Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
"Absolutely not."
"Papa, you have not even heard my full argument yet."
"I have heard enough of it to recognize where it is going, and I would rather refuse you at the start than watch you build an elaborate case toward a conclusion I have already decided.
" Her father did not look up from his newspaper, though the faint twitch at the corner of his mouth suggested he was rather more amused than his tone let on.
"You wish to attend Dr. Charles Wetherby's lecture on the Athenian constitution. "
"I wish to attend a public lecture on a subject I have studied for the better part of a year, in a hall that admits any interested party who purchases a ticket, which I have already done, incidentally, with my own pin money."
"A public lecture attended almost exclusively by gentlemen, Amelia, which is precisely the difficulty."
"Then I shall be the sole exception, and Dr. Wetherby will simply have to manage the shock of a woman in his audience actually understanding the material.
" She set down her teacup with rather more force than strictly necessary.
"Papa, I have read three of his published papers already.
I have asked Mr. Bell to order the fourth.
I have earned the right to hear the man speak in person, and I do not see why my presence in a lecture hall ought to trouble anyone half so much as it apparently troubles Mama. "
"It troubles your mother," her mother said, from the doorway, arriving in time to catch the last of it with an expression of long-suffering patience, "because you have already made yourself the subject of considerable talk this Season, and I do not relish the prospect of adding a lecture hall full of gentlemen to the list of places society expects to find you arguing rather than dancing. "
"I am capable of doing both, Mama, should the occasion require it."
"That is precisely the difficulty." Her mother settled into the chair opposite, folding her hands.
"You are already the young lady who dismantled a duke at the Fairmont ball.
You are already the young lady who argued philosophy at Richmond where any of society's gossips might have seen you.
I had hoped, foolishly it seems, that you might spend at least one evening this Season behaving as though you wished to be married rather than examined by a room full of Cambridge men. "
"Perhaps I do not wish to be examined by a room full of Cambridge men, Mama. Perhaps I simply wish to hear a lecture."
"Perhaps," Mary said, drifting in from the hall with an apple in hand and an expression of gleeful interest, "she wishes to see whether a certain duke will be in attendance, which I understand is rather more likely than not, given how frequently his name has come up in recent conversation."
"Mary."
"I am simply observing." Mary took an unrepentant bite of her apple, dropping onto the settee beside their mother with the easy sprawl she'd never quite grown out of.
"Though I confess, if I were permitted to attend a lecture purely to watch you argue with a duke in front of an audience, I would abandon every other engagement without hesitation. "
"There is no duke to argue with. This is a lecture on the Athenian constitution, not a private assembly."
"Of course," Mary said, entirely unconvinced, with an expression that suggested she intended to say nothing further and believe absolutely none of it.
Her father sighed, folding his newspaper at last, and studied Amelia with the look he wore when he had already decided to relent and simply wished to make her wait a moment longer for the privilege.
"I will escort you myself. That is my final offer, and I will not be argued out of the condition.
If society wishes to whisper about my daughter attending a lecture, they may whisper about her father sitting beside her while she does, and see what they make of that instead. "
"Papa." Amelia was across the room and embracing him before he'd finished the sentence, delight rising fast enough to chase away every careful argument she'd prepared and no longer needed. "Thank you."
"Do not thank me yet. You have not sat through two hours of Dr. Wetherby discoursing on Athenian governance beside your own father, who I promise you will fall asleep well before the second hour concludes.
" He patted her shoulder, resigned and fond in equal measure, and returned to his newspaper as though the matter were entirely settled, which, judging by her mother's long, unhappy sigh from the settee, it apparently was.
"You are hopeless," her mother said, though there was no real heat left in it, only the exhaustion of a woman who had learned, over one and twenty years, precisely which battles were worth the effort of fighting to their conclusion.
"I am simply interested in the topic, Mama."
"You are simply interested, I repeat," Mary said, around another bite of apple, grinning outright now, "in whether a certain duke will be sitting somewhere in that lecture hall, and I do hope, for both our sakes, that he is, because I have not had this much entertainment from your Season since the Fairmont ball. "
Amelia did not dignify that with a response, though she spent rather longer than necessary that evening selecting a gown that was neither too formal for a lecture hall nor too plain to be noticed, and told herself, quite firmly, that the choice had nothing whatsoever to do with the possibility Mary had so unhelpfully raised.
The lecture hall was already half full when they arrived, rows of hard wooden benches filling steadily with gentlemen in dark coats, the low hum of academic conversation carrying through the room in a way that reminded her, not unpleasantly, of the bookshop, and Amelia had just settled beside her father in a row near the back when a familiar voice spoke from just behind her shoulder.
"I confess I did not expect to see you here, Miss Hartwell."
She turned to find Sebastian standing in the aisle, dressed with his usual precision, an expression of genuine surprise breaking through his careful composure in a way she had rarely seen.
"Nor I you, Your Grace, though I suppose I ought to have guessed.
A lecture on the Athenian constitution seems precisely suited to a man who once argued the merits of primary sources at a ball. "
"I have heard Dr. Wetherby speak before. He is competent enough on the constitutional structure, though I find his treatment of the ostracism procedure regrettably thin."
"I have read the same complaint in one of his critics' reviews, and thought it rather unfair, given the limited surviving evidence on the subject."
"Then we are destined to disagree again before the lecture has even begun, which I confess does not surprise me in the slightest." He glanced toward her father, offering a proper bow. "Honourable Dr. Hartwell. A pleasure."
"Your Grace." Her father's tone carried a careful neutrality that gave away nothing of what he thought of the encounter, though Amelia caught the faint, assessing look he gave Sebastian before returning his attention to the program in his hands.
Sebastian took the seat beside her that happened to be empty, and if either of them noted how naturally that had occurred, neither remarked on it, though Amelia was rather too aware of his presence beside her for the whole of the lecture's rather dry opening remarks.
"You disagree with me already," he murmured, low enough that only she could hear, as Dr. Wetherby began his opening survey of the Athenian assembly. "I can see it in your expression."
"I have not yet said a word."
"You did not need to. You have a particular way of narrowing your eyes when you believe a speaker has made an error, which I have now observed on three separate occasions and find increasingly difficult to ignore."
Amelia turned her head slowly to look at him.
"You have observed me on three separate occasions?"
"Your expressions are difficult not to notice."
"Are they?"
"Yours are."
The answer was so immediate, so matter of fact, that Amelia felt warmth creep into her cheeks.
She turned her attention back to the podium before he could see it.
"Then perhaps you ought to attend to the lecture rather than my expression, Your Grace, and allow us both to form our objections properly before comparing notes."
"A fair point," he conceded. He faced forward, and for several minutes Amelia managed to convince herself that the matter had ended there.
Then, without looking at her, he murmured, "Though I confess, I find your expression far more interesting."
Her eyes widened.
She glanced at him, but he was watching Dr. Wetherby with an air of such perfect composure that she wondered whether she had imagined the remark.
The lecture ran the better part of two hours, precisely as her father had predicted.
Amelia found herself thoroughly absorbed despite the hard bench and the room's close, overheated air, occasionally exchanging a glance with Sebastian at some thin argument or overreaching claim, the shared amusement passing between them without either needing to voice it aloud.
When the formal address concluded and the floor opened for questions, discussion breaking out in scattered clusters throughout the hall, she rose to stretch and, in doing so, dropped her handkerchief without noticing.
"Miss Hartwell." Sebastian bent to retrieve it before she'd fully noticed its absence, and when he held it out to her, his fingers brushed hers briefly, the exchange entirely unremarkable to anyone watching, and yet Amelia felt the whole of her attention narrow to that single point of contact with an intensity that startled her.
"Thank you," she managed, tucking the handkerchief away.