Chapter 3
Chapter Three
“Now, Miss Norton, you must understand that a turnip is a much-abused vegetable.”
Sophia looked up at her dance partner with the startled attention of a young lady who had expected, at worst, a remark upon the weather.
“Is it?” she asked.
“Most assuredly,” Mr. Wilcox replied.
He was a kindly widower of nearly sixty, and he guided her through the next figure with great solemnity and very little rhythm.
“People speak of roses, peaches, pineapples and all manner of showy produce, but the turnip, Miss Norton, is the true test of a country estate.”
Sophia made the mistake of looking interested, which encouraged the man considerably.
“A poor turnip,” he continued, “reveals poor soil, poor management and very likely, poor morals somewhere among the tenants.”
“Poor morals?” She lifted an eyebrow.
“In agriculture, everything is connected.”
Sophia’s lips trembled. She lowered her gaze at once, for laughter would have been unking, and Mr. Wilcox was not unkind himself. He was merely devoted to turnips with a tenderness most gentlemen reserved for horses, politics or the memory of their first love.
Lady Briarwood’s ballroom glittered around them with determined magnificence.
As always, her sisters drew attention enough for the family.
Emma, serene and lovely in soft blue, spoke with a gentleness that made everyone near her wish to be gentler too.
Frances, in rose silk despite Andrew’s earlier diplomatic error, had already made three gentlemen laugh, and one dowager look scandalized.
Their husbands stood nearby with the easy consequence of men quite accustomed to being noticed.
After dancing with Mr. Wilcox, Sophia retreated. She had just begun to hope she might pass a quarter hour in peace when three young ladies drifted toward her with the graceful inevitability of swans approaching bread.
“Why, Miss Norton,” Miss Clarissa Vane, the boldest and prettiest of them, greeted her with a smile as polished as glass. “How unexpected to find you without a book in your hand.”
Sophia’s fingers tightened upon her fan. “Good evening, Miss Vane.”
Miss Eliza Hartwell gave a soft laugh. “Perhaps she has concealed one in her reticule. One must always be prepared for emergency reading.”
“How clever,” the third mused, a young lady by the name of Miss Penrose, who was not clever herself but admired the quality when it could be used unkindly.
Sophia smiled because propriety demanded a lady do something with her mouth even when silence would have served better. “I left my book at home.”
“How brave of you,” Miss Vane replied. “I should have thought a ballroom rather alarming without one.”
The words were light. Pleasant, even, to any ear not trained by years of being gently reduced. Sophia heard such tones often enough. They never sounded cruel from a distance. That was their art.
“I manage tolerably,” she told them.
“Do you?” Miss Hartwell glanced toward the dancers. “You are very quiet this evening.”
“She is always quiet,” Miss Penrose observed.
“Yes, but at a ball, quietness is almost a declaration,” Miss Vane pointed out. “One might think Miss Norton disapproved of merriment.”
“I do not disapprove of it,” Sophia replied. “I merely prefer not to compete with it.”
Miss Vane’s brows lifted, and Sophia knew at once that she ought not to have spoken so nearly like herself.
“How droll,” Miss Hartwell grinned. “You see, Clarissa? Books do make one witty, though perhaps not very sociable.”
Heat rose in Sophia’s cheeks. She looked beyond them, across the shifting colors of the ballroom, and saw Frances standing near the refreshment table.
Her sister’s head was turned toward Andrew, but Sophia knew Frances too well to trust in her distraction.
Frances could detect an insult from three rooms away if it approached someone she loved.
Please do not look this way, Sophia thought.
If Frances noticed, there would be no quiet escape. There would be defense, sharpness, attention. And attention, even kindly meant, was the very thing Sophia most wished to avoid.
Miss Vane leaned a little closer. “I suppose it must be peaceful, being so devoted to novels. One need not be disappointed by real gentlemen if one has invented ones.”
“My dear Clarissa,” Miss Hartwell added, “that is perhaps why Miss Norton remains unmarried. No ordinary man can compare with a hero in a book.”
The three laughed softly. Sophia’s fan opened and closed once in her hand.
She could not think of any answer that would not expose the hurt beneath it.
It was not merely that they had spoken of books.
She loved books and would not be ashamed of them.
It was the other part, the unmarried part, the overlooked part, the part already whispered by anxious relations and well-meaning matrons until it had become a small stone she carried inside her.
“There are many worse fates than remaining unmarried,” Sophia told them.
“Oh, indeed,” Miss Vane replied. “But one hopes not to prove it by experiment.”
Miss Penrose hid her smile behind her fan. Sophia shifted as if to move away, but Miss Hartwell stepped delicately into the path she might have taken.
“Leaving us already?” she asked. “How very like you, Miss Norton. Always slipping away just as the conversation is becoming lively.”
“Perhaps she has remembered her emergency book,” Miss Penrose chuckled.
The little circle tightened. Sophia’s throat felt dry. The music swelled around them, a bright, elegant country dance, all order and motion.
How absurd that a room filled with people could contain no easy path of escape. Everywhere she looked, there were shoulders, skirts, smiles, eyes. She wanted the garden, the oak tree, the quiet press of bark beneath her hands and the honest danger of a broken branch.
Danger, she thought, was preferable when it did not wear perfume.
Then the crowd parted. For one foolish instant, she thought she had summoned him by memory.
The Duke of Rivermere crossed the ballroom with the same controlled force with which he crossed the grass that afternoon.
He wore black with severe elegance, his broad shoulders making lesser gentlemen seem designed in haste.
Candlelight caught the dark gloss of his hair and the clean line of his jaw.
His expression was composed, but not soft.
Yet his eyes moved through the room with a searching steadiness that made Sophia’s pulse behave in a most unreasonable manner.
Miss Vane saw him and transformed at once.
“Your Grace,” she greeted him, turning with a brightness that seemed to require no effort at all. “What a pleasure.”
Miss Hartwell fluttered her fan. Miss Penrose straightened her posture so abruptly that Sophia feared for the poor girl’s spine.
“Ladies,” the Duke said, bowing.
His voice was deep enough to be felt before it was quite heard. Sophia looked down at her fan, suddenly aware of every crease in her gloves.
“We were only speaking of the dance,” Miss Vane chirped. “How fortunate you should join us, Your Grace. Were you in search of someone in particular?”
The boldness of it made even Miss Hartwell blink.
The Duke’s gaze moved over the little group. “Yes.”
Sophia’s stomach dropped.
Of course. He wished to speak to one of them.
Miss Vane, perhaps, with her golden hair and practiced smile.
Or Miss Hartwell, who had three thousand a year and never had grass on her hem.
Sophia prepared herself for the awkward little rearrangement that would follow, for the ladies’ triumph, for her own invisibility restored in a more painful form.
Then Benedict Langley looked directly at her.
“Miss Norton,” he spoke her name, “would you do me the honor of this dance?”
For a moment, Sophia did not understand him. The room seemed to hush, though she knew it had not. Miss Vane’s smile remained fixed, but some vital warmth left it. Miss Hartwell’s fan stilled. Miss Penrose looked from the duke to Sophia as though a side table had been asked to dance.
Sophia rose from her curtsey only because her body remembered what her mind abandoned. “Yes, Your Grace.”
His hand extended. She placed her gloved fingers upon it. The contact was nothing. It was entirely proper, brief, controlled, and visible to half the county. It nevertheless traveled up her arm like a question.
He led her to the dance area. Sophia felt the stare of the three ladies between her shoulders with every step. She also saw Frances’ eyes widen across the room. Emma, beside her, looked pleased and puzzled. Their mother looked as though Providence suddenly developed excellent manners.
The music began. For several turns, Sophia said nothing. She was too occupied with breathing correctly, stepping correctly, and not thinking about the fact that the Duke of Rivermere’s hand had settled at the proper distance from her waist and still managed to disturb the air between them.
At last, when the figure brought them near enough for speech, she spoke quietly. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
His gaze lowered to hers. “For what?”
“For rescuing me.”
“I wished to speak with you privately, and a dance appeared the only proper method.”
Sophia nearly missed the next step. “Privately?”
“As privately as one may be while observed by an entire ballroom.”
There was so little humor in his face that it took her a moment to detect it. When she did, her anxiety loosened by a thread.
“I see,” she nodded just once. “And what did you wish to say?”
The dance separated them. Sophia turned beneath another gentleman’s raised arm, then returned and found the Duke’s eyes fixed on her with disconcerting attention.
“My nieces have spoken of little else since this afternoon but you.” His voice remained controlled, but something warmer moved beneath it. “They are not usually so enthusiastic about strangers.”
“I think Marjorie is enthusiastic about many things.”
“Danger, chiefly.”
“And Amelia?”
His expression shifted. “Amelia is careful with her affections.”
Sophia thought of the quieter twin’s anxious hands and solemn eyes. “Then I am honored, if she has spared any for me.”
“She has. They both have.” He paused as the dance required them to part once more. When they came together again, his voice was lower. “That is why I wished to ask whether you would consider visiting Rivermere Hall from time to time.”
Sophia stared at him. Only the structure of the dance kept her moving.
“Visiting?”
“For the girls’ sake,” he clarified. “They would enjoy your company. Amelia, I believe, would benefit from someone who understands books without making her feel dull for loving them. Marjorie…” He exhaled in what was almost a sigh.
“Marjorie appears to have decided you are a person of courage and therefore worthy of her highest regard.”
Sophia’s heart gave an odd, tender ache. No one, outside her family, had ever asked for her company as though it might be of use.
“I hardly know what to say,” she admitted.
“Then do not answer now.”
“But—”
The final notes of the dance rose and resolved before she could form the rest. Sophia curtsied, feeling strangely bereft, as if the music ended before the conversation had even properly begun.
The Duke bowed, then offered his arm. She took it, conscious that the entire walk back across the ballroom would be watched.
The young ladies near the flowers were no longer smiling. Miss Vane’s fan moved very quickly.
When they reached the edge of the room, the Duke paused.
“I shall call tomorrow. You may give me your answer then.”