Chapter Ten
“You are certain you wish to walk into that room,” Amelia said quickly, meeting them at the foot of the great stair with her fan already at work.
“Because half of it means to cut you, and the other half means to watch the first half do it, and I cannot for my life decide which is the worse company for an evening.”
“I am certain,” Victoria said. “A woman who stays away is a woman they have already beaten. I have been beaten in a great many ballrooms, Amelia, and every one of them by not going in.”
“Then I shall go in beside you. If anyone cuts you, they may cut me too, and discover how thoroughly I can fail to notice they exist.”
She turned to Elias.
“And you, my lord… You will keep your temper.”
“So I have been instructed,” Elias replied gravely. “Cole has repeated it often enough that I could recite the lecture by heart. I intend to be the dullest gentleman in London this evening. It will require an effort worthy of notice, though I trust none will notice it.”
Amelia looked unconvinced.
“He is not jesting,” Victoria said quietly. “That is how you know he is serious.”
“That is a most alarming distinction.”
“It is merely an accurate one.” Victoria smoothed the fingers of one glove. “There is one favour I would ask of you, Amelia.”
“Anything.”
“If the room grows unpleasant, stay near Elias rather than me.”
Amelia frowned.
“You expect them to come after him?”
“I expect them to try. Me they know already. Him they hope to provoke.”
“And you?”
“I have had years to practise disappointing people who wished to unsettle me.” A faint smile touched her mouth. “He has had rather less.”
Amelia looked from one to the other before giving a reluctant nod.
“Very well. But if either of you begins behaving heroically, I reserve the right to interfere.”
“I should expect nothing less.”
Cole arrived that afternoon without removing his hat, which, in Cole, was sufficient notice that ordinary courtesies had given way to more pressing business.
“They mean to provoke you tonight,” he said to Elias without preamble. “I have it from a clerk of Dabney’s who prefers his drink to his employer.”
“To what purpose?”
“Hemsworth’s first ground has weakened. Lady Harwood is now established in your household, with her own income and no present want of consequence or protection.
An old scandal will scarcely be enough. He must now cast doubt upon the household itself.
More particularly, upon your temper. There is already talk of Crayle and the churchyard.
One public scene tonight, before witnesses prepared to remember it accurately, and Dabney may argue that the child lives beneath the roof of a violent man. ”
“That would be a lie.”
“It would be a lie built around one useful fact. Those are the most durable kind.” Cole held his gaze. “Crayle will be there. He is still within Hemsworth’s power, and he will be instructed to say whatever is most likely to bring your hands upon him.”
“You have a poor opinion of my restraint.”
“I have a professional opinion of it, which is less flattering and generally more expensive.” Cole’s expression did not alter.
“You are quick to anger and accustomed to being obeyed before the anger requires expression. Hemsworth knows it. Tonight, he will try to discover whether insult may accomplish what authority usually does.”
“And your advice?”
“Give him nothing that may be repeated in Chancery. Whatever Crayle says, remember that the child is the object of it, not the man before you.”
He paused.
“I have rarely known you to lack courage, my lord. Tonight you will require the less convenient virtue.”
***
The ballroom was at Ashcombe House, which Victoria had not entered since the evening upon which the whole affair had begun.
The same chandeliers burnt above the same crowded room. For one unsteady moment at the threshold, Victoria was the widow in grey once more, counting the doors.
For the first quarter of an hour, there was only the cold.
Backs turned with the unhurried insolence of people who wished the movement to be observed.
Mrs Radley discovered an absorbing interest in the opposite wall.
A matron with whom Victoria had twice dined remembered an acquaintance elsewhere in the room.
Victoria moved through it with her head high and her hand resting lightly upon Elias’s arm.
Then Lady Maribel arrived.
“There you are,” she announced at a volume calculated to travel. She sailed through the company with Nathaniel and a blushing Miss Ellery behind her. “I have been searching for the only people here worth speaking to, and find you surrounded by persons who owed my late husband money.”
“Aunt,” Elias said.
“Not now. I am occupied.” She offered Victoria her arm. “Come, child. We shall walk the length of the room slowly enough to be seen and quickly enough not to be detained.”
“You need not do this,” Victoria began.
“On the contrary, I have seldom found anything more necessary or more agreeable.”
They began their progress.
The room’s reserve weakened before Lady Maribel’s consequence. Faces turned back. Greetings appeared where none had been intended.
Victoria watched one acquaintance after another discover that affection for her had merely been delayed.
“You are enjoying this,” she murmured.
“Enormously,” Lady Maribel said. “Mrs Radley is about to pretend she never cut you.”
“She did so twice.”
“Then permit her to mend the offence twice over. A woman allowed to preserve her dignity may yet become useful. One deprived of it becomes tiresome for life, and I have not the years remaining for unnecessary enemies.”
Mrs Radley approached with a smile whose warmth had plainly been assembled at speed.
Lady Maribel’s hand tightened once upon Victoria’s arm.
“Smile,” she murmured. “You need not forgive her. Only leave her uncertain whether you have.”
For a little while, it went better than Victoria had expected.
That was precisely when the trap was sprung.
“Harwood.”
The voice carried across the room. Sir Peregrine Crayle pushed through the company, flushed, unsteady, and already too loud for the hour. Conversation faltered around him.
“Harwood and his bride,” he said. “Though perhaps bride is too innocent a word for a widow so practised at being discovered in dark rooms.”
Elias, who had remained discreetly nearby, came towards them with controlled haste.
“Sir Peregrine,” he said evenly. “You are drunk; and it is early, even for you.”
“I am celebrating your good fortune. A ready-made household, bought at very little trouble to yourself.”
He came nearer.
At the edge of the gathering stood Dabney with two sober-faced gentlemen beside him. Farther away, Roland watched over the rim of his glass.
Victoria saw the arrangement settle into place.
Crayle smiled at her.
“You took what another man had left, Harwood, and paid handsomely for it. Wife and child together, though there are some who might question what sort of woman the girl will become beneath such instruction.”
Victoria reached for Elias’s arm and closed her hand around it.
She had expected to restrain him. Instead, beneath her fingers, he was already rigidly still. Her touch became not a check upon him, but an assurance that he did not stand alone.
Elias looked past Crayle towards Dabney and the two gentlemen beside him.
Then he returned his attention to the baronet.
“You have said enough.”
“Have I touched a tender point?”
“You have exposed one,” Elias replied quietly. “Though not mine.”
Crayle’s smile faltered.
“You arrive drunk, insult my wife, and bring a child into it before witnesses conveniently placed to observe my answer. I begin to suspect the evening has required more preparation than your appearance suggests.”
A murmur moved through the nearest company.
“I do not know what you imagine,” Crayle said.
“No?” Elias’s voice remained level. “Then you will have no objection to leaving before your confusion worsens.”
“You threaten me now?”
“I have made no threat. That appears to disappoint several people.”
His gaze passed briefly over Dabney. The solicitor’s face had become carefully blank.
Crayle took another step.
“You think marriage has made her respectable?”
“No,” Elias said. “I think her conduct did that long before I met her.”
The answer shifted something in the room. A few faces turned, no longer towards Elias, but towards Crayle.
The baronet heard it happen.
“She was caught with me.”
“I was followed by you,” Victoria said.
Her voice carried without rising. Crayle turned towards her, surprised, as though he had forgotten she might speak for herself.
“You entered a room after I had asked to be alone,” she continued.
“You shut the door, refused to open it, and caught me by the wrist when I attempted to leave. Lord Harwood found you doing so. That is the whole account, Sir Peregrine, and you would be wise not to invite its repetition before a larger audience.”
The silence around them changed.
Crayle looked towards Roland. The movement was slight, but not slight enough.
Elias saw it. So did Victoria.
When Crayle faced them again, some of his bluster had gone.
“This is absurd.”
“Then spare yourself further embarrassment,” Elias said. “Go home.”
For one moment, Victoria thought Crayle might make the final effort expected of him. His hands flexed at his sides, and Dabney’s witnesses watched with grave attention.
Elias did not move.
That stillness defeated him.
Crayle muttered something too indistinct to carry, turned, and pushed his way through the company. The crowd opened before him with none of the deference it had shown upon his arrival.
Dabney followed shortly afterwards. His two companions remained only long enough to make their departure appear unconnected.
Across the room, Roland lowered his glass.
He and Elias regarded one another through the space Crayle had left behind.
Neither bowed.
Lady Maribel watched Crayle’s retreat with open satisfaction.
“Well,” she said, “that account ought to travel quickly enough without assistance.”
“It will,” Victoria replied.
Lady Maribel glanced towards the nearest cluster of attentive faces. “For once, I may even permit society to manage the work unaided.”
Elias said nothing. Beneath Victoria’s hand, the tension in his arm began slowly to ease.
She looked at the set of his mouth and understood, with a clarity no one else in the room was likely to share, what his composure had cost him.
“Come outside,” she said quietly.
His gaze moved to hers.
“For a moment,” she added. “Before someone decides to congratulate you.”
He let her guide him towards the balcony doors.
The night air was cold after the ballroom. Elias went to the stone rail and rested both hands upon it. Victoria stood beside him without speaking.
At length, he said, “I wanted to strike him.”
“I know.”
“I still do.”
“I know that too.”
His fingers tightened against the stone.
“I have treated my temper as though it were merely an inconvenience. Tonight I saw how readily another man might put it to use against you and Sophy.”
“But he did not.”
“No.” Elias looked out into the dark garden. “Because your hand was upon my arm.”
“You were already holding yourself still.”
“I am not certain how much longer I should have managed it alone.”
“Then it is fortunate you did not have to do it alone.”
He turned his head then.
Victoria laid her hand over one of his where it rested upon the rail. The gesture was small, but it was the first of its kind between them, and he became very still beneath it.
“You chose Sophy over your anger,” she said. “That matters.”
“I chose not to provide Hemsworth with an affidavit.”
“You chose more than that.”
He looked at her, but did not ask.
“Gerald believed anger proved love,” she continued. “For a long while, I believed him, because I had nothing to measure it against.”
Elias’s hand remained motionless beneath hers.
“Tonight you were given every excuse to become the man they expected. You did not.”
“I wanted to.”
“That is not the same as doing it.”
“No,” he said after a moment. “Perhaps it is not.”
Victoria drew a slow breath.
“You have a habit of speaking more readily of your faults than your virtues. You are forever insisting you are not as patient, or as good, as people suppose.”
“I have found it safer than advertising virtues I may fail to possess.”
“I have been watching you for six weeks. I believe I may judge the evidence for myself.”
Something altered in his expression.
“And what is your judgment?”
“That you are not always the man you claim to be.”
“I feared as much.”
The faintness of his humour eased something in her.
“You gave Sophy your stillness tonight,” Victoria said. “You may not think it a gift, but I do.”
His gaze dropped briefly to their joined hands.
“I knew what it cost,” he said. “I did not know it might be worth anything to you.”
“It was.”
The answer settled between them.
Slowly, Elias turned his hand beneath hers, offering his palm without closing his fingers around her own.
Victoria let her hand remain there.
Behind the glass, the ballroom had already resumed its noise, though the shape of the evening had changed. Crayle’s retreat would be discussed, improved upon, and carried into every house that mattered. For once, the truth had been given a fair beginning.
Neither of them tried to give a name to what had long since ceased to be merely convenience and had not yet become something either was ready to claim.
For now, it was enough to stand together in the cold and let the silence keep it.