Chapter 14
Violet and Nicholas had decided to come visit her.
“Sister,” Nicholas said. “Are you well?”
“I am well,” Maria said, laughing.
Nicholas held her at arm’s length, and something in his shoulders eased.
“Has the Duke treated you properly? If he hasn’t, I’ll throw him into his own fountain and then write a note of apology on his best paper.”
“Stephen has been…” She searched for the right word. “Decent. We have an arrangement.”
“I hate that word,” Nicholas said. “I prefer allegiance. But I’ll take decent until I can terrify him into devoted.”
Violet arched a brow. “Nicholas.”
“What? I’m being brotherly.” He glanced around. “Where is he?”
“In his study,” Maria said. “Writing letters or staring at them until they blink.”
“Good,” Nicholas said. “If you need anything, you tell me.”
“I know,” Maria said, and meant it.
Violet squeezed Maria’s hand. “How is the house?”
“It’s feeling more like home each passing day.”
Just then, Stephen entered with the butler, who announced refreshments. Stephen bowed to Violet, to Nicholas, to Maria, last of all. Maria watched her brother watch the duke.
“Verwood,” Nicholas said, bright as a blade being inspected. “We’ve come to see whether my sister is adjusting fine.”
“She is,” Stephen said. “The house is adjusting to keep up.”
Nicholas smiled a little. “We’ll see.”
Violet cut in. “We brought biscuits you can’t buy in this county and a terrible plan for the afternoon.”
“Tell me the plan, not the biscuits,” Maria said.
“Games,” Violet said. “Neighbors are gathering at three. Cards inside for those with sense. Blind Man’s Bluff on the lawn for those who pretend to have it.”
Maria felt the prickle she always felt at the mention of Blind Man’s Bluff. It was a game that involved the senses, and she was not entirely comfortable with the idea that she would have to be discovered by the shape of her.
It made her nervous, though she tried to hide her nervousness. It was a game that invited a girl to be known by what she could not hide.
Nicholas was already delighted, and no one else seemed to share the same discomfort as she did.
It will be okay, she told herself. It is not as though they do not know what her figure is like. It is not a secret, she told herself. But it did little to stop her heart from fluttering wildly.
“A duke with a blindfold has always been my ambition.”
Stephen’s mouth tipped. “Your ambitions are modest.”
“They’re seasonal,” Nicholas said. “Do say you’ll come. I need to test your reflexes.”
Violet read the hesitation in Maria’s face and touched her wrist. “We can decline.”
Maria looked at Nicholas, at Violet, and at Stephen, who had gone very still, waiting on her choice without comment.
“I’ll go,” Maria heard herself say. “If the lawn is dry.”
“It isn’t,” Nicholas said cheerfully. “It’s damp and unwise, which only improves the game.”
“It improves nothing,” Stephen said. “But we’ll come.”
Maria kept her eyes on her own small circle: Nicholas, too pleased; Violet, ready to defect if needed; Stephen, hands behind his back, already listening for rules no one would admit existed.
A scarf appeared. A man submitted to the blindfold and promised not to cheat; the circle tightened; laughter rose and fell. Nicholas elbowed Stephen.
“Care to surrender your dignity first?”
“I carry so little of it,” Stephen said. “You first.”
Nicholas thrust his hands to Violet, who tied the scarf with the tidy competence of a woman who had wrangled worse.
He spun, staggered, then adjusted—chasing laughter once, then, learning, chasing silence.
He missed, laughed, missed better, and caught an unfortunate gentleman who protested with mock dignity.
The crowd approved; Violet clapped, soft and fond.
“Next,” Nicholas said, ripping off the scarf, flushed and wild. “Verwood?”
“By all means,” Stephen said, and let Nicholas tie the folded linen over his eyes with more zeal than necessary.
“Careful,” Maria said before she could catch the word back.
Stephen turned his head toward her voice, blindfolded and attentive. “I am,” he said, and she pretended not to feel that.
Released, he moved with a hunter’s gait—listening, guessing wind and grass, hands extended just enough to avoid scandal and still succeed. Laughter darted ahead of him; he adjusted. He missed twice on purpose; then he reached and closed gentle hands around a pair of elbows.
“Caught!” Nicholas crowed.
Stephen stood still and tilted his head. “Miss,” he said politely to the squeak that answered, and released at once. No showing off. Just the measure of a space.
The scarf came round again. Maria hoped to be spared, but Violet, who knew play could teach as well as expose, nudged the cloth into Maria’s hands. “Once,” Violet murmured. “If you hate it, I’ll faint with great conviction.”
“You won’t,” Maria said.
“I will if needed,” Violet said, smiling.
The scarf was soft against Maria’s lashes. The world shortened to sound and air. She was too aware of the outline she carried into rooms—hips, waist, the shape she tried to tuck into corners.
The old dread licked up: they’ll know you by touch.
She spun, and a hand brushed her sleeve; she flinched and then reached past the flinch and caught a wrist.
“Violet,” she said, smiling.
“Unfair,” Violet laughed, kissing her cheek. “I smell like roses.”
The game pushed and pulled. She reached again and caught a lapel.
“Nicholas?” she ventured, mortified by her own certainty.
“Alas, sister,” Nicholas’s cheerful voice answered from much too near her ear. “You’re correct.”
She let go at once and laughed at herself. The circle shifted; laughter rose and fell.
“Careful,” Nicholas called. “You’re near the edge.”
She corrected a step. A palm found her elbow, and heat rushed to her face beneath the scarf.
“Caught,” she said softly, already knowing.
“I would never mistake my wife,” Stephen murmured, low enough for only her.
She tugged the blindfold up and blinked into his nearness. His hand had already fallen away; his mouth held the hint of a smile he wouldn’t show anyone else.
“Unfair,” Nicholas called. “You cheated with marriage.”
“It’s an excellent trick,” Stephen said. “You should try it.”
“I did,” Nicholas shot back, grinning at Violet.
Maria handed the scarf onward and tried to regulate her breathing.
Her figure, her laugh, her face, any of those might give her away; she had always believed that was the point of the game: to be revealed by what you couldn’t hide.
Stephen had chosen something else. Wife as answer.
She wanted to be irritated, but she failed.
The game went on. Nicholas and Stephen grew competitive.
“You do realize,” Nicholas said after Stephen neatly avoided a collision, “that you are insufferable at children’s games.”
“Only the ones with rules,” Stephen said.
“This one has no rules.”
“Exactly.”
Maria watched with a relief that surprised her. The antagonism that had hummed between them at the wedding shifted into sparring with blunt swords. Nicholas prodded; Stephen parried; neither drew blood. She had space to breathe.
By the time the scarf had gone round twice more, cheeks were pink, boots damp, and a footman was carrying hot wine like a hero. Violet drifted to Maria’s side and bumped her shoulder.
“You looked like you did not hate that,” Violet said.
“I did not,” Maria said. “I didn’t like the part where people tried to touch me to be kind.”
“They’ll learn not to,” Violet said. “You have a husband who can stare instruction into a crowd.”
“I suppose I do,” Maria said, thinking of the hand on her elbow and the sentence that had ruined her composure.
Violet followed her gaze. “So,” she said lightly, “you will come to the ball next week.”
“The ball,” Maria repeated.
“At the same house,” Violet said. “They want to show off their chandeliers and their new harpist. Come. Please. You are a married woman now; it will do you both good to be seen.”
A ball was not a lawn. It was a room full of looking.
Compliments that landed like dust; men who asked for dances as if brass tokens had bought them small pieces of her.
She had once thought she would never stand in such a room again.
Then she had thought she would stand in it only to catch a husband.
Now she was a wife, and the room would be different and not different at all.
“I’ll think on it,” she said.
“I accept that as yes,” Violet said.
“Presumptuous,” Maria said.
“Accurate,” Violet returned.
Nicholas came over, scarf around his neck like a trophy. “You survived,” he told Maria. “Verwood survived me. I call this a day.”
“It is barely four,” Stephen said.
“Then I have time to be worse,” Nicholas said, delighted. He dropped his voice for Maria. “Are you—truly?”
“Truly,” she said.
He glanced at Stephen. “I am almost satisfied.”
“Try again next Thursday,” Stephen said, and Nicholas showed a quick flash of teeth that meant fair enough.
They took their leave as the sky decided it had held its light long enough. Nicholas kissed Maria’s cheek and told her not to plant anything at dusk. Violet hugged her and whispered, “Ball,” into her ear like a spell that did not need repeating.
When the carriage rattled away, the lawn looked suddenly like what it had been before: grass and footprints and the memory of laughter. Maria stood with Stephen at the top of the steps where the house swallowed people whole or gave them back kindly, depending on the hour.
“You were kind,” she said, eyes on the hedge.
“To whom?”
“To me,” she said. “With the scarf.”
“I told the truth,” he said.
She swallowed because the truth had landed exactly where it could do the most good and the most trouble. “Violet wants us at the ball.”
“Of course she does,” he said.
“Will you go?” she asked.
He was quiet for a breath. “Yes.”
Her heart, ridiculous, did something quick and obvious.
“Then so will I.” She turned for the door before her face betrayed her, and felt him fall into step beside her without being asked—close enough to be present, far enough not to crowd.
It was a small thing. It felt like practice for something larger.