Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
“You have been staring at that tree line for twenty minutes, Penelope,” Violet remarked as she gave her ball a single, unhurried thwack.
The ball rolled toward the hoop, and Violet smiled happily before returning her focus back to Penelope.
“I am watching for Nicholas,” Penelope said. “What else?”
Her knuckles were white where they gripped her own mallet. She had been holding the thing for the better part of an hour without once swinging it. Truthfully, she didn’t know if she had missed her turns, or if the other ladies had been so successful that she had not yet garnered one.
Penelope quickly realized she did not care, for her focus really was on the tree line.
“Of course you are.” Violet’s tone was teasing, as always, when she thought Penelope was fooling herself.
Penelope still couldn’t quite tear her gaze from the tree line. The game of Pall Mall had long since lost its purpose. Nearby, other ladies played in desultory pairs, their gossip wandering further from the game with every passing turn.
The afternoon sun had moved past its height, beginning its slow, heavy pull westward, casting long, bruised shadows across the grass.
Penelope had placed her ball twice, missed both times, and retrieved it without feeling. Her attention kept fracturing, pulled toward the dark gap in the oaks where the hunting party had disappeared earlier.
She told herself it was Nicholas she was watching for. She was mostly certain it was Nicholas.
Violet retrieved her ball and set it up again with elaborate, maddening calm. “Deep woods on the north side, someone mentioned?”
“Lord Hillsborough’s keeper. At breakfast.”
“Mm.” A pause. “Deep enough to lose a child.”
“That is precisely what I just said.”
“Is it?” Violet looked up, eyes wide and in mock innocence. “I thought you said it first about fifteen minutes ago. And then again just now. And at least once in between, I believe.”
“Violet.”
“I am only observing that your concern is admirably consistent.” She turned back to her ball, her smile sharpening. “Nothing at all to do with anyone else in those woods, I am certain.”
Penelope did not dignify that with a response.
Finally, there was movement. The hounds came through first, tongues loose and tails wagging. Then the grooms came, then the first riders, the colors of their coats muted with dust and dried mud.
Their laughter preceded them, a series of deep, rolling bellows that cut through the lawn. They spoke in loud bursts, throwing their heads back to trade jests about near-misses and lucky shots that Penelope couldn’t quite hear from her distance, but it was clear it had been successful.
The party spread out across the lawn, horses handed off and rifles surrendered to waiting grooms.
Penelope’s eyes moved through the group with the rapid, involuntary precision of a mother’s scan. She had done it in church, at the edges of village greens, anywhere her son was present without her direct chaperoning. It was a reflex she hadn’t chosen yet couldn’t stop.
She found him before she had fully taken in the rest.
Nicholas was practically running, his short legs churning at a frantic pace she had seen when he got too excited to simply walk. Too distracted to sprint. His jacket was smeared with mud at the knees. His hair had come loose from under his cap. His face was incandescent.
“Mama!”
He hit her at the waist, both arms locking around her.
Penelope caught him and hauled him in, her chin dropping to the top of his head. She pressed her hands flat against his back, feeling his heart hammering against her palms like a trapped bird. Something in her chest finally released.
“You are all right, my darling,” she said. It was a whisper, for her as much as for him.
“I am more than all right!” He pulled back, his eyes dancing with a bright light. “Mama, you will not believe it. The Duke—”
“In a moment.” She cupped his face in both hands, thumbing a smudge of dirt from his cheek. She had to check him over first for any injuries or slight show of harm before he recounted any tales from his time in the woods.
She found a thin scrape along his chin and a clean rip at the cuff of his left sleeve, and though she worried initially, she knew it was nothing serious.
Her lungs filled properly for the first time since she’d watched him walk into the trees. “Are you hurt anywhere?”
“No. Mama. The Duke—”
Lord Hillsborough arrived at her elbow, his movements wide and unhurried.
He peeled his sweat-stained gloves back finger by finger, his jaw set in a permanent, toothy grin that crinkled the skin around his eyes.
He exhaled a long, gusty breath of triumph, ignoring the mud splattered across his waistcoat as if it were a badge of highest office.
“Lady Romwich!” He was flushed and cheerful, his mustache slightly disordered by the wind.
“Your boy was a credit to himself today. He was incredibly brave, and it takes good courage to ride out, as young as he is, among a group of seasoned hunters.” He gave Nicholas a hearty clap on the shoulder that rocked the boy forward.
“But I must confess, honors went elsewhere. Brigrock was out first, before the rest of us had our barrels up. First bird, most birds, at that, and I will tell you that not a single wasted shot among them.”
He shook his head in rueful admiration. “Whatever you might hear about the man’s manners, Lady Romwich, he handles a rifle the way most men can only dream of. Quite something to watch.”
“I was there!” Nicholas said, his chest swelling visibly. “Right beside him.”
“You were indeed.” Hillsborough winked at Penelope and moved off toward the drinks table.
Nicholas seized the opening. He grabbed her hand and steered her two decisive steps sideward, away from the nearest ladies. His voice dropped to that low, urgent register he used for the most important secrets.
“We were in the ferns, Mama, both of us crouched down, and he went completely still. And then he raised his rifle slowly. And he fired! The pheasant just dropped before I even heard the sound properly.” He stopped to breathe.
“And afterward he talked to me about patience. He said patience is what separates the hunter from the man who only makes noise in the trees. Do you think that is true? I think that is true. He is ever so wise, Mama.”
“Nicholas.” She turned him gently but firmly by the shoulder until he faced her fully. “Look at me.”
He did as she asked, recognizing the iron in her tone.
“You strayed from Lord Hillsborough’s side.”
The light in his face dimmed. “Only a little.”
“Nicholas.”
“I found a hare in the north ferns and I only followed it.”
“You were told to stay with the group.” She kept her voice low, but gentle, because while she was worried, she had always known his eagerness would get the better of him.
She just had to get a soft word across. “Not near the group. Not within sight of the group. With the group. Do you understand what can happen in those woods? A stray shot, a startled horse… the ground alone is uneven enough to make you fall.”
“But the Duke was there,” Nicholas said, his chin lifting. “He found me. He kept me safe.”
“I am not discussing the Duke.” She held his gaze. “I am discussing your decision. Which was a poor one, and one that frightened me.”
He held her look for a moment, jaw set with a stubbornness she couldn’t identify. Then his shoulders slumped.
“Yes, Mama,” he said. “I am really sorry.”
“Thank you.” She smoothed the lapel of his jacket, her touch softening. “We will speak more about this at home.”
He nodded. A pause. “But the shot was really something.”
“Nicholas.”
“All right, I am finished, completely finished!”
She bit the inside of her cheek to hide a smile. She was still composing herself when she heard the voice.
“Lady Romwich. Nicholas,” a man greeted from behind.
The warmth in it was careful and deliberate, laid on like paint over something harder underneath. She felt Nicholas go rigid beside her before she had fully turned.
Charles stood several feet back, hands clasped loosely behind him. His afternoon coat was immaculate. Not a speck of mud. Not a pulled thread. His cravat was as crisp as it had been at ten that morning, and his boots held no trace of the woodland floor.
It was as though he had not joined the hunting party at all.
“What a morning,” he said haughtily. “I managed a couple of shots myself in the second wood. Nearly had a fine one.”
Nicholas said nothing. He looked at Charles like a cat examining a mouse not worth pursuing.
“The second wood?” Nicholas’s voice was light, almost pleasant. “I was in the second wood the whole second hour. I did not see you anywhere.”
Charles’s smile held its shape, but his eyes remained cold. “You wouldn’t have, Nic. I was working a different line. Further in.”
“His name is Nicholas,” Penelope said insistently. Charles merely gave her a tight smile, but Nicholas stepped forward.
“Lord Chelworth said your horse was slow.” Nicholas looked up at him with unnervingly clear eyes. “He said you turned back before the first hour was through.”
A heavy silence dropped between them.
Charles’s gaze moved to her son and the warmth in it went thin. Not gone entirely, but thin enough that the outline of something colder showed through.
Penelope pressed her fingers into Nicholas’s shoulder. A firm, final warning.
Charles looked from Nicholas to Penelope, and the warmth rebuilt itself with practiced ease.
“Children hear all manner of things,” he said pleasantly.
“They do,” Penelope agreed, her voice like glass.
Charles advanced, narrowing the space until he was just within her personal circle.
“I was hoping that I might receive an invitation to Romwich Hall soon. As you know, I have been in the area a fortnight. It would do him good to spend time with me. A boy needs a father figure now and then.”
“I shall write when the calendar allows,” Penelope said. “I do believe I have mentioned this before.”
Charles’ eyes came back to hers. He held them one beat too long, his gaze traveling from her mouth to her throat. “I look forward to it.”
He glanced once more at Nicholas, smiled and turned away.
Nicholas watched him go without blinking. “He did not get any shots, Mama,” he said quietly.
“No, I do not think he did.”
“He was not even in the woods.” Nicholas frowned at the middle distance. “Why does he bother lying? Nobody believes him.”
“He does not do it to be believed,” Penelope said, watching her brother-in-law’s retreating back. “He does it to see what happens when he is not challenged.”
Nicholas considered this, then moved closer to her side. She put her arm around his shoulders, her heart still unsettled by Charles’ eyes.
Then, the air around her changed.
It wasn’t a sound. It was a particular quality of stillness that arrived before the person it belonged to. She felt it, a prickle of heat on her skin, a half-second before she saw him.
The Duke of Brigrock stood ten feet away.
He had not announced himself. He was simply there.
His jacket was gone, his white shirt sleeves rolled to the forearm, exposing skin corded with muscle and a fine coat of woodland dust across his shoulders.
He stood with his boots planted firmly in the grass, his chest still rising and falling in the deep, rhythmic swell of the hunt.
He made no move to wipe the streak of earth from his jaw or to smooth his wind-blown hair.
Penelope’s arm drew Nicholas closer. Her body reacted before her mind could weigh in.
“Your Grace,” she said.
His eyes moved to Nicholas first, then to her. They were a piercing, unforgiving blue. “He strayed,” he said, his voice a low rasp that seemed to vibrate in the space between them.
“I am aware.”
“He had the sense to go still when I asked him to. And quiet.” A pause, his gaze resting briefly on Nicholas. “That is not common at any age.”
Nicholas’s chin lifted. He said nothing, but his posture had shifted; he stood like a soldier.
“I’m grateful you found him and returned him to the group. Truly,” Penelope said earnestly.
The Duke looked at her. Not long, not pointedly, but fully. It was a look that had no social performance in it whatsoever, and it was somehow harder to meet for exactly that reason. She felt the heat in her cheeks rise, unbidden.
“Your son has potential,” the Duke said. He took a half-step closer, the scent of cedar and gunpowder clinging to him. “It is not being trained, though.”
Penelope opened her mouth, a retort sharp on her tongue.
He was already turning. Not sharply, but with a finality that garnered no argument. He moved through the thinning crowd, people parting before him like water before a ship’s prow. By the time she had found the first word, he was through the doorway and gone.
She stood frozen.
It is not being trained.
The words stung. She should be angry. He had walked into her life and suggested that she was leaving something in Nicholas untended, that the life she had carefully built for her son was not enough.
She should be angry.
Her hands were perfectly still at her sides. That was the part she couldn’t account for. The air felt colder now that he was gone.
“Mama.” Nicholas looked up at her. “He meant it well.”
Penelope looked at the door where Malcolm had vanished.
“Perhaps,” she said.
Nicholas watched her watch the door. “Are you going to do something about it?”
She said nothing.
She was still asking herself the same question.