Chapter 20
Ambrose found it rather mean-spirited, in the machinations of the universe, that now that he had reason to linger and enjoy his days, they passed by much more rapidly than he had ever known them to do before.
The days that had meant nothing at all had clunked and dragged and sometimes repeated a few times just to punctuate the torment, though of course, he couldn’t prove that.
Now that his life sparkled with meaning and enjoyment and worthiness to cherish, they were flying past so quickly, he could barely get an anchor on one before the next had begun.
Such was just the way of things, he supposed. It was still better than it had been, in any event. Far, far better. But he would have liked to have lingered in the trappings of post-consummation bliss for another year or two, before the world came knocking, all the same.
Despite Ambrose’s most valiant attempts to slow the passage of time, the charity ball was almost upon them already. Donations had been gathered, flowers and food had been ordered, staff had been secured, and still there were a thousand things to do.
Vix intended to execute all one thousand things personally, of course, and Ambrose had simply taken it upon himself to follow her and watch it happen. He suspected she enjoyed his audience.
“Honestly, our house looks well enough that we might have hosted it ourselves if you’d given it another week,” he told his wife on the way to the home where the ball would be held, a handful of mornings before the event. “Do we have a ballroom?”
She cut a look at him across the morning haze and shook her head. “We do not.”
“We could always convert that empty room across from ours,” he said wistfully, putting his hands in his pockets and squinting up at the sky.
It made her stop walking, her fan quivering against the early humidity. “You mean my bedroom, Ambrose?”
He did not stop to answer her. When she finally gave up on awaiting acknowledgement, he could have sworn he heard something resembling amusement on her breath as she caught up to him.
“This is better anyhow,” she told him, catching him by the elbow as she resumed her place by his side. “The house is larger and built for this type of event.”
“You mean you don’t want strangers in ours, in fact?” he asked, tossing her a little half smile at the way she immediately colored. “It is perfectly well. I don’t either.”
She sniffed, waving the fan at both of them to dispel his observation.
“Earl Bentley only just bought this house last year so his wife may be near her family when they are in London, and apparently the countess expressly requested one which could serve as a venue for balls and concerts and so on. Rosalind is a relation by marriage, actually.”
“Is she?” said Ambrose, raising his brows. “I thought you knew them through Hannah.”
“So did I,” Vix replied with a smirk. “I suppose that’s how Hannah met Rosalind? London is a very small world at the end of the day, isn’t it?”
“I suppose it must be. If London is small, the peerage is absolutely miniscule, because I know the earl too,” Ambrose told her. “He was a few years ahead of me at school. He’s terribly charming. You will hate him.”
“Will I, indeed?” she said slyly as they turned the corner into Bloomsbury. “It should be just at the end of this street.”
The house was the width of two of the townhouses that lined the opposite street, and shone a lovely pale blue in the morning heat.
The doors were already open, with several deliveries of vases and carpet runners and odd little baskets of tissue paper being carted in through the front entrance while Hannah and a pair of dark-haired women spoke on the approach.
Vix raised her arm and called out to them, trusting that Ambrose would follow along as required.
“Lady Aster,” Hannah said, grinning as they crossed into the drive, “and Sir Ambrose. Allow me to introduce you to the Yardley sisters. This is Claire, the Countess of Bentley, and this is Millie Murphy, who is married to Rosalind’s brother, Abe.”
“We have met, actually,” Millie, the elder, plumper sister said, with a raise of her brows. “On the sidewalk last winter. You were Miss Beck back then, I believe?”
“Oh, God,” said Vix, immediately flinching. “Let us pretend that did not happen and that we are meeting for the first time today instead, if you will be so kind.”
Ambrose silently resolved to ask about that later. To Hannah, he asked, “Is your husband about?”
“He should be here soon,” she said, an unmistakable glint of mischief in her big blue eyes. “He is avoiding Lord Bentley.”
“A common ailment, I’m afraid,” said the countess with a tiny smile. “I think Freddy is hiding too.”
“I am not hiding,” came a voice from behind a very large living arrangement of hydrangeas, which a man was absolutely hiding behind. “I was checking the quality of these blooms.”
“Freddy!” Hannah cried, stepping forward as the man emerged, grinning and golden, to receive her with a kiss to either cheek. “You’ve got flower petals in your hair.”
“Yes, I put them there,” he lied, reaching up to brush them away. He then glanced around at the assembled guests with polite curiosity until his surprised blue eyes fell on Ambrose and widened in immediate disbelief. “Aster?!”
“Bentley,” Ambrose returned, breaking into a grin. “Look at you, thoroughly domesticated.”
“Said the pot to the kettle,” Freddy Hightower replied, raising his brows and weaving around another flurry of maids transporting baskets of reliquary to approach Ambrose and Vix. “Did you marry? Did Ambrose Aster marry? My dear lady, what were you thinking?”
“A great many things,” Vix replied, tilting her head to the side. “Why is my brother avoiding you?”
“Your …” The earl paused, blinking twice, and glancing with urgent befuddlement over his shoulder at Hannah, who nodded and shrugged. He gave an incredulous laugh and looked back at her, shaking his head. “No. I refuse to believe it.”
Thaddeus Beck chose that moment to arrive, plodding up to the townhouse with the enthusiasm of a man walking to the gallows.
Ambrose turned to watch the approach and saw, with some surprise, that Beck’s eyes did not find his wife or his sister first, but indeed landed immediately on Freddy Hightower.
There was a marked layer of tension over Beck’s usually neutral face.
“Ah,” said Freddy politely.
Hannah gave a little sigh and stepped around everyone to greet her husband, ushering him into the melee with a gentle hand on his arm. “Thaddeus. You remember Lord Bentley,” she said, as though it pained her. “From Blackcove?”
“Let’s get this over with, shall we?” Freddy announced with a sigh, drawing an immediate look and a frown from his wife. “Beck, old boy, I’m terribly sorry about the … well, you know,” he said, lifting his hands in front of himself like a boxer and miming a left hook.
Beck grimaced.
There was a lull of general disbelief as the assembled guests and a few of the servants looked around in confusion at the exchange.
“You’re apologizing to me?” Beck demanded, clearly affronted by the gall.
“Well, yes,” said Freddy, blinking at him with all the polite earnestness of a choirboy. “I punched you.”
“You did what?!” his wife exclaimed.
Everyone else just stared in naked disbelief while the long, incredulous silence stretched out between the two men.
Ambrose couldn’t be certain, but he imagined they were all having the same confused mental theater he himself was experiencing, wherein Freddy, who was a full foot shorter and several stone lighter than Thaddeus Beck, threw a punch that must have landed with all the fury of a dove flying into a portcullis.
Still, Beck looked positively sick about it. Maybe Freddy had more strength in his swing than anyone realized.
“I deserved it,” Beck finally said. “It is forgotten.”
“Excellent,” said Freddy, smacking his lips together. “Does anyone want croissants?”
Ambrose opened his mouth to respond, but Vix sliced him a look sharp enough that he suspected if he said anything, his tongue would fall out, and so he closed it again, and simply filed in with everyone else to partake of pastry.
It was actually the elder sister who said what everyone was thinking, glancing at Freddy, then over her shoulder at Beck, then back at her sister, frowning, and saying in the gentlest, most polite voice, “I have several questions.”
“That is just too bad, Millie,” her sister snapped, in exactly the same tone as Vix’s narrow-eyed glare.
Freddy was grinning like he’d just announced his victory over an entire battalion of enemy soldiers, whistling to himself as he led the charge into the sitting room.
Ambrose was not sure if he was much changed or entirely the same.
They were ordered around a series of tasteful seating arrangements, served tea and croissants and jam, and then subjected to the specifics of charitable-donation management and ball logistics with all the intensity of a war table.
“We’ve a dedicated ledger, of course,” Hannah said at one point, while spreading blueberry preserves on a bit of flaky dough. “If there had been more time, we ought to have included an auction on top of the donation scheme. Perhaps next year.”
“Next year,” Vix echoed dreamily. “There is still the matter of choosing a student to sponsor, of course.”
“I had a thought about that,” Beck put in, drawing surprised heads around to where he was perched on a chaise altogether too delicate for his hulking build.
“There are several young ladies who have used the clinic in Clerkenwell and have volunteered there as well, over the last year. I think we should offer the opportunity to them first.”
“Oh,” said Hannah, in a tone like a fresh debutante who’d just been given her first bouquet of flowers. “Yes! Oh, Thaddeus!”
Beck gave her a little smile, a faint tinge of pink flushing his cheeks, and Vix immediately cleared her throat in horror.
“How old is the ideal girl?” Ambrose asked, reaching out to steady his wife from such a flagrant display of affection toward her brother. “How young do they start at this school?”
“I started when I was eleven,” Vix said, still throwing one more glare at her sibling for good measure before turning to her husband.
“Which is about the usual age, though some start much earlier. I wouldn’t like to send a small child, though.
I think our girl should be old enough to have found some independence if she is going to go off to live in a new city by herself. ”
“Eleven is reasonable,” Claire agreed. “I would never send my children any younger than that.”
“Nor I,” said Freddy, tossing her a look of open fondness. “I’d rather not board Oliver at all, when the time comes.”
Claire blinked at him and reached out to touch his knuckles, a little wistful smile flickering over her face.
Vix cleared her throat again. Louder.
Hannah caught Ambrose’s eye and folded her lips inward, raising her eyebrows with shared observational amusement.
He swallowed his own desire to snort.
“My lady,” came a maid’s voice, the hard soles of her shoes tap-tap-tapping into the room as she hurried in, looking distressed. “My lord. I am sorry to impose. There is a woman at the door.”
“A woman?” Claire prompted, glancing up. “One of the artisans?”
The maid shook her head. “No, my lady, a … prospective guest? She is insisting that she speak with you at once to address the oversight of her lack of invitation. She is … she will not be deterred.”
“Vix,” Ambrose said, blinking at his wife. “Who did we snub?”
Vix met his eye with the most terrifying gentle calmness, her lips curling up at the edges.
“The lady says she is a long-standing patron of the school for young ladies,” the maid continued, twisting her hands together. “A pillar of the institution.”
“My dear girl,” said Vix, raising her eyes to the maid. “Do not let her in the house. I will address Mrs. Tolliver myself, outside.”
“Oh!” said Hannah, coming immediately to her feet. “Oh!”
The maid bobbed a curtsey and turned to attend the task, rushing back out of the room with a mirrored series of taps from her shoes.
Vix examined her fingernails, making no motion to rise and address the crisis at hand.
Thaddeus Beck heaved a sigh and rubbed his fingers over his brows like there was an ache building behind them.
“Tolliver,” Claire repeated, looking at the Beck family with a raise of her honey-brown brows. “I’m afraid I am at a loss about the dynamics at play here. How may I help?”
Vix smiled at her—glowed at her, practically. “I intend to dismiss the woman,” she said, dropping her hand in her lap. “But if you wish to make the encounter more satisfying for me, you could absolutely do so.”
“Oh?” said Freddy, straightening with interest. “What manner of beast is at the gates?”
Beck sighed again, pushing himself to his feet. “Let me do it,” he said to his sister. “I read the letter.”
Vix frowned. “I told you not to.”
“Yes, well,” he replied tartly, “you are not my commander.”
“The devil I’m not,” she shot back, coming to her feet as well.
“I shall just go begin the conversation, shall I?” Claire Hightower said, rising with an elegant lack of noise. “I would prefer she not rattle my staff, you understand.”
Vix nodded to her and let her go ahead, waiting until she’d left the room entirely to round on her brother again. She opened her mouth to rebuke him and then thought better of it, giving a defeated little sigh and shaking her head. “She is a liar,” she said instead.
“You think I don’t know that?” he replied, very gently. “Vix.”
“This is the employer, isn’t it?” Ambrose said, a flickering blade edge whirring to life in his chest. “From your governess post. Isn’t it?”
Vix glanced at him over her shoulder, her dark eyes flat. She nodded.
He stood, turning immediately to exit the room and find the lawn again. He made it as far as the door before his wife was standing in front of him with her hands on his chest.
“Ambrose,” she said. “It is mine to do.”
He clenched his jaw, the muscles in his face bunching with fury. He pushed it out in a breath and nodded. “All right.”
It made her smile. A very tiny smile. And her hands slid down from his chest over his arms to take his hands.
“You can’t do it for me,” she said, “but you can come with me. Do you want to come with me, Ambrose?”
“I am your accomplice,” he reminded her, squeezing those soft, sharp hands. “It was in the vows. Lead the way.”