
He guided them around the rosemary marking the doubtful board. “Wanting an answer does not entitle me to request it while you are trapped in a dance before eighty witnesses.”
“I am not trapped.”
“No.”
“You asked a question.”
“One with a route to refusal.”
Margaret felt the strength held carefully beneath his hand and the effort with which he kept the turn easy upon his knee. “And if I had said I regretted it?”
“I would have finished the dance, asked whether you wanted distance, and obeyed the answer.”
“Without becoming noble?”
“I would have attempted not to become unbearable.”
“That is less ambitious.”
“I have been advised against ambitious turns.”
They emerged from behind the screen into the sight of the room.
Joseph sold the chairs at nearly twice their lowest acceptable price. He moved immediately to a writing desk, describing the drawers, timber, and payment terms without mentioning the man who had shaped each joint until the maker stepped forward by choice.
The dance carried Margaret and Henry past the dais again. Thomas stood beside it with his recovered breath and a small group of donors asking about copied accounts. He saw them and gave Margaret a look suggesting that the House had acquired an extravagant method of preventing departures.
Henry’s shoulder tightened beneath her hand.
The change was slight. His right elbow drew closer to his side, and the hand at her waist lost some ease.
“Enough?” she asked.
“One more turn to the dais.”
“Now is also an answer.”
“I can complete it.”
She assessed him rather than the room. His voice remained even. The shoulder had not gone into spasm, but the muscles beneath the coat had become rigid.
“One turn,” she said. “Then you sit.”
“Yes.”
They completed the measure without display. Henry brought them to a stop beside the dais as the musicians ended upon a clean chord.
Applause moved through the ballroom.
Margaret curtsied because the room expected it. Henry bowed without forcing the injured shoulder farther than it wished to go. When he straightened, he did not conceal his left hand briefly settling against the back of a chair.
The guests had returned from the doors.
Joseph began the next lot.
Henry leaned nearer. “Your administrative remedy appears to have worked.”
“Do not sound surprised.”
“I am married to the structural risk. Surprise has become expensive.”
Margaret should have returned to the subscription table. Instead, she looked toward the musicians’ screen.
“The second violinist has lost a page,” she said.
Henry followed her gaze. The sheet music remained securely clipped to the stand. “A grave emergency.”
“It may delay the concert.”
“We cannot permit disorder.”
Margaret crossed behind the screen. Henry followed at a pace that told the room he was inspecting the musicians and told her he understood perfectly well that no page had been lost.
The painted screen concealed them from the ballroom but not from either service door. A maid carrying empty glasses could enter at any moment. The musicians had moved toward the refreshment table during Joseph’s auction, leaving resin, chairs, and abandoned bows behind them.
Margaret turned.
Henry stopped beyond the reach of her skirts. His right arm remained close to his body. He did not use the privacy she had created as permission.
“The dance belonged to the room,” she said. “This does not.”
She took his left lapel and drew him down.
Her mouth found his before caution could turn the choice into another item requiring written terms. The kiss began with the laughter she had suppressed upon the dance floor and changed when Henry’s left hand settled at her waist.
He kept the right arm still.
Margaret tasted coffee and rain. His mouth was warm, controlled for one breath, then responsive when she pressed nearer.
The screen, the violins, and the polite industry beyond it made the secrecy feel less solemn than the gallery had been.
She was kissing her husband behind hired musicians while Joseph auctioned a desk.
The absurdity pleased her.
Henry drew back enough to speak. “Do you intend to inspect the missing page?”
“It remains missing.”
“I should assist.”
“You have limited experience with music.”
“I can identify paper.”
Margaret kissed him again.
This one was shorter and no less chosen. Henry followed when she changed the angle, then stopped when her fingers eased from his lapel. He did not attempt to purchase another moment with restraint.
Voices approached the screen.
Margaret smoothed the front of his coat where she had caught it. “The page appears irrecoverable.”
“A blow to the arts.”
“We must endure.”
They emerged separately enough to preserve appearances and close enough to make those appearances unconvincing to anyone who had observed the color along Margaret’s cheek.
The auction had reached the writing desk. Lord Wexham’s steward was bidding against the banker’s wife, which suggested gout had not diminished his lordship’s need for furniture.
Margaret returned to the subscription slate.
The evening gathered momentum. Residents spoke according to the roster.
Mercer described the delay in his pension correspondence without providing family details.
Simmonds discussed the writing-desk order and stated plainly that smoke in the dining room had frightened him, while refusing to explain why.
Sarah presented the ward accounts and corrected a donor who called unpaid nursing a charitable contribution rather than an unpaid wage.
Henry did not take the dais.
He stood beside presenters when asked, sat when his knee required it, and directed questions concerning the House to Margaret, Sarah, Joseph, or the resident entitled to answer. His rank remained useful because he did not spread it over every subject.
The subscription slate climbed.
Then Croft’s clerk appeared at the principal doors with a newspaper messenger beside him.
The messenger carried a folded late edition damp from the street. Croft, who had spent the previous hour moving among donors with the composed sorrow of a man attending the failure he had predicted, accepted the paper as if it had surprised him.
Margaret saw the performance before she heard the words.
Croft read the paragraph near the doors. His clerk watched the guests rather than the print. Within half a minute, a reporter had crossed to them.
Conversation thinned along the east tables.