CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ceci
By late afternoon, the library had begun to feel almost normal.
She had spent the day with family papers, guest lists, household correspondence, and enough brittle old social maneuvering to keep her happily occupied for hours.
The work itself had steadied her. Even the strangeness of Duncan’s nearness had become, if not ordinary, then at least manageable while there were names to cross-reference and patterns to mark.
Which was why the sound of Sabrina’s arrival hit the room like a thrown stone.
She did not enter quietly. There was the unmistakable energy of her in the hall first, then the front door opening and closing, Margaret’s lower voice.
A moment later, she appeared in the library doorway in a sweep of dark wool and cold air, carrying her gloves in one hand and satisfaction in the other.
“I have returned,” she announced, “with information, an invitation, and a complete loss of patience.”
Archie came in behind her, smiling before he had even fully crossed the threshold.
“That is not the order in which she acquired them,” he said. Ceci looked up from the table and felt herself grin before she could help it.
“Good evening.”
Sabrina crossed to kiss the air beside her cheek. “Much improved. The house suits you.”
Ceci ignored the comment.
Archie took Ceci’s hand in greeting, the gesture easy, familiar now in a way that should have felt premature and somehow did not. “You look far less haunted than you did at supper yesterday.”
“She’s had a day with paper,” Duncan said from the far end of the table. “It appears restorative.”
“I appreciate how determined everyone is to remind me I looked terrible yesterday.”
Sabrina turned toward Duncan at once.
“Dax,” she said, “you’re going to object.”
Duncan did not even pretend to misunderstand. “What have you done?”
“Lady Judith Rowe,” she said. “Thursday. A smaller dinner than usual, which always means one of two things. Either she had run out of people worth inviting, or she expects the room to improve by being selective.”
Duncan looked at the envelope, then at Sabrina.
“And.”
“And I’m going.”
“No one is surprised.”
Sabrina’s smile sharpened. “And I think Ceci should come with me.”
Duncan’s answer was immediate.
“No.”
Archie laughed into his glass. Ceci leaned back in her chair and looked from one to the other. “That was impressively fast.”
“It deserved speed,” Duncan said. Sabrina set a cream envelope down atop the papers Ceci had been working through, a sacrilege Ceci would have objected to from anyone else.
“There will be the usual assortment,” Sabrina said. “Minor aristocratic clutter, one or two political men who think themselves subtle, at least three women who know more than their husbands assume, and, if I’m reading the air correctly, a guest or two whose presence will matter later.”
Ceci sat back in her chair. This, she knew at once, was the moment the work changed shape. Sabrina ignored him. “You’ve spent all day in these papers with her. You know perfectly well she should see a room like that for herself.”
“She had seen enough already.”
“That,” Sabrina replied, “is not the same thing.”
Ceci looked at Duncan.
He was still standing with one hand resting on the table, dark hair neat as ever, expression composed in the way it became when he was forcing irritation into silence.
There was no point pretending she did not understand both sides of this. The invitation was dangerous. That was part of why it mattered.
“She’s right,” Ceci said.
Duncan’s eyes moved to her.
“You want to go?”
“Yes.”
“That is not an argument.”
“No,” she said. “But this is.”
She rose and turned the guest book toward Sabrina and Archie.
“These names,” she said, touching the page, “repeat across houses, weekends, and private dinners. That would be one thing if it were just ordinary social overlap, but it isn’t.
The group is too tight, and the overlap kept pulling in people who smooth the path for uglier ideas by making them look acceptable. ”
Archie leaned forward at once. Sabrina came around the table.
Neither interrupted.
Ceci traced the list with one gloved finger.
“Lady Judith’s house is one of the places where the pattern thickens,” she said, touching the page. “I don’t think conviction is the point with her. Women like Judith make rooms where dangerous men can pass for dinner guests.”
Sabrina’s expression sharpened.
“That,” she said, “is a very interesting distinction.”
“It’s an important one,” Ceci replied. “A movement doesn’t gain ground only through speeches or public spectacle. It gains ground because people with names and houses and invitations keep making room for it socially before anyone admits what they’re doing.”
Archie looked from the page to her.
“And you think Rowe’s dinners are part of that?”
“I think I’d like to know why the same cluster of names keeps passing through them.”
Duncan said, “You can know that without walking into the middle of one.”
Ceci turned to him.
“Can I?”
The question sat between them. Sabrina, hearing only the surface of it, folded her arms. “She won’t be interrogating anyone under a lamp. She’ll be observing.”
“That’s often worse,” Duncan said. Archie smiled. “Only for the people worth observing.”
That won him a look from Duncan that would have cooled a less reckless man. Archie appeared to enjoy it. Ceci looked back down at the guest book.
“I’m not saying I go in and save civilization before dessert,” she said. “I’m saying I know what to look for in a room like that. Who speaks to whom? Who gets treated as central? Everyone is quietly adjusting around themselves. It’s easier to see power when it thinks it’s being charming.”
Sabrina laughed, quick and delighted.
“Oh, I am taking you.”
“We have not agreed to that,” Duncan said.
“No,” Sabrina replied. “You have not agreed to it. I, however, am already committed.”
Ceci should have stayed still. She should have let Sabrina win the argument for her. Instead, she heard herself say, “If I don’t go, I’ll spend the entire evening imagining what I’m missing and resenting all of you personally.”
Archie burst out laughing.
Even Sabrina covered her mouth for a second.
Duncan looked at her.
“Personally.”
“Yes.”
“That seems unfair.”
“I’m under strain.”
That nearly got him. Duncan’s mouth gave him away before he could stop it. Archie saw, naturally, and looked insufferably pleased. Sabrina seized the moment like a woman born to exploit weaknesses in the civilized.
“Excellent,” she said. “That settles it.”
“It does not,” Duncan replied.
“It does enough.”
He looked at Ceci again. She knew exactly what was happening behind that look.
Sabrina and Archie heard a woman making a sharp, defensible argument from the papers.
Duncan heard the same argument and the hidden layer beneath it, the one he alone had any right to hear.
That private current made the room feel smaller.
At last, he said, “You will not move through that house alone.”
Sabrina’s brows lifted.
Archie’s smile faded into something more attentive. Ceci held Duncan’s gaze. “That sounds dangerously close to agreement.”
“It sounds like terms.”
“That is much more your style.”
A brief silence.
Then Archie leaned back in his chair and said, “Well. Since we appear to be attending a socially suspect dinner, I should like it entered into the record that I approve of the evening already.”
Sabrina turned on him at once. “No.”
“No?”
“No,” she repeated. “You are not invited.”
He put a hand to his chest in mock offense. “What in the world have I done?”
“Too much,” Duncan said.
Archie ignored him. “I could be useful.”
“You could be decorative,” Sabrina said. “Which is not the same thing.”
Ceci laughed again, helplessly now.
“Please tell me you two always do this.”
“Worse,” Duncan said.
“Better,” Sabrina corrected.
Archie looked at Ceci. “You see how I suffer.”
The line was so dry, so perfectly timed, that she had to press her lips together against a smile. Trouble, she was learning, could arrive softly, dressed as wit.
An hour later, Grace’s room had become a battlefield of fabric.
Sabrina had gone over to the Manor after supper to send over dresses and was now directing the whole operation with ruthless clarity.
Archie had been denied attendance at the dinner itself and had responded by inviting himself to the fitting, declaring that if he could not be useful socially, he could at least be morally supportive.
“No one wants your moral support,” Sabrina said.
“I’m offering it generously.”
“You’re offering commentary.”
“That too.”
Ceci stood in the middle of the room in one of Grace’s evening dresses while Sabrina circled her with narrowed eyes.
The dress was a deep blue, simple in cut, elegant in its restraint, and more flattering than Ceci was comfortable discussing.
Her hair had been pinned more carefully this time, though enough of it had escaped around her temples to keep her from looking severe.
Sabrina had declared this a blessing, and Archie had declared it a public service.
Duncan, who had started the scene by standing near the window in the vague hope of remaining outside it, had long since been drawn in by necessity.
“The shoulders are better in this one,” Sabrina said.
“The sleeves are a touch long,” Duncan replied before he seemed to realize he had spoken.
Sabrina turned.
“How fascinating.”
Ceci looked from one to the other. “Should I leave the two of you alone with the dress?”
“No,” Sabrina said at once. “He’s only useful in very small doses.”
Archie, sprawled on the chaise with all the dignity of a man who had no intention of being modest in someone else’s bedroom, said, “I disagree. Duncan’s hidden talents are one of the great under-discussed tragedies of our time.”
“Archie,” Duncan said.
“Yes, yes,” Archie said with a shooing motion in the direction of Duncan’s derision. Ceci pushed one sleeve back to adjust the glove and saw Sabrina’s eyes catch on the inside of her right wrist.
The room paused.
“What’s that?” Sabrina asked.
Ceci followed her gaze and felt a rush of annoyance at herself.
The feather.
Black, fine, delicate, and very much not 1938. For one sharp second, she considered tucking her wrist behind her back like a guilty child. That would only make it worse.
“It’s from home,” she said. Sabrina stepped closer, took her wrist lightly, and turned it toward the lamp. Archie sat up at once.
“Well,” he said, “now I’m interested.”
“That was never in doubt,” Duncan muttered. Sabrina studied the tattoo for another second, then released her.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “Utterly disreputable. But beautiful.”
Ceci let out a breath she had not realized she was holding. Duncan’s gaze dropped once to the inside of her wrist before he looked away again. He said only, “It will need to stay covered.”
Ceci looked at him.
There was nothing teasing in the line. He was already thinking ahead, already placing her in the room to come. Sabrina snapped the glove closed over the wrist. “And now it is.”
Archie, still watching with altogether too much interest, said, “The feather suits you.”
Ceci laughed, the sound escaping too quickly for her to check it. Duncan’s eyes moved to her face at once. Sabrina stepped back and surveyed the result.
“There,” she said. “You look like a woman no one will underestimate until it is too late.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“It isn’t supposed to be.”
Ceci turned toward the mirror and hardly recognized herself. The feather was hidden. The rest of her was not.
“This is a terrible idea.”
“Yes,” Sabrina said behind her. “Which is how I know it’s probably the right one.”
Archie rose from the chaise and came around just enough to catch Ceci’s gaze in the mirror.
“For what it’s worth,” he said, “you no longer look remotely like an American interloper.”
“That does not help.”
“It should.”
Duncan, from the window, said, “She never did.”
The room went very still.
Ceci turned.
He looked as though he had not meant to say it aloud.
Archie’s expression changed first. Recognition.
Sabrina, by contrast, looked almost radiant.
And Ceci, caught in the middle of all three of them, could do nothing but laugh because if she didn’t, the whole thing might become far too real, far too quickly.
“Wonderful,” she said. “That is exactly the kind of thing no one should say before I go into danger dressed like this.”
Archie laughed with her.
Even Sabrina had to turn away for a second. Duncan’s mouth shifted before he gave up and let the smile happen. It altered the whole room.
And Ceci, seeing it, had the sudden wild thought that the most thrilling part of Thursday night might not be the dinner after all.