Chapter 22
“There is still charcoal on your hands!” Vix tutted, reaching for Ambrose’s thumb with her kerchief, her dark brows drawn together over with the strength of her fretting. “How many times do you have to wash them?”
He chuckled, catching her hand through the lacy fabric and turning the sooty bit of his knuckle into it to be wiped clean.
“Well, you see, the trouble is that I would wash them, and then Bear would turn his head just so again, and I’d need to take up the sketchpad to capture it before the moment was lost. It is just the way of things, my love. ”
“It is the way of you, Sir Ambrose,” she returned with a click of her tongue. “There, clean again. I trust you did not smuggle a nub of coal into the ball with you?”
“I might have,” he said, leaning closer. “Do you want to search me?”
She gave him a twist of her lips, very clearly a begrudging one that she was attempting to keep under control. “No,” she lied, blinking at him and releasing the kerchief into his grip. “Behave yourself.”
“I shan’t,” he told her, warming at the way she released a huffing titter despite herself. “Has your headmistress arrived yet?”
She nodded, stepping closer and snatching the handkerchief out of his grip to tuck it into his waistcoat pocket. “There, by the hydrangeas,” she said, giving a delicate little quirk of her head to indicate where he should look. “She is wearing black. She always wears black.”
“Oh, very dour, very mysterious,” he said, nodding along as his eyes found the lady, gray-haired and severe, squinting at the blooms with abject suspicion. “She doesn’t like the flowers.”
“She is very devoted to her botanical pursuits,” Vix said, frowning at the scene. “To be fair, whoever buried the aluminum with those flowers did so incorrectly. You can see that the blue is not distributed evenly. They probably used copper. Common mistake.”
“Buried the aluminum?” he repeated, baffled. “Copper?”
It made her grin at him. “Do you actually want to know how to dye hydrangea blooms, Ambrose?”
He winced. “No.”
The music shifted, drifting from gentle chords to something more spritely as guests continued to trickle in, each in a glimmer of jewel tones or pastels a bit more eye-watering than those who came before.
Voices trailed over the music like accompaniment, Ambrose thought, and the musicians adapted to them as the ballroom continued to fill. He wondered if they trained for specific quantities of people and how best to accompany their presence.
“I learned the viola as a boy,” he told Vix. “I preferred the pianoforte, but I was good at the viola as well.”
“Were you?” she said, blinking. “I tried my hand at harp. I was not good at it at all.”
“No, you need an instrument that does not weigh you down,” he said, considering her. “Perhaps the flute. It is all about control and breath and rapid reflexes. Yes, I think flute for you, Vix.”
“Indeed?” she replied, looking entertained by the prospect. “Perhaps I will consider it.”
He was already considering what metal to purchase it in when she turned to regard the crowd again, likely having forgotten the concept of the flute entirely.
Gold, he wondered? Silver? He had heard they sometimes made the instrument entirely of crystal as well.
And he would have to find an instructor.
Someone talented, but not too handsome. It would be an endeavor.
“Good evening, Asters,” came the voice of Matthew Everly, looking nigh unrecognizable this evening as he strode toward them in tails, his usually chaotic mop of curls defined and tamed into a fashionable tumble. “What a beautiful gathering this is!”
“Matthew!” Vix cried, turning toward him and widening her eyes. “Look at you! Goodness, who knew it was possible?”
“Not I,” Matthew confessed, shrugging. “Tod found the tailor. Roland brought the pomade. I just arrived and let them do things to me.”
“A dangerous endeavor,” Ambrose said, blinking. “That is how I found myself married, you know.”
“Yes,” said the vicar, glancing from Vix to Ambrose and back again. “I know.”
“Speaking of which,” said Vix, a worrying glint in her eye. “I must go greet my own motley array of friends. See them, just there? Ah, how they glow.”
She floated away toward the refreshment table, where Rosalind Murphy in glowing pink satin was engaged in conversation with Mae Casper, in matte gold silk.
When Ambrose turned back to Matthew, he found him watching the journey with narrowed eyes. “She is a wicked little minx, your wife,” he said of Vix, without turning to Ambrose. “I’m terribly fond of her.”
“Yes, I know she is,” Ambrose replied with a fond little sigh. “Though I haven’t a clue what she’s up to just now. Care to enlighten me?”
Matthew sighed, watching as Mae and Rosalind turned to greet Vix. “I would rather not. It would only delight her further.”
“I understand,” said Ambrose, because he did.
“How is your dog?” the vicar asked, eyes still on the trio of women. “Fluent in German yet?”
“Getting there,” said Ambrose. “Did you know the German word for poison is gift? It created a lot of confusion in our house last week when Bear tried to eat a grape. I suppose I should also ask if you knew that grapes are poisonous to dogs. It was a day of education, all around.”
Matthew’s attention slowly drifted to Ambrose during this tirade, his brows rising in slow intervals. “And you’ve taught him that gift means poison?”
“I don’t think there is a word in dog language for do not eat, to tell you the truth,” Ambrose confided.
“But Vix and I know now that it is not allowed, and I suppose that will have to be enough. Though the utter confusion of my manservant bounding through the house, announcing, ‘Nein, Bear, das ist gift!’ as the pup fled with a grape between his teeth will remain with me until my final day on this earth.”
“And you watched them go by and thought the grape had been a lovely present, not a deadly poison?” Matthew guessed, eyes sparkling.
“Of course,” Ambrose returned with a sniff. “Like any Englishman would.”
“One day, the poor pup may learn that he was also a gift,” Matthew cautioned. “Imagine the confusion and heartbreak.”
“You are still angry about that destroyed chair, I see,” Ambrose replied with a smirk. “Shall I have the dog replace it?”
There was a bit of a flutter as the next song ended, with the congregated people pulsing around a series of new arrivals with a gasp and flurry of fanfare.
Ambrose and Matthew both raised their heads to observe it, staying in place as the music once again transitioned, this time to a rapid overture in staccato.
“Lord Greendale, the Vicar General in service to the Archbishop of Canterbury!” the herald announced, to a general murmur of approval.
“Oh, fancy,” said Ambrose, lifting a glass of champagne from a passing tray.
The herald continued, “Accompanied this evening by Her Grace, the Duchess of Canterbury.”
He almost dropped the glass.
His fingers went immediately numb, his heart sinking into his stomach as his head snapped around to the entry to see a rustle of gauzy sky-blue skirts, a flash of white-blonde hair, and the unmistakable air of superiority that only his mother could embody walking into a room.
“Ah,” he said politely. “Shit.”
She nodded graciously to the assembled ogling masses, dipping and swishing her skirts about to dazzle them, and then parted from the vicar general with a press to his hand and what was likely an impeccably polite beg-off in that utterly polished way of hers.
Ambrose grimaced. He could hear her in his head, even from here, across the room.
“You think you have unfair expectations upon your head, my darling Ambrose?” she would say to him, from whatever tender young age he’d been when he’d learned to complain. “Your father is only a duke. Mine own was a prince of the Swedish crown. Imagine that!”
As though suffering were a competitive sport.
He glanced around, wondering if there was somewhere nearby that would facilitate a quick escape or elsewise shield him from her observation.
Unfortunately, the damned hydrangeas were against a wall and still being interrogated by bloody Mrs. Baxter.
“Ambrose,” Vix’s voice came, breathless and urgent at his elbow. “I didn’t know she was coming.”
Immediately his body eased in some small degree, turning toward her like a buoy in a sea storm. “We did invite her,” he said, cringing at his own stupidity. “But I thought she’d send money and some condescending apology and stay in Kent where she belongs.”
“Right,” said Matthew Everly, “I’m just going to …”
“Yes, go,” said Vix impatiently, flapping her hand at him until he had, in fact, gone. “Here she comes.”
He breathed deeply and held it as his mother locked her eyes on his, a pale, icy blue, and gave him her fixed duchess’s smile as she floated her way across the ballroom floor. “Ambrose!” she cried, reaching her hands out for his. “Sir Ambrose, now! My most darling child!”
He did not flinch. “Mother,” he replied. “I did not expect to see you tonight. What a gift.”
He saw Vix’s head swing toward him at the word, saw the miniscule rise in her brows. He wanted to almost smile at it, knowing that she understood. He did not.
“And you must be my new daughter,” Helena Aster said, turning toward Vix with her smile still firmly in place. “Goodness, look at you. You have royal stature, my girl.”
“Oh,” said Vix, appearing genuinely surprised. “Thank you, Your Grace. It is a pleasure to meet you in person. I have heard much of you and your family.”
“Hm, I am certain you have,” said the duchess, flicking a little glance at her son. “I would have come earlier, but the duchy requires many duties, and I could not get away until now. I am so very proud to see my Ambrose finally embracing his potential, at long last.”
“Mother,” Ambrose said, already exhausted, already going numb again from the inside out. “Please.”
“He has always been the most talented of my children, you know,” she said to Vix, turning toward her as though Ambrose was interrupting the adults in conversation.
“Utterly stunning in every way, and thoroughly unwilling to embrace it. I can see now that all he needed was the influence of a worthy woman. What is your heritage, my dear? Greek? Italian? You’ve a look of the Mediterranean about you. ”
Vix opened her mouth to answer but was barreled over before she could make a sound.
“I will, of course, introduce you to all of the best people,” Helena continued, reaching out to touch Vix’s arm where her skin peeked out between the top of her glove and the bottom of her sleeve.
“We will have Society eating from your hand. This charity will only be the beginning of your ascent, my darling girl, you will see.”
Ambrose lifted his glass to his lips, pushing some champagne down past the lump in his throat. He observed the dazzled befuddlement in his wife’s eyes.
This was what she had always wanted, wasn’t it? This was better than anything he could have offered her himself, such as he was.
“The knighthood was such a welcome surprise, of course,” his mother was continuing, her voice beginning to muddle with the static of familiar weight in the air, smothering out the color and warmth from everything. “I can only hope you continue to guide him into the light.”
“I haven’t guided him anywhere,” Vix said, sudden and sharp, startling both Asters enough that there was a hiccup in the drowning environs around Ambrose. “He was knighted on his own.”
Helena blinked, her pale lashes fluttering with irritation. “Of course, my dear,” she said, recovering smoothly. “I suppose that happened before you agreed to wed him. A woman such as yourself likely needed an indication of direction for the future.”
“In fact, I needed the opposite,” Vix said, tilting her head to the side. “I’ve direction in spades. What I needed was levity and worth, both of which Ambrose already had in spades. He has much improved me, my lady. Not the other way around.”
There was a long pause, his mother’s smile going tight around her mouth and her eyes. “I see,” she said, sharper this time, disappointed. “Perhaps you are more predictably matched than I believed.”
“Perhaps we are,” Vix agreed, moving to touch Ambrose, to weave her fingers through the crook of his arm. “I should be honored that anyone would think so.”
“I require refreshment,” she said, not going quite so far as to frown, but dropping the smile entirely. “We shall speak more later in the evening.”
She turned, swishing away with her usual gaggle of admiring onlookers, her hair glinting like spun silver in the candlelight. The farther away she got, the easier the air became to breathe.
“You did not have to do that,” he said, when he felt he could speak again, looking apologetically down at his wife. “You did not have to say those things. She really could give you access to the cream of Society.”
“I don’t love the cream of Society, Ambrose,” she snapped, glaring up at him. “I love you.”
She paused, her face bunching up in realization of what she’d said, then she shook her head and glared at him again for good measure. “Yes,” she reiterated. “It is true.”
He could only stare down at her in a kind of numb wonder. “Vix, you wicked woman,” he finally said, sighing. “Why would you tell me that in public, when I cannot kiss you for your trouble?”
“Because I am terribly broken, Ambrose,” she replied, just as acidic and impertinent as always. “I need champagne.”
He watched her storm away to seek out her comfort with his heart gone to goo in his chest. And he realized, in the watching, that the color had come back to the room and the feeling had returned to his chest.
The numbness that had threatened to overtake him had retreated.
It had lost.
Like so many other shrinking adversaries, it had stood not a chance opposite Vix Aster.