Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Requirements for the Duke of Ravensmere to Become a Husband Worth Keeping.
He nearly laughed, reading the title alone, some old academic instinct recognizing, with genuine admiration, the precise architecture of an argument he had absolutely no grounds to dispute.
She has given me a thesis with six conditions and expects me to defend it through action rather than words.
He read the sixth requirement last and felt something in his chest tighten. He will not touch me, in any manner, until I have decided for myself that he has earned the right to do so again. It was, he understood immediately, the fairest and most devastating clause of the six.
"Hopkins." He folded the paper with more care than necessary. "Send word to Mrs. Hartwell's stationer that I require the finest paper in the shop, I have a letter to respond to."
The first requirement took them to the village near the Ravensmere Estate outside London. Amelia collected him early from Ravensmere House in a hired gig, her chin lifted with the determination he had learned meant she intended to be obeyed without argument.
She had dressed simply, a walking dress in soft green that caught the light rather than competing with it, her hair pinned looser than usual and had somehow neglected to notice how thoroughly lovely she looked simply walking beside him in ordinary daylight.
"You are meant to be following my instructions, Your Grace, not admiring the scenery."
"I am admiring the scenery precisely as instructed. You did not specify which scenery."
"That is a very convenient interpretation." Her mouth curved despite herself, the first real warmth he'd seen from her since the ball, and something in his chest eased at the sight of it. The village on a bright morning was not, Sebastian reflected, a place he had ever properly looked at.
"You are to speak to Mrs. Aldous," Amelia informed him, standing before a small shop front hung with dried herbs and ribbon, her tone entirely without mercy.
"She has run this shop for thirty years and knows more about the estate's tenants than either of us.
You will ask her about her stock, and you will not attempt to steer the conversation toward anything you find more interesting. "
"I do not attempt to steer conversations."
"You’ve attempted to steer at least three since we left the house, Sebastian. I have been counting." She held the shop door for him, an inversion of manners that made something in him want to protest and made him bite the protest back, rememberingthe terms of the arrangement. "In you go."
He went. Mrs. Aldous proved to be a small, sharp-eyed woman fully unimpressed by his title, who informed him within two minutes that his steward had been buying inferior candle wax from a supplier three villages over when her own stock was both cheaper and better, and then continued by explaining, in considerable detail, precisely why.
Sebastian listened, resisting three separate urges to redirect the conversation toward something he found more immediately useful, and found, somewhat to his own surprise, that he had, despite himself, stopped resisting and simply become interested.
"You did not attempt to correct her figures," Amelia observed, once they were back on the lane, something almost pleased in her voice despite the careful distance she still maintained between them.
"I wanted to. Her arithmetic on the wax pricing was slightly off."
"And yet you did not."
"I have been informed," he said, dry, "that today is not the day for correcting anyone's arithmetic."
"You are enjoying yourself." Amelia said it almost accusingly, glancing sideways at him as they walked.
"I am tolerating myself rather better than I expected to."
"That is not the same as enjoying yourself."
"No," he admitted, and found, to his own surprise, that he meant it plainly rather than defensively.
"It is better than that. I have spent years believing a village full of people I am obliged to protect had very little to teach me that I could not learn more efficiently from a ledger. I begin to see I was wrong about that."
She said nothing to that, but something in her expression eased, and he noticed, walking beside her in the early afternoon light, as the first real progress of the day.
They moved through the rest of the village at her direction, a ribbon shop where she made him hold three different spools against the light and offer an honest opinion rather than simply agreeing with whatever she suggested, a small bookstall where he was forbidden from correcting the proprietor's rather generous account of Herodotus, a churchyard where an old groundskeeper talked his ear off about roses while Amelia stood back, arms crossed, watching him struggle not to redirect the conversation toward something more efficient.
"You did remarkably well," she said, as they finally turned back toward the gig, the afternoon light going gold and low over the village rooftops. "I expected you to give up by the second shop."
"I very nearly did."
"I know. I could see the struggle." She laughed, and the sound, easy and unguarded, landed somewhere warm in his chest. "You are learning, Sebastian."
"I am trying."
"That is all I have asked of you."
The social event came a fortnight later, a modest evening at Lady Fairweather's, and Sebastian arrived already braced for the strain of an evening spent without complaint, a challenge he had not fully appreciated the difficulty of until he found himself forced to endure Lord Aldridge’s opinions on the corn laws without once excusing himself toward better conversation.
Amelia wore ivory that evening, simply trimmed, her dark hair swept up with a single strand of pearls threaded through it, and Sebastian found his attention returning to her again and again across the crowded room, watching her navigate a conversation with Mrs. Pemberton with the grace she brought to every room she entered, whether arguing philosophy or discussing the weather.
"I confess I am surprised, Your Grace, that your wife troubles herself so thoroughly with scholarship," Lady Ashbourne said, near the card room, her voice pitched just loud enough to carry.
"It seems a rather unbecoming pursuit for a young duchess, all that reading.
I do wonder it has not addled her manners. "
Sebastian felt the old, sharp retort rise, some part of him wanting, badly, to simply dismantle the comment the way he'd dismantle any flawed argument.
He held it a moment, considering the list, considering her, and found, when he finally spoke, that the truth came out more forcefully than any careful scholarly rebuttal would have managed.
"My wife's scholarship is the single most impressive thing about her, and I would remind you, my lady, that impressive is not a quality London seems to possess in any great abundance this Season, present company included.
" He said it evenly, without heat, and watched Lady Ashbourne's mouth thin into a less confident line before she excused herself toward some other conversation.
Amelia, catching the tail end of the exchange from across the room, arrived at his elbow a moment later with an expression he could not entirely read.
"You defended me."
"I stated a fact, though I understand the distinction may seem academic." He held out his hand as the orchestra struck up a new set. "Dance with me."
She took it, and he drew her into the set with considerably more care than he usually brought to a ballroom, and for the length of the dance he said nothing at all about Herodotus, or Witherby, or the ostracism procedure, or any of the dozen arguments that usually filled the space between them, content simply to watch her, the candlelight catching the pearls in her hair, her eyes bright with something that looked, cautiously, like the beginning of trust returning.
"You did not once mention philosophy," she said, as the set concluded.
"I noticed."
"I am impressed."
"Do not sound so surprised. I am capable of occasional restraint.
" He escorted her from the floor, and found, watching her laugh at something Mary said a moment later across the room, that restraint had cost him far less than he expected, and given him, in exchange, an evening he found he'd genuinely enjoyed rather than merely endured.
The book arrived from her a week after that, a slim volume of poetry he would never have chosen for himself, and Sebastian read it cover to cover in a single evening, and found himself, the following afternoon, admitting to her over tea that her interpretation of the third poem had been considerably better than his own first reading of it.
"Say that again," Amelia said, setting down her cup with visible delight. "I do not believe I heard you correctly."
"I said you were right, and I was wrong, and I do not intend to repeat myself simply for your amusement."
"I would enjoy hearing it a second time regardless."
"You were right, Amelia. About the poem." He said it plainly, without qualification, without the careful hedging he usually wrapped around any concession and watched her expression soften sa she looked at him the way she had looked at him in that small library, before any of it had gone wrong.
"You are improving remarkably, Your Grace."
"I am trying to," he corrected, "which I have come to understand is rather the entire point."