Chapter 4
Alice could not, for the first second after he stepped back, remember how to be in a room.
The Duke had stepped back. His hand had fallen from her jaw.
The string quartet had stopped. The room had not stopped, exactly, but it had narrowed around her into a series of disconnected impressions she could not yet make into a coherent picture, and she stood at the center of it with her gloved hands balled into fists and a heat behind her ribs she could not name.
She was about to be in a great deal of trouble.
That, at least, was the next thought, and it pulled her back into her body.
She straightened her spine. She unballed her hands.
She looked at the Duke very briefly and saw that he had already refitted himself into the shape of a man who had not just kissed a woman in front of half the ton.
The reassembly had been so swift that for a moment Alice found herself almost angry at how easily he could do it.
“Your Grace,” she forced out.
“Lady Alice.”
“My family will be here in a moment.”
“I imagine so.”
“I do not know what to say to them.”
“Allow me.”
Behind her, somebody was running. Heels on parquet, fast and uneven. Alice did not turn. She knew the sound. Her mother had been wearing those slippers all evening.
“Alice.” Her mother’s voice, pitched low, frantic, beautifully composed. “Alice, my darling, what—”
Alice turned her head at last.
Her mother was at her elbow, beaming as though her face had been frozen into that expression.
Behind her mother, her father was approaching with the slow, terrible deliberateness of a man who had not yet decided whether to be furious or magnanimous.
Behind her father was the Marquess of Dowton, who had gone a strange grayish color.
And behind the Marquess, like the bright knot at the center of a storm, was Daphne.
Daphne’s face was pale.
Alice’s heart cracked open in her chest.
Oh… Oh, Sister. Oh no.
“Lord Westbury.” The Duke’s voice cut across the gathering air, smooth and low and offensively calm. “Lady Westbury. I must beg your pardon for the spectacle. There is a matter that we had better discuss in a more private setting.”
“Your Grace.” Her father was breathing hard. “That was the most appalling—”
“I am aware. The fault is entirely mine. Lady Alice has done nothing for which I am not prepared to answer.”
“Your Grace, I—”
“If I might call on you tomorrow morning at, say, ten, My Lord, I believe a great many of these difficulties will resolve themselves.”
It was beautifully done.
Alice watched it happen. Her father’s mouth, half open to bellow, closed and tightened. He nodded once, sharply.
Suddenly, the whole circle of them was standing on the Worthington floor like a small private negotiation behind a glass that the rest of the room was pretending not to look through, and the Duke was managing them. He had the matter in hand within a count of ten.
The Marquess of Dowton was the one who broke.
“Lord Westbury…” he muttered under his breath. He had gone the color of a wax candle. “My Lord, I think the betrothal—”
“Lord Dowton,” her father snapped.
“My Lord, with respect. I do not believe under the circumstances—”
“Isaac, this is not—”
“Father…” Daphne’s voice, small and hoarse, interrupted.
Everybody turned.
Alice looked at her sister and felt the air whoosh out of her lungs. Daphne had stepped between Isaac and their father with her chin lifted in a way Alice had never seen before. Her hands were shaking, and she was looking at Alice as though she were a stranger.
“Alice,” she said, “what have you done?”
All Alice could do now was hope it had looked real.
Hope the room saw nothing but a foolish woman ruining herself for no reason anyone would ever guess at and that her sister saw the same.
Because if Daphne suspected, even for a moment, that the kiss had been for her, that Alice had spent herself to buy her sister free, then the whole of it had been for nothing.
Alice opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
“Daphne…” she managed at last. “Daphne, please, it is not—”
“Are you all right?” Daphne’s voice was still too quiet. “Alice, are you all right?”
“I—”
“I do not understand.”
At her side, the Duke had gone very still. Alice saw him out of the corner of her eye. He was watching her sister with an expression she could not quite read, and she could feel his attention, sharp and waiting.
She understood, with a flash of something very like gratitude, that he had not let go of the situation. He was holding it. Loosely, but he was holding it. He would catch whatever fell.
She found her voice.
“I did not do it for you, dearest.” She made herself look at Daphne.
She made her voice as gentle as she could.
“I did it because I never loved Lord Dowton, because I did not want him, and because I have wanted for a long time to be reckless about something. There. That is the worst confession of the evening. I am very sorry to have made it in front of half of London.”
She was lying.
Daphne nodded. She did not look convinced, but she did not press.
“Mother.” Alice turned. Her mother was twisting her gloves.
“Father. I am so very sorry. I have embarrassed all of us this evening, and I have certainly embarrassed Lord Dowton beyond bearing. I shall accept any punishment you choose, but I cannot in good conscience accept his offer of marriage now. It would be a kindness to release him from it.”
“Alice—”
“It would be a kindness, Mother. He has done nothing. The fault is entirely mine.”
She drew a breath. She did not look at the Duke.
She did not look at the Marquess. Instead, she looked at her father and said in the lightest voice she could muster, “If only there were a way to make it up to you, Father. To Lord Dowton. It would be terrible to ask my sister to accept his proposal in my stead, of course, but—”
“That is a great idea,” the Marquess and Daphne said in unison.
They said it a beat too quickly, too loudly, and they both heard themselves do it and immediately went red.
Daphne’s hand flew to her mouth. The Marquess turned the color of a poppy.
At Alice’s left, the Duke made a sound that she would have called a laugh if she had not known better.
Alice fought the urge to smile. Alas, she could not manage it perfectly. She felt her own mouth twitch.
Her mother made a confused little sound, and her father drew himself up. Beside her, the Duke shifted his weight by an inch, and she thought, We have done it, thank God. Then her father nodded slowly, the way he did when he had been outmaneuvered and was working out how to pretend he had not.
“It is,” he said carefully, “an idea worth considering.”
“It is the very idea I thought of,” her mother put in brightly. Two minutes ago, she had not had any idea at all. Clearly, she was already planning the wedding. “Of course, it is the very idea. Daphne, my darling, you must not be in any way distressed. This is a perfectly natural arrangement.”
“Mother…” her sister said, her voice very small. She was looking at Isaac, who was also looking at her.
“It is decided,” her father declared.
Nothing had been decided. Everything had been decided. Her mother started discussing banns and dates.
Alice turned, with the most polite slowness she could muster, toward the Duke.
He was watching her.
He had stepped back enough that the space between them was respectable, and his hands were folded behind his back. His expression had turned neutral again, but his eyes had not. They were gray, alert, and faintly amused.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “So much.”
“You are a strange lady.”
“I know.”
“But I know love for a sibling well.”
“I know.”
He inclined his head. “As I said, you owe me now. I do not do favors. I make deals,” he added quietly.
“That is not fair.” She kept her voice low.
Her smile had not faltered. They were standing close enough to be seen having a private exchange and far enough to be deniable.
She knew, with a sudden clarity, that he had positioned them this way on purpose.
“I did not know the rules when you kissed me.”
“Well, you will find out now.”
“What sort of deal?”
“We shall discuss it tomorrow.”
“Your Grace…” Her face went hot, and she looked away. She did not want him to see it.
The Duke cleared his throat and turned to her father. “My Lord.”
“Tomorrow morning, Your Grace, as we agreed.” Her father’s voice was firm.
He had recovered some of his dignity now that catastrophe had been avoided, and he was using it.
“For now, we must go home. The hour grows late, and I think the Worthingtons would rather not host us much longer. Tomorrow morning at ten. You may say what you like to me then.”
“As you wish, My Lord.”
“Come, Alice. Daphne. Lord Dowton, Lady Westbury, we shall see ourselves out.” He turned.
Her mother, still beaming, gathered Daphne under one arm and Alice under the other and steered both of them toward the door.
Alice did not look back. She could feel the Duke’s gaze on the back of her neck for the length of three steps, and then it lifted, and she was permitted to walk away.
The ride home was silent. In the dark, Daphne reached for Alice’s hand. Alice let her take it. They sat with their fingers tangled in the space between them.
Alice watched the gas lamps slide past, thinking, I have done it. I have done it. Oh, I have done it. What have I done?
The knock on her door came at half past one.
Alice had not undressed. She was sitting in her gown on the edge of her bed, her hair half down, her slippers still on.
She had not been able to bring herself to ring for her maid. The thought of Sally undoing her stays, asking her brightly how the ball had been, was more than she could bear.
“Come in,” she said.
It was not Sally.
Daphne stood in the doorway in her white nightdress, her hair pulled in a braid, her feet bare on the floorboards. She had her robe folded over her arm, as though she was not sure she would stay long enough to put it on.
“May I sit?” she asked.
“Always.”
Daphne came in and sat beside her on the edge of the bed.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Alice could hear the clock in the hall striking the half hour. She could hear, very faintly, somebody moving in the kitchen below. She watched her sister fold her hands in her lap, the way Daphne always folded her hands when she was trying not to cry.
“Are you all right?” Daphne asked at last.
“I am quite well.”
“Truly?”
“Truly, dearest.”
Daphne nodded slowly. Her eyes stayed on the floor between them.
“And the Marquess.” Her voice was very small. “You truly never…?”
“Truly never,” Alice assured. She put her arm around her sister’s shoulders and pulled her close.
Daphne came easily, the way she used to come when they were children.
“I liked him, Daphne. As a friend. As a kind, awkward, sweet-tempered young man who I think will spend the rest of his life cataloging beetles and being very gentle with his wife. I never wanted to marry him. I was going to. I would have. But I never wanted to.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
Daphne let out a breath she had clearly been holding in for a while.
“Well then.” She sat up and rubbed her face with the back of her hand.
“I am glad. I just never knew you cared for the Duke. I thought you hated him all this time. Otherwise, I would never have accepted, Alice. You know that, do you not?”
Alice’s stomach dropped. “Oh yes.” She kept her voice even. “Yes, I do, little one.”
“I am not little anymore.”
“You are always little to me.”
Daphne let out a watery laugh. “Tell me about him.”
Alice opened her mouth. She had not thought this far. She had thought about ruining herself, about the Marquess, and about Daphne. She had even briefly thought about the Duke of Langton’s shoulders, but she had not thought about the request her sister had just made.
“He is…”
“Yes?”
“He is…”
“Alice.”
“He is very tall and has gray eyes.”
“Alice, I have seen the man before. You must do better than that.”
“I am very tired, dearest.”
“Did he kiss you only because he had decided he wanted to marry you, or—”
“Daphne.”
“Or did he kiss you because he is in love with you as well?”
The words hung in the air.
Alice watched her sister in her nightdress with her braid coming undone and her cheeks still pink from the lemonade and the long shock of the evening, watching her with the clear-sighted seriousness of a child who knew when she was being lied to.
“I do not know,” she said very quietly.
It was the most honest thing she had said all evening.
Daphne nodded. She kissed Alice’s cheek, gathered her robe over her arm, and stood up. “Then I shall come back tomorrow,” she said, “and you may try answering again.”
She went to the door.
“Daphne.”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.” Daphne’s hand paused on the latch. “Alice.”
“Yes.”
“Whatever you did, I am still glad you did it. I do not know if that makes it better or worse.”
Then she slipped out, and the door closed softly behind her.
Alice remained seated on the edge of her bed in her gown and her slippers.
She did not move. She did not undress. She did not ring for Sally.
She thought of Daphne’s face at the supper table, lit from inside by the question of a beetle’s wing case, and she knew, with a clarity that surprised her, that whatever was waiting for her tomorrow, the kiss had been right.
She had done one right thing tonight. That was more than she had done in three Seasons.
Then she thought of the Duke’s hand on her jaw.
She did not sleep.