Chapter Seven #2
“There now. You have had your answer, your custard, and your curiosity all in the same course. Few hostesses are so generous.”
A reluctant smile tugged at the corner of Mrs Crawford’s mouth.
“You are a formidable family.”
“No,” Lady Maribel corrected. “Only an old one. We have had rather longer than most to practise.”
The conversation, having discovered there was nothing more to be had from the subject, drifted elsewhere with the relief of people released from an obligation.
It was Cole, of all people, who disturbed the peace, and he did so with the complete innocence of a man who never understood why some facts preferred a drawing room and others a solicitor’s office.
“The other matter progresses,” he said to Elias. “Lady Harwood’s accounts. I have written to the Hemsworth solicitors and received a reply abundant in apologies and rather deficient in particulars. We shall have the particulars presently.”
“Cole,” Elias said mildly.
The solicitor looked up.
A brief pause followed, during which his gaze travelled, at last, to Mrs Crawford.
“Ah,” he said.
“Yes,” Lady Maribel observed. “Precisely that ah.”
Cole inclined his head, apparently accepting the correction.
“Then perhaps I ought only to say,” he continued, “that Lord Harwood has instructed me to see Lady Harwood’s affairs placed in the best possible order, and that I have every expectation of succeeding.”
Mrs Crawford regarded him with open disappointment.
“That is a very lawyerly sentence.”
“So I am frequently told.”
“It conveys almost nothing.”
“It conveys precisely as much as ought to be conveyed over dinner, my lady,” Cole replied. “I beg the company’s pardon for having brought business to the table.”
Lady Maribel smiled into her wine.
“Accepted,” she said. “Though next time, Mr Cole, do wait until the cheese.”
***
The evening loosened after that. By the time the company withdrew to the drawing room, Mrs Crawford had been supplied with enough civility, custard, and carefully limited information to leave reasonably content.
Beatrice was persuaded to the pianoforte. Nathaniel, having returned from escorting Sophy upstairs, took up a place beside the instrument, where he could turn the pages and remain silent with evident relief.
“You were gone a long while, Mr Fernwood,” Miss Ellery said, not looking up from the keys. “I hope the ghosts were civil.”
“They were.” Nathaniel searched for somewhere natural to put his hands and settled them behind his back. “And Miss Sophy is a remarkable child. I have seldom found conversation so easy.”
“With a child of five?” Miss Ellery asked, smiling without unkindness.
“With anyone,” Nathaniel admitted awkwardly.
He went scarlet and turned a page that did not require turning. Miss Ellery allowed the small confession to remain where it had fallen and did not tease him out of it.
“Mark that,” Lady Maribel murmured to Victoria. “A girl who knows when not to rescue a shy man from his own words is a girl worth watching. I give them eighteen months and shall take the credit whether I have earned it or not.”
“You appear very certain.”
“I am frequently certain. It saves time.”
Miss Ellery began a country air with rather more spirit than the drawing room required, and Lady Maribel tapped her stick upon the carpet.
“Someone dance. I did not come across London to watch you all sit like jars upon a shelf.” Her eye settled upon Elias. “Your wife has worn an excellent gown to very little purpose.”
“I am not certain Lady Harwood wishes to be volunteered,” Elias said.
Victoria rose. “On this occasion, Lady Harwood wishes to dance.”
“Well, in that case.” Elias crossed to her and offered his hand.
For the space of a breath, neither seemed certain the other would complete the gesture. Then Victoria placed her hand in his, and the music carried them into the figure.
He danced without display, holding her at precisely the distance courtesy required. The inch he did not take seemed more present than any touch might have been.
She had danced countless figures upon Gerald’s arm, each one performed for the room, his hand directing her into whatever picture he wished others to see. Elias led differently. He offered direction without forcing it, asked nothing of her expression, and left her free to look where she pleased.
To her annoyance, she found that she pleased to look at him.
Her bracelet caught as they turned, its fine clasp snagging in the lace at his cuff. They stopped, briefly tethered by thread and gold.
“Hold still,” he murmured. “Hold still,” he murmured. “Your bracelet appears to have taken me prisoner.”
He worked the clasp free with two careful fingers, making no attempt to turn the accident into an intimacy. When it came loose, he returned her hand to its place in the dance.
“There. You are released.”
“You make a great deal of my liberty, my lord.”
“I am trying not to make too little of it.”
She had no answer she cared to give before an audience. The music turned them again, and she followed it.
Across the room, Lady Maribel watched them over the rim of her glass.
“Yes,” she said softly. “That will do.”
***
The guests departed at last into the cold.
Mrs Crawford went first, already shaping the evening into an account fit for repetition, though for once it would bear some resemblance to the truth.
Lady Maribel kissed Victoria upon both cheeks and demanded that Sophy visit her before the summer was out.
Cole bowed with his customary economy. Nathaniel bowed twice, blushed once, and glanced back towards the drawing-room windows as though he had left something behind that he meant to recover.
When the door closed upon the last of them, Victoria remained for a moment in the quiet hall.
“You did not use me,” she said evenly when Elias came to stand near her at the careful distance he always kept. “I came down braced for it, and you did not.”
“No,” he remarked. “I told you I would not.”
“You allowed me to answer Mrs Crawford for myself.”
“I thought you better qualified.”
“And when Cole began to speak too freely, you stopped him.”
“I attempted to. Cole is not always readily stopped.”
She looked at him. “The evening went very nearly as you intended.”
“Parts of it did.”
“And the rest?”
“The rest went as you intended. That may be why it succeeded.”
Victoria considered the answer. She had entered the drawing room prepared to detect every pressure placed upon her, every glance meant to direct her, every kindness with a demand concealed inside it. Somewhere during the evening, she had ceased to count them.
That unsettled her more than she wished to admit.
“Good night, Lord Harwood.”
“Good night, Lady Harwood.”
He neither followed nor detained her. Victoria went upstairs alone, aware that for the first time that evening she was not measuring the distance between them.