Chapter 17
“Mr. Barnes has arrived, Miss Cartwell,” Simmons announced that Thursday, eleven days after they had arrived in London. “His Grace asks if you would join him in the study.”
She had been assisting Rachel with some correspondence, set down her pen, and followed with a nod.
Frederick was standing beside his desk when she came in.
He was not sitting, which she had learned to read.
Rachel was already in the chair near the fireplace.
Barnes was in the chair across from the desk, with his folder open.
He stood briefly when she entered, which she acknowledged, and then sat.
She took the remaining chair, folded her hands in her lap, and waited.
“I will not delay the matter,” Barnes said, which was not his most extraordinary sentence since she had found it was generally how he began.
“Miss Marsh has been located. She was in Somerset, which is near enough to Wiltshire that my thinking…” he glanced at Frederick, “and Your Grace’s men, both arrived at it within a day of each other. ”
Anna went very still.
“She is well,” he said, which she had not asked but was grateful to hear.
“She was staying with her sister’s family.
She had heard, through channels I won’t try to document, that inquiries were being made, and she had been…
cautious. She was not unwilling to come forward in the end.
She simply needed to understand that she would be protected. ”
“And she is satisfied on that point?” Frederick said.
“She gave her statement to my clerk in full. She confirmed the morning of the wedding, in precise detail. The dress delivered to her the night before with instructions from Viscount Edgeware’s household, no explanation given.
Miss Cartwell’s state when woken. The coercive circumstances of their departure for the church.
” He looked at Anna. “She is a good witness. Clear, specific, consistent with your own account in every particular.”
Anna looked down at her hands. They were very still in her lap. She hung on his every word.
“The statement is signed and witnessed,” Barnes continued.
“Between that and the other materials we have assembled, I am satisfied that we have grounds not merely adequate but compelling. I will begin the formal filing early next week.” He closed the folder with the brisk finality of a man satisfied with his own preparation.
“I will not make promises on the precise timeline, Miss Cartwell. These proceedings have their own pace and the court moves as it moves. But I can say with confidence that the petition is in an exceptionally strong position. I would be surprised if there were significant obstacles.”
The room was quiet for a moment.
“And Birchall?” Rachel asked. Carefully, like a woman picking a path across uncertain ice.
“He will be notified, as is required by law.” Barnes said it without drama.
“He may contest. Men in his position sometimes do, for reasons that have less to do with the law than with their own dislike of losing. However, contesting this petition would require him to make arguments that do not reflect well on himself, with a witness now on record who was present for the morning in question.” He paused.
“I don’t anticipate a serious challenge. ”
“Thank you,” Anna said. Her voice came out steady, and she was glad of it.
Barnes rose, and Frederick walked him out, and the room was still.
Rachel said, “Anna.”
“I know.” She looked out the window. “I know. It’s good news.”
“It is the best news,” Rachel said. “Anna, it’s nearly over.”
“Yes.” She felt Rachel watching her. “Yes, it is.”
It was. She knew that. She felt it clearly, the relief of it.
Maura was safe, the petition was filed, the shape of the thing that had been weighing on her since the morning in the church finally resolved into something that was ending rather than going on.
It was a large relief, and it was genuine, and she held it.
And underneath it, quiet and uninvited and complicated, was something else.
Her mind began to race.
Derbyshire. The breakfast table, the single place setting.
Percy on the garden step, moving down one.
A corridor where a man told me I was not helpless, and I believed him.
The nightstand candle and the nightmare I was not supposed to have seen and the way he said go back to your room in a voice that was trying very hard not to shake.
A cold garden and the stars above the pear tree and his voice saying she went home, people go home, as if the world rearranges itself into sense when he decides it ought to.
She thought about all of it, the accumulation of weeks—small and not small, ordinary and not ordinary—and the space that would be where those things had been, once she was gone.
This is the plan, she reminded herself. This was always the plan.
“Anna.” Rachel’s voice was gentle.
“I am glad,” Anna said firmly, because it was true. It was entirely true, and she meant it. “I am very glad.” She turned away from the window and looked at her friend. “I am.”
Rachel looked at her for a long moment. “So am I,” she said.
“A ball feels horribly odd with Anna at home. Truly we did not need to subject ourselves to such an outing. We just went to the garden party,” Rachel started as they entered the carriage.
“We must keep up appearances, if we truly wish to keep her sanctuary a secret.”
“Yes, yes… but does it really need to be the Merriwether Ball?”
“I suppose not. But a ball is a ball, no?”
“Well, let’s be done with it.”
The Merriweather Ball was in Hanover Square, which was close enough to Rathbourne House, but they went by carriage anyway. Arriving on foot at a ball was the sort of thing that would be remarked upon, and being unremarkable was the purpose of the entire evening.
“Shall we.” Frederick said as he handed Rachel down from the carriage and offered his arm.
Rachel was bright and composed in pale blue, Frederick in black and white, both of them looking, he hoped, like a duke and his sister who had come to London for no reason in particular.
The entrance hall was already warm and crowded, smelling of expensive champagne and ambition. A string quartet carried from somewhere above. Frederick had never been particularly attached to ballrooms, but on occasion found them useful.
“The Duke of Rathbourne, and his sister,” he offered to the footman at the top of the stairs and followed Rachel in. “We are on the list.”
“But of course, Your Grace,” he said quietly to him before announcing, “His Grace, the Duke of Rathbourne, and Lady Rachel Bannerman.”
Four minutes was all Rachel needed. He watched her cross the room with a smile here, a hand pressed there. By the time Frederick had accepted a glass of champagne, he could not find her at all.
Somewhere in the middle distance, a woman in primrose was laughing, and Rachel was the reason for it. He had always been grateful for this quality in her. He had never once possessed it himself.
He moved along the periphery and took a flute of champagne. He found Wrenshaw near the east wall. Mr. Mark Wrenshaw was a successful merchant, and a man he had some business with. His eyes went to the door for a moment, where he thought he saw—
General vigilance, he told himself. Nothing more than that.
“Your Grace. I had hoped to see you tonight,” Wrenshaw said as he approached him.
“And I you, Wrenshaw. The amendment to the standing contract. I understand the committee meets Thursday.”
“It does.” Wrenshaw said as he leaned casually against the wall. “I’ll confess I expected more resistance, but the language on entailment has been quietly revised. You’ll want to read the new draft before Thursday.”
“I haven’t read it.”
“I’ll have it sent round tomorrow.”
“Yes.” Frederick turned his glass in his hand. “Thank you, Wrenshaw.”
“Of course. It affects what… three generations of settlement?”
“Four.”
“Mm.” Wrenshaw nodded gravely. “Well, then. Thursday it is, Your Grace. I must find my wife.”
“Thursday,” Frederick agreed with a tight nod and something resembling a smile.
He moved on then. The champagne was warm now. Across the room, the woman in primrose laughed again, and a man’s voice followed. His eyes followed the sound.
Surely it cannot be…
It was distinctive, even though Frederick had only heard him speak a few times. It was a particular brightness that was slightly too loud, too easy. As slippery as a snake.
Frederick turned slowly to see that Birchall was across the room, near the doors to the garden terrace. He was in conversation with two other men Frederick recognized peripherally—Lord Steffon’s younger brother, and some baron whose name he could not place.
Birchall was animated, holding court with the small group, admired and aware of it. He had a glass in one hand and an easy smile that concealed a great deal. Frederick looked away. He moved to the next position along the wall, which gave him a different angle, and stood there and listened.
“… Not in London at all, as far as I understand it,” Birchall was saying.
The tone was pleasant, easy, the voice of a man doing damage in the mode of light conversation.
“She finds the city disagreeable, I’m afraid.
Some women are simply better suited to the country.
” A brief pause. “It may be that she is already with child. One hopes, naturally. God willing!”
One of the other men murmured something Frederick did not catch. Birchall made a sound of easy agreement.
“One does what one can,” he said, and laughed again, and the other men laughed with him in the way men laughed when someone above them in the social order had made a joke.
Frederick stood very still. The rage was cold, which it always was, and it sat somewhere below his sternum and did not move from there. He looked at his champagne glass, which he had not drunk from, and set it on the nearest tray.
He moved along the wall.
He was aware, as he moved, of Birchall’s gaze finding him. He did not acknowledge it. He did not look back. He found a position between two sets of French doors and occupied it and spoke to a man about drainage and thought about absolutely nothing while his eyes took in the entire room.
“Your Grace,” an acquaintance said as he passed by. “How lovely to see you!”
“Indeed,” he said, harsher than he meant, as he walked on to keep an eye on Birchall. “If you will excuse me.”
Birchall looked at him three more times in the next half hour. Each time, Frederick was looking somewhere else, which was the only response he intended to give.
He saw Birchall also looked at Rachel. Twice. Steadily.
It was at the turn of the second hour that he saw Lily Beaumont, the Duchess of Thornwaite, and his godmother’s niece.
He recognized her before he had consciously done so, his preoccupation with Birchall’s presence an albatross across his neck. She was laughing at something, which was generally the easiest way to identify.
Hugo Beaumont, the Duke of Thornwaite, noticed him first and waved him over. Lilly turned then, and a large smile crossed her face. Frederick crossed the room to meet them, and found himself smiling back.
“Rathbourne,” Hugo said, shaking his hand. “I thought it was you. I didn’t know you were in London.”
“Only recently,” Frederick said. “I had estate business that demanded me back to Rathbourne. Among other things.”
“Other things,” Lily said, her green eyes searching his in question.
“Duchess. A pleasure to see you,” Frederick gave her a small bow, because they had known each other long enough that it was more a joke than a form and she received it as such.
“Likewise,” she said. “How is Rachel? Is she here?”
“She is.” He tilted his head toward the far end of the room, where Rachel was now in conversation with a tall woman in green he thought might be someone’s aunt. “She looks very well, I think.”
“She always looks well,” Lily said. She had a quality of directness that Frederick had always found refreshing, which was not precisely common.
She also had a quality of noticing things, which was less convenient.
She was looking at him now with the look of someone who had filed several observations and was deciding whether to produce them. “Are you all right?”
“Perfectly,” he said. “How are the children?”
“Wonderful, growing so fast,” she said, when she looked at him for one more moment.
“We should call,” Hugo said. “While you’re in London. Are you at Rathbourne House?”
“Yes,” he said, and he suddenly found his eyes searching for Birchall. “Or better yet, perhaps we may pay a call on you… to see the children.”
“That would be lovely! I shall invite my aunt, too.” Lily said it simply, in the way of someone who meant things. “It is good to see you, Frederick.”
“And you,” he said, and meant it.
He shook Hugo’s hand again and moved back toward his position along the wall, and thought about what it was like to know people well enough to have that kind of exchange and not need the length of it.