Chapter Three #2
“Her circumstances became difficult when she was given reason to flee her father’s house in the middle of the night, Voss. The travelling was a consequence, not a cause. I would prefer you not to confuse the two in my drawing room.”
Beatrice looked at Ravenshaw with an expression he could not entirely read. Surprise, perhaps. Or the beginning of something adjacent to trust, caught before it could fully form.
“Lady Beatrice can speak for herself,” she said. “She has been doing so since she arrived, and she does not require either of you to narrate her condition on her behalf.”
“Noted,” Ravenshaw said.
“Noted and appreciated are different things, Your Grace.”
“I am aware of the distinction. I employ it frequently.”
Voss’s smile had gone thin and watchful, and Ravenshaw could see him recalculating the geometry of the room.
This was not the situation he had anticipated.
He had expected a frightened woman alone in a strange house, desperate for rescue.
He had found a frightened woman who had already made an ally of the house’s owner and had no intention of being rescued by anyone.
“The child,” Voss said, and the word was placed with the precision of a knife on a tablecloth, soft and deliberate.
“A woman travelling alone through the night with a child invites questions, my lady. Questions that, once asked, are very difficult to un-ask. I should be vastly sorry to see your reputation pay the forfeit for a decision made whilst your mind was so severely tried.”
“And I should be vastly sorry to see anyone’s reputation suffer for decisions made by men who were not present for the consequences. We all have our hopes, Lord Voss.”
“This is not a matter of hopes. It is a matter of fact. People will talk.”
“People will always talk, my lord. The question is whether anyone worth listening to is among them.”
Beatrice went pale as she said it, and Ravenshaw watched the bravado hold for exactly as long as the words required and then begin to crack at the edges.
She was terrified, and she was performing courage, and the performance was good enough to fool Voss but not quite good enough to fool a man who had caught her when she collapsed and had felt how thin she was beneath the cloak.
The pattern was unmistakable. Charm first, then concern, then the carefully placed threat disguised as solicitude.
Ravenshaw had watched Voss perform this sequence once before, in a different drawing room, with a different woman, and he had not understood what he was watching until the damage was done.
“They may ask me,” Ravenshaw said.
Voss and Beatrice turned. The room went still.
“I beg your pardon?” Voss said.
“You expressed concern that questions might be asked about Lady Beatrice’s reputation.
You may direct anyone with such questions to me.
” He stepped forward from the window. “Lady Beatrice is my betrothed. The banns will be read at the earliest opportunity. Any enquiry into her conduct, her character, or the child in her care is an enquiry directed at the future Duchess of Ravenshaw, and I will treat it accordingly.”
The silence that followed was long enough for Ravenshaw to hear the rain against the windows and the distant creak of a floorboard in the corridor where Keene was presumably listening.
Voss recovered first. The smile returned, narrower and more deliberate.
“My congratulations, Your Grace. I had no idea the attachment was so advanced.”
“It is advanced enough.”
“And Lady Beatrice’s father? Has the Earl given his blessing?”
“The Earl will be informed. His blessing is not required.”
“How decided. And how very quick.”
“I have found that rapidity is advisable when dealing with threats that present themselves as concern.”
“I meant no threat.”
“You never do, Voss. That has always been your particular talent.”
Voss turned to Beatrice, who was standing behind the nearest chair with her face white, her eyes wide and her mouth set in a line that Ravenshaw could not read as fury or gratitude but suspected was both.
“My felicitations, Lady Beatrice. I hope the match brings you everything you deserve.”
“Thank you, Lord Voss. I hope the road home is not too muddy.”
“I wonder, though.” Voss reached for his greatcoat and drew it on with the same unhurried ease with which he had removed it.
“You have chosen a very powerful protector. His Grace is nothing if not formidable. But one does wonder whether a woman who arrives at a gentleman’s door in the middle of the night and emerges the next morning as his betrothed has been rescued, or merely acquired. ”
“That is enough,” Ravenshaw said.
“I mean no offence.”
“You mean precisely the offence you have calculated, delivered with just enough deniability to retreat behind if challenged. I have watched you do this before, Voss. There is, most regrettably, no amendment to be seen in the arrangement of the steps.”
Voss held his gaze for a long, measured moment.
What passed between them was older than this morning and older than this woman.
It lived in the space between two men who had once been friends and were now something considerably worse.
The betrayal that had ended the friendship had never been acknowledged by the man who committed it but had never been forgotten by the man who survived it.
“Then I shall take my leave,” Voss said. He bowed to Beatrice, but at the door he paused.
“You will discover, my lady, that His Grace shelters nothing he does not first intend to own.”
The door closed. The carriage wheels ground against the wet gravel and faded.
Beatrice released the chair.
“Your betrothed,” she said, and the words came out flat and vibrating with a fury that Ravenshaw had not anticipated but should have.
“Yes.”
“You announced my future to that man as though you were ordering a change to the dinner service.”
“I announced the only version of your future that does not end with you destroyed by morning.”
“You did not ask me.”
“There was no time to ask you.”
“There is always time to ask, Your Grace. You simply chose not to take it.”
“If I had taken it, Voss would have taken the opening. I have seen him build before, and I have seen what the structure looks like when it is complete. I was not prepared to watch him build it around you.”
“So instead, you built it yourself. You decided my future without consulting me, which is exactly what my father did, and what Lord Voss did to my sister. I am beginning to wonder whether every man I encounter believes the appropriate response to a woman in difficulty is to make her decisions and expect her gratitude.”
The accusation landed with more precision than he had braced for. She was right, but the fact that she was right did not make the betrothal wrong. It merely made the method indefensible.
“I am not your father,” he said.
“No. You are a man I met a few hours ago who has just announced to my worst enemy that I am to be his wife. You will forgive me if the distinction feels somewhat academic at this moment.”
“It is not academic. Your father acted to protect his reputation. I acted to protect you.”
“And yourself.”
“Indeed. And myself. I will not pretend otherwise.”
“That is the first honest thing you have said to me since I arrived.”
“It is not. I have been honest throughout. You have simply been too busy surviving to notice.”
She held his eyes, and he held hers, and neither of them looked away.
“You could have warned me,” she said, and something in her voice had shifted away from fury towards something quieter and more bruised.
“You could have found thirty seconds to tell me what you intended to do. I would have agreed, Your Grace. That is the part that should concern you. I would have agreed, and you did not give me the chance.”