Chapter Fifteen
“I will not be shorn like a sheep for the county’s amusement.”
Edmund stood in the dressing room adjoining his bedchamber with his arms folded and his expression arranged into the sort of dark refusal that had made footmen reconsider messages, tenants reconsider complaints, and small children reconsider whether they had truly wanted to ask questions at all.
Lady Maria, who had never been a footman, tenant, or small child in need of self-preservation, surveyed him with open dissatisfaction.
“No one has proposed shearing you for amusement, Edmund. That would require a lightness of spirit no one in this room presently possesses. I am proposing that you allow Morris to cut your hair, trim that wilderness upon your face, and remind the county that beneath the tragic shrubbery there remains a duke rather than a widowed highwayman in mourning for his comb.”
Morris, Edmund’s valet, stood beside the washstand with scissors, razors, towels, and the fixed expression of a man who had spent weeks wishing to perform precisely this service and was now afraid he might die in the attempt.
Mrs Holroyd was present because Lady Maria had insisted upon it. Mrs Holroyd had replied that Lady Maria insisted upon many things. She had come anyway.
Petalia stood near the open door while servants moved about the corridor beyond. Lady Maria had summoned her, she claimed, as a moderating influence.
Edmund had objected to the phrase.
Petalia had objected to being used as an instrument of domestic reform.
Lady Maria had ignored both objections with the ease of long practice.
“His Grace is perfectly entitled to wear his hair as he likes,” Petalia said, though her gaze rested on Edmund with a steadiness that made him more uncomfortable than Lady Maria’s entire assault. “A wedding should not require a man to become unrecognisable to himself.”
“Thank you,” Edmund said.
“Do not thank me too quickly,” she continued. “I did not say the current arrangement was wise.”
Morris coughed into his fist. Mrs Holroyd found a sudden need to inspect the linen.
Edmund looked at Petalia. “You have chosen a perilous hour to become candid.”
“I understood candour to be one of the conditions of the marriage. If you wished me to begin after the ceremony, you should have specified the hour.”
Lady Maria pointed towards Petalia as if presenting evidence. “You see? She is already improving you. Sit down, Edmund.”
“I have been improved enough for one week.”
“You have been engaged, exposed to honesty, visited by Lady Whitcombe, and offered a stale muffin as precedent for romance. None of that excuses your hair.”
Petalia’s mouth twitched. Edmund saw it and felt, absurdly, betrayed.
“You enjoy this,” he said to her.
“Not as much as Lady Maria does.”
“No one enjoys anything as much as my aunt enjoys victory.”
“Then we must not deny her all victories. It would be ungenerous to her age.”
“My age,” Lady Maria said, “is the only reason either of you are still alive after the last three days. Sit, Edmund.”
He did not sit.
The truth was not that he feared scissors.
Nor razors. Nor Morris’s hands, which were steady enough when Edmund allowed them to be used.
The truth was worse. The beard and the too-long hair and the high scarf had become more than neglect.
They were defences whose usefulness he had never admitted.
The beard blurred the line of the scar. The hair shadowed his brow.
The scarf concealed what the beard did not.
The whole arrangement permitted him to meet the world already half-hidden and call the concealment indifference.
To remove it now, for a wedding, for Petalia, felt like standing bare in a room full of witnesses.
He was aware of his own body in a way he despised, the breadth that made rooms smaller, the scar that pulled when his jaw tightened, the beard that had been armour so long it felt like skin. He felt the discomfort crawling beneath his collar and forced himself not to shift.
Petalia saw it.
Of course she saw it.
Her expression changed, not dramatically, but enough that he felt the room alter. She was no longer amused. She stepped a little nearer, still safely distant, still properly within everyone’s sight.
“Your Grace,” she said quietly, “you do not need to become polished.”
“That is fortunate, as I have never shown talent for it.”
“No. You have shown talent for discouraging anyone from trying. That is different.”
His gaze sharpened.
She did not retreat. “You do not have to become someone else for the wedding. I would not ask it. But perhaps you might permit the world to see that you are not only the shadow it has grown used to fearing.”
“I am visible enough.”
“No,” she said, with such gentleness that the words struck harder. “You are armoured enough. That is different.”
Silence followed.
Lady Maria, by some miracle, did not speak.
Morris looked as if breathing had become a professional risk.
Edmund looked at Petalia and saw no triumph there. No attempt to tame him for her own satisfaction. No feminine campaign to make him pleasant. Only understanding, which was much more difficult to refuse.
“You wish this?” he asked.
The question came out rougher than intended.
Petalia’s eyes widened slightly, not because of the words but because he had asked them as if her wish had weight.
“I wish you to stand at the wedding without hiding from it,” she said. “If that means no scissors, then no scissors. If it means allowing Morris to rescue one ear from captivity, then perhaps that is between you and your ear.”
A sound escaped Mrs Holroyd. Morris lowered his gaze to the scissors with the reverence of a man awaiting reprieve.
Edmund exhaled through his nose. “If one ear is lost, I hold you accountable.”
“I shall defend the ear in any inquiry,” Petalia said gravely.
He sat.
The chair creaked under him as though astonished by victory.
Morris approached with great caution. Lady Maria placed herself near the mantel; Mrs Holroyd folded her hands. Petalia remained near the open door, but Edmund could see her in the mirror.
He hated the mirror.
He had avoided mirrors for years. The scar looked harsher in reflected light, more foreign. The beard had helped. The wild hair had helped. Time had not accustomed him to his face; it had merely taught him where not to look.
Morris touched the scissors to the first heavy lock.
Edmund’s hands closed over the arms of the chair.
Petalia saw.
“If you glare any harder, Your Grace, Morris may mistake it for instruction and cut in self-defence.”
Morris froze.
“Continue,” Edmund said.
The first lock fell. Nothing happened. Eleanor did not rise from memory to rebuke him. The scar did not grow larger because the hair no longer shadowed it.
Morris cut again.
“You are all behaving,” Edmund said after several minutes, “as though my hair were a political prisoner finally released.”
“It has been held without trial,” Lady Maria replied.
Petalia looked down to hide a smile.
The beard came next. That was worse.
Morris shaped it carefully rather than removing it entirely, trimming away the wild growth that had swallowed the lower half of Edmund’s face. The scar showed more clearly. So did the line of his jaw. He looked less concealed. Not gentler, exactly, but more human.
At one point, the razor paused near the scar.
Edmund’s eyes went flat.
Petalia spoke before the room could tighten around him. “Morris, does His Grace usually threaten razors into obedience, or is this honour reserved for wedding preparations?”
The valet blinked. “His Grace has not entrusted me with a razor near his face for some time, miss.”
“Then you are both out of practice. A grave circumstance.”
Edmund looked at her in the mirror. “Are you attempting to distract me?”
“Yes. Is it working?”
“No.”
“How unfortunate. I had thought myself subtle.”
“You have never been subtle.”
“I shall add it to the list of qualities I need not bring into the marriage.”
His mouth shifted despite himself.
When Morris stepped back, the beard remained, but close-trimmed now, shaped to the jaw rather than hiding it.
“There is one uneven lock near the temple, Your Grace,” Morris said. “If you would permit—”
“No more,” Edmund said.
Petalia looked at the offending lock. “Might I be permitted to cut one?”
The room went silent.
Edmund turned slowly in the chair. “You wish to cut my hair.”
“Only the rebellious piece. I respect its spirit, but I do not trust it for a wedding.”
He looked at her for a long moment.
Then he held out his hand to Morris. “The scissors.”
Morris gave them to him.
“If you take an ear,” Edmund said as he extended the scissors, “I shall consider it an omen.”
Petalia took them carefully. “If I take an ear, Your Grace, I shall blame Morris for weakening the surrounding structure.”
“Miss Winthrop,” Morris said, appalled.
“Do not worry, Morris. I have mended enough hems to understand edges.”
“Hair is not a hem,” Edmund said.
“No, but both punish haste. Hold still.”
She stepped nearer.
Edmund held still.
Petalia lifted the uneven lock between two fingers and cut. Then his head shifted, not much, but enough that the point of the scissors grazed the skin above his temple.
A bead of blood appeared.
Petalia gasped. “Oh.”
Edmund looked at her through the mirror. “You have drawn blood.”
“A drop. Do not make yourself a martyr.”
“If this is revenge for the muffin, I consider it excessive.”
“If it were revenge for the muffin, Your Grace, I would have begun with both ears.”
Lady Maria laughed. Even Mrs Holroyd’s mouth betrayed her by a fraction.
Petalia seized a clean cloth from Morris and pressed it carefully to the tiny nick. “I am sorry. You moved.”
“I breathed.”
“You breathed rebelliously.”
“I shall try to reform my lungs before Friday.”
Her fingers held the cloth lightly against his temple. It should not have meant anything. Yet Edmund had to command himself not to lean into the care.
Petalia saw enough to step back before the moment became too much for a room with open doors.
“There,” she said. “The rebellious lock is defeated. The ear remains.”
Edmund looked at himself.
The man in the mirror was not restored. He was not what he had been before grief, before scar, before all his habits of concealment. But he was visible.
Petalia stared before she could stop herself.
The beard had not hidden ugliness. It had hidden structure: the hard cheek, the severe mouth, the tired nobility of a face grief had made brutal without making coarse.
He was handsome.
Not soft. Not safe.
Handsome in a way that made her stomach drop and her face warm with the alarming knowledge that this man, this severe and scarred and newly visible man, was to be her husband.
Edmund saw her looking.
“Do not look so stricken, Miss Winthrop. Morris may take it as criticism.”
Petalia forced herself to breathe. “Morris has done very well.”
“That does not account for your expression.”
“No,” she said, finding courage because he had shown some first. “It does not.”
The room felt suddenly too warm.
Mrs Holroyd stepped closer. “The late Duchess always said the beard was a poor decision, Your Grace.”
The room went still.
Edmund looked at her.
Then, after a moment, his mouth shifted. “She was often wrong about symmetry and never wrong about beards.”
Mrs Holroyd’s eyes brightened. “Yes, Your Grace.”
A smaller sound came from the corridor. Mary stepped into view with Declan behind her.
Mary stared at her father.
“Papa! You have a chin,” she announced.
Declan frowned. “He had a chin before.”
“Not one anyone could prove.”
Edmund closed his eyes briefly.
Lady Maria said, “Lady Mary, you have entered without permission.”
“The door was open. Also, Papa looks strange.”
“Improved,” Lady Maria corrected.
Mary considered this. “Less cross.”
Declan tilted his head. “No. Equally cross. It is only easier to see where.”
Petalia laughed before she could stop herself, then pressed a hand to her shoulder when the burn objected. Edmund’s gaze went to her at once.
Mary saw it.
So did Declan.
So did everyone.
Lady Maria clapped her hands. “Enough. The Duke has survived scissors, commentary, and a minor injury inflicted by his bride. We shall withdraw before he mistakes continued attention for persecution.”
Petalia handed the scissors back to Morris. “In that case, we had better not test his endurance further.”
Edmund looked at her then, no longer hidden enough to disguise the guarded warmth moving across his face.
“A wise precaution,” he said.
The words were simple.
Petalia heard more in them than he had said.