Chapter Eighteen
“Lady Maria says refusing the invitation would make us appear afraid of scrutiny,” Petalia said, holding the folded card as though it had developed teeth between breakfast and the schoolroom corridor.
Edmund looked up from the estate paper he had been pretending to read.
Since the wedding, Wrenfield had developed the habit of producing fresh absurdities each morning before the coffee had cooled.
Some were domestic. Mary had informed Nurse Ellis that duchesses outranked Latin and must therefore be consulted before any lesson could begin.
Some were social. Two neighbours had sent elaborate notes of congratulation written in a tone that suggested surprise had been beaten into politeness with a fan.
This, he suspected, belonged to the social category. He already disliked it.
“Which invitation?” he asked.
Petalia crossed the room and handed him the card.
“Lady Carrowmere’s ball in Exeter. Lady Maria calls it a small regional affair, which I believe is her way of saying only half the county and a quarter of London will be present.”
Edmund took the card and read it once. His mouth tightened.
Lady Carrowmere. Exeter. Friday next. Dancing. Supper. Congratulations, no doubt, delivered through teeth polished for the purpose.
“No,” he said.
Petalia sat opposite him. “I expected that answer. I had hoped you might take a longer road to it.”
“No, with regret.”
“That is not longer. That is only decorated.”
He set the invitation on the table. “Lady Carrowmere has not invited me to anything in two years. She sent condolences after Eleanor died, two Christmas cards after that, and one note asking whether I intended to lease the north meadow to her nephew, who had no more use for land than a fish has for a saddle. This invitation is not hospitality. It is curiosity in satin.”
“I know.”
“Then we do not go.”
Petalia looked down at the card. “Lady Maria says refusing would give the matrons of the county a month’s occupation.”
“Most of them are seeking one.”
“She also says that because the marriage was sudden, and because I was a governess, and because the county knows more than it ought about the accident, our absence would be read as shame.”
Edmund pushed the papers aside. “And did my aunt also say that my wife is still recovering from a burn and has no obligation to parade herself before women who intend to inspect the seams of her dignity?”
Petalia’s gaze lifted. “She did. Then she said I must decide whether I wanted to be hidden for my comfort or seen for my safety.”
Blast it, Aunt Maria.
It was an irritating thing when his aunt was right. It was worse when she was right in a way that cost Petalia.
“You do not wish to go,” he said.
“No.”
The honesty pleased him and hurt him at once.
She continued before he could speak. “But I also do not wish to live as if every room beyond Wrenfield is an enemy I must avoid until someone kinder inherits the county. I was a governess. I am now a duchess. That sentence alone is enough to make people inventive. If I hide, their inventions will improve themselves without my supervision.”
“You should not have to supervise the county’s malice.”
“No. But I have taught children. Malice and children share one useful quality: both are less dangerous when seen early.”
He looked at her for a long moment. “You are determined.”
“I am attempting to be.”
That difference mattered. He heard it in the careful way she held herself, in the small line of tension near her mouth, in the fingers resting too still upon her lap. Petalia was not eager for triumph. She was afraid and choosing movement anyway.
It made him want to forbid the ball, summon his carriage, remove her to some estate no gossip could reach, and surround her with walls high enough to exhaust the curious.
It also made him want to stand beside her wherever she chose to go.
He was still learning which impulse was love and which was only fear wearing armour.
“If we attend,” he said slowly, “we will not stay long. You will not dance if your shoulder pains you. If anyone says anything to distress you, we leave. If any of the county matrons becomes objectionable, I reserve the right to become unpleasant.”
Petalia’s mouth softened. “You reserve that right in most situations.”
“In this instance, I shall consider it a duty.”
“Could that duty be exercised without frightening elderly ladies into dropping their punch?”
“That depends on the elderly ladies.”
She laughed, quietly, and he felt the sound move through him like a reward he had not earned.
Since the night he had applied salve to her shoulder, something had altered between them. Not resolved. Not settled. But altered. They were still cautious with one another. Their rooms remained separate, though the door between them stood unlocked.
He had kissed her once after the wedding. And since then, he had thought of it far too often and done nothing about it.
Restraint, he was discovering, was easier before one knew exactly what one was refusing oneself.
His gaze caught on her hair.
The memory came at once: the alley, the torn reticule, the moment she had realised the thief had taken more than money, and the shock she had tried to hide.
My mother’s, she had said of the pin.
Brass. Worthless to anyone who had not loved the woman who wore it.
He had remembered.
For several days, a small package had sat in the drawer of his writing table, waiting for courage to become less ridiculous. Courage had not improved. The ball invitation had made delay impossible.
“I have something for you,” he said.
Petalia’s curiosity sharpened at once. “What is it?”
He rose and crossed to the writing table before he could decide to postpone again. The package was wrapped in brown paper, tied with plain thread. He had refused the jeweller’s velvet case. Petalia disliked grandeur when it tried to replace meaning.
He returned and held it out.
She did not take it immediately. “Edmund.”
Her use of his name still caught him in the ribs.
“If you dislike it,” he said, “you may say so. If it is presumptuous, I will accept correction with the dignity of a man who has already survived a stale muffin.”
That eased her. She accepted the package and untied the thread.
Inside lay a brass hairpin.
Plain. Smooth. Carefully made. Not adorned with pearl, jewel, or enamel.
The head of it held a small engraved line of leaves, barely visible unless one looked closely, and the metal had been polished to a quiet warmth rather than a shine.
It was not her mother’s. It could never be her mother’s. It did not pretend to be.
Petalia went very still.
Edmund kept his hands at his sides. “It is not hers. I know that. But I thought perhaps…”
The sentence trailed away. She touched the pin with one finger. The room grew quiet around them.
When she spoke, her voice was lower than before. “You remembered the hairpin.”
“I did.”
Her eyes lifted to his.
He wished, suddenly and fiercely, that they had been married under ordinary circumstances.
That he had courted her slowly. That he could have given this before scandal, before injury, before obligation tangled itself through every gesture until even tenderness had to declare its innocence in advance.
But ordinary circumstances had not been granted to either of them. He had this room, this morning, this small piece of brass, and the truth that he had remembered her loss when he scarcely knew why he had wanted to.
“May I?” he asked.
Petalia looked at him for a moment, then understood.
“Yes,” she said softly.
She turned slightly in the chair.
The gesture was simple. It felt enormous.
Edmund took the pin, his fingers suddenly less certain than they had been with estate accounts, reins, razors, or pistol cases.
Her hair was warm where his knuckles brushed it.
The scent of lavender soap and something only Petalia rose from the dark strands.
He placed the pin carefully, absurdly aware of the curve of her head beneath his hand, of the trust implicit in her stillness.
He did not linger.
He wanted to.
“There,” he said, stepping back. “It may be crooked.”
She rose and crossed to the small mirror near the window. The brass pin held the loose twist of her hair, plain and warm against the darker strands.
Petalia stared at her reflection.
“It is perfect,” she said.
He watched her through the mirror. Her cheeks were flushed. Not from embarrassment alone, he thought. Something more fragile. Something like being seen in a place where she had expected only to be managed.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You need not—”
“Please do not refuse my thanks.” She turned from the mirror. “I know it is not hers. That is why I love it. It does not try to replace what was lost. It only remembers it.”
His throat tightened.
“Good,” he said, because anything more would have exposed too much.
She returned to the table, where the invitation lay between them.
“I shall wear it to the ball,” she said.
He looked at the plain brass pin, then at Lady Carrowmere’s elegant seal. “They will expect diamonds.”
“Then they may learn endurance.”
He could not help it. He smiled.
It was small and brief, but visible enough that Petalia looked caught by it. The smile vanished because he did not yet know how to leave such things undefended.
“The children will ask about it,” he said.
“Mary will say it is too plain for a duchess.”
“Declan will say it is structurally sufficient.”
“And you?” she asked.
He looked at the pin in her hair. Plain brass. Quiet, warm, unpretending.
“I will think,” he said slowly, “that it suits you better than diamonds would.”
They looked at one another, and for a moment neither looked away.
The ball still awaited them, and the county with it: a hundred curious eyes, twice as many opinions, and very little mercy for uncertainty.
But for once, the prospect did not seem quite so frightening.