Chapter 12
Alice had been at Hyde Park for forty-five minutes by the time Cassian appeared.
She had not slept. She had not pretended to sleep.
She had lain in her bed for the better part of three hours, watching the strip of light move across her ceiling, and counted three or four times the number of things that had occurred at Almack’s the previous evening that she did not, on reflection, mean to think about.
The count was eleven. It was the same number of slots on her dance card. She had found this very funny at three in the morning and had stopped finding it funny by four.
She had dressed at six, gone downstairs at half past, and informed her father at breakfast that she meant to promenade at Hyde Park with her sister and Sally.
Her father had grunted at his paper and said, “Mind the chaperone.” And she had said, “Of course, Father.” She had not, throughout it, met his eyes.
Daphne, by contrast, had been chattering since dawn.
After all, she had not opened the curtain at the back of Almack’s terrace.
She had spoken Alice’s name; Alice had answered; Daphne had cheerfully accepted that her sister had been admiring the moon and had gone away.
On the ride home, she had decided, in the dreamy, oblivious way that she decided most things, that Alice and the Duke must have been very much in love this whole time, and she had spent the night before breakfast and the morning after it telling Alice so.
Alice had been told eleven times that the Duke was very handsome. She had been told six times that penning his name in all the slots was the most romantic thing Daphne had ever heard of in her life. She had been told twice that Daphne would not have believed it and was so glad to be wrong.
Alice had not corrected her. Perhaps she had not found the strength.
“There,” Sally pointed out quietly on Alice’s other side. “That is Lord Dowton.”
Alice looked up.
Isaac was on the path some twenty paces ahead of them, alone but for a stick, and he was looking with the particular attention of a man cataloging a thing into the deepest folder of his memory at a small green creature on a leaf.
He had not yet seen them. He was so focused on the creature that Sally, who was old and very kind and had taken note of a great many things in her time, did Alice a favor by clearing her throat loudly enough that he would hear her without having to be addressed.
He looked up, his face turning pink. He bowed at the waist very carefully, the way one bowed when one had been rehearsing the bow in one’s head for several minutes. “Lady Alice. Lady Daphne. Good morning.”
“My Lord,” Alice greeted.
Daphne said nothing. She was looking down the path.
“It is a very fine morning,” Isaac said.
“It is, My Lord,” Alice agreed.
“I have just been looking at a particular species of leafhopper. I think it may be a new one. I have been keeping a notebook.”
“Have you, My Lord?”
He had taken a small leather notebook out of his coat pocket and opened it. He was, without seeming to be aware of it, holding it out to Daphne, who was still looking down the path.
Alice gave her sister a small nudge with her shoulder.
Daphne looked up. “A leafhopper, My Lord?”
“Yes, yes, a leafhopper. I am not certain whether it is the species I think it is because the marking on the back is… Well, here, I have made a sketch.”
He walked over to her clumsily. He had not, in all his life, been quite sure how to walk a path with a young lady, and it showed in his shoulders and his stride.
Daphne took the notebook from him with her small, bare-fingered hand.
Sally, who had been hired by Lady Westbury sixteen years ago and was very fond of the sisters, said in a low voice at Alice’s ear, “I shall go a little behind, My Lady,” and dropped back three paces, where she could still see them all and where Isaac and Daphne, who had bent their heads over the notebook, would not have to remember they were being chaperoned for a while.
Alice walked on. She walked perhaps ten paces, and she walked them very slowly.
She realized she had not planned what to do when Daphne and Isaac became absorbed in one another, which was a thing she had quite specifically arranged her own ruination to bring about, and now, she found herself in the awkward position of having achieved her aim and being mildly, ridiculously jealous of how well it had worked out.
“Can’t face the rejection?”
She did not turn. She had heard him come up behind her, the smooth tread of a man whose boots were made by a man who knew his trade. She had no intention of letting him know that, but she had heard him, nonetheless.
“Your Grace.”
“Lady Alice.”
“You have followed me to Hyde Park.”
“I have been here since seven. You have come to the Park.”
“I had not seen you.”
“You had not looked.” He fell into step beside her.
This time, he did not offer his arm. He did not, she realized after a moment, dare to. He kept perhaps eighteen inches between them and walked at her pace, looking mostly at the path.
“How is your sister?”
“She is being courted, Your Grace, by a man who is showing her a sketch of a leafhopper.”
“Is he?”
“He is. She is presently listening to him with her whole attention. It is the prettiest thing I have seen in three days.”
“I am sorry to have missed it.”
“Are you, Your Grace?”
“No.”
She laughed.
She had not meant to laugh. She had meant to keep her composure, as she had kept her composure all of last night, as she had been keeping her composure all of this morning.
But she laughed briefly, low at the back of her throat, and she felt him register the laugh with an almost imperceptible drop of his shoulders.
She understood, with a small, unhelpful warmth in her chest, that he had not until that moment been sure of her.
She had not, until now, considered that he might not have been sure of her.
“Your Grace,” she said carefully, “you did not say goodnight to me last night.”
“You did not say goodnight to me, Lady Alice.”
“Oh. Did I offend you, my beloved?”
He gave her a small smile that was not quite a smile. “Thoroughly. You should be punished for your insolence.”
“Your Grace.”
“You ought to be sent to bed without supper.”
“It is half past nine in the morning.”
“Then sent to bed without nuncheon. The principle stands.”
She did not mean to laugh again. The wretch was making her with the light touch on the back of her hand. He was doing it on purpose, and she did not mean to give him the satisfaction of knowing it had worked.
However, he seemed to know. He rested his fingertips very briefly on the side of her waist where her pelisse buttoned, turned her down a path that veered off the main walk, then let his hand drop before Sally could catch them at it.
“I had not vanished,” he said quietly. “I had been standing at the fourth window for an hour and a quarter watching you not look at me.”
“That is not vanishing.”
“It felt like vanishing.”
“Oh, did it, Your Grace?”
“Yes.” He paused.
He did not look at her. He looked at the path.
The path was bordered by a low hedge, the hedge was bordered by a stretch of trampled grass, and beyond the grass was a small cluster of plane trees. Cassian nudged her in the direction of the plane trees which were not visible from where Daphne and Isaac were now standing over the leafhopper.
“Lady Alice, we must talk.”
“Must we?”
“About the other night.”
“Oh.”
She had been waiting for this. She had been waiting for it since the carriage ride home.
She had been waiting for it since she had lain awake in her bed and watched the strip of light.
She had been waiting for it, and she had imagined it a dozen different ways, and she had not been able to imagine even one of them in which she ended the conversation feeling steadier than she had begun it.
She drew a breath and let it out slowly.
“You mean,” she said, “when you kissed me.”
“When you kissed me back, Lady Alice.”
“Surely, I did not.”
“Quite desperately.”
“Your Grace!”
“You did. But I shall not press the point. I shall press a different one.” He stopped.
They had reached the cluster of plane trees. He turned her gently by the elbow so that her back was to the wider path. The trunk of the nearest tree was at her shoulder, and he stood at the other shoulder.
She could not see Sally from this position, and Sally could not see her.
Cassian had arranged this neatly. He had arranged it the way he arranged everything—deliberately, using the exact amount of rope he had been given.
“I should not have done what I did the other night.”
The warmth in her chest turned cold. “Oh.”
“It was a mistake, Alice. I apologize.”
“A mistake.”
“I should not have gotten carried away. It will not happen again.”
“I do not understand. You want a wife.”
“Yes.”
“You will be married to me within the month.”
“Yes.”
“You will, on the night of our wedding, want an heir.”
Cassian went very still.
At the word heir, he had taken half a step closer to her.
She did not, in the moment, realize he had done it.
His hand had come up to the trunk just at the side of her head, and his other hand braced against the trunk on the other side, and all of a sudden, she found herself caged between the tree and his body.
“And what,” he rumbled, “would a lady like you know about heirs, Alice?”
In five and twenty years of being a sister, a daughter, and a young woman, Alice had been mocked in many ways by many men.
None of them had ever mocked her in the low tone Cassian had just used.
None of them had ever stood within an inch of her while they did it.
None of them had ever made her feel the things she was feeling now.
She lifted her chin. “Enough to ask, Your Grace.”
He was looking at her mouth.
She thought, for the briefest second, that he was going to kiss her again, against the trunk of a plane tree in Hyde Park in the late morning of an ordinary Thursday with her chaperone fifty yards behind them on the gravel.
She thought he was going to kiss her, and she thought that if he did, she was not going to step back.
She thought a great many other things, all of them quite useless, in the half-second before he closed his eyes and stepped back.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What?”
“It does not matter. It was a mistake the other night, it would be a mistake here, and it will not happen again. I apologize.”
“But if we get married—”
“Not if I can avoid it.”
“Because you dislike me?”
“Because I do not want an heir.”
“What?”
He had gone very still. “I do not want an heir.”
“You—”
“I do not want an heir from you. I will not want an heir from anyone. I have decided some time ago that there will not be any more Dukes of Langton after me, and the decision is not a thing I shall be revising, and there is no use in pretending it might be otherwis, because pretending will do neither of us any kindness in the long run.”
The path was very quiet. For several seconds, Alice heard nothing but the small wind in the plane trees and her own pulse in her ears.
“You do not want to have children.”
“No.”
“At all.”
“At all.”
“But—”
“There are reasons, Alice.”
“What reasons?”
“They are not reasons I will share at Hyde Park with your chaperone fifty yards behind us, your sister fifty yards behind your chaperone, and Lord Marbury—yes, I have seen Lord Marbury on the bridle path on the far side of those trees, and I shall have words with him later about it—within hailing distance.”
“You will not have words with Lord Marbury.”
“I will have words with Lord Marbury.”
“He is twenty-years-old and has no sense.”
“He had quite enough sense to dance with you last night with his hand half an inch higher on your back than the dance required, Alice, so I will—”
“Your Grace, you are changing the subject.”
He stopped.
He had been speaking quickly, almost heatedly, and now, he stopped abruptly, like a man who has been caught at something.
He drew in a shaky breath. “Alice.”
“Your Grace.”
“I do not want to have children. It is not something I will be swayed on. I am sorry.”
“I—”
“Lady Alice!”
It was Sally. She appeared at the edge of the plane trees, slightly breathless from walking fast over uneven ground, and behind her was Daphne.
Behind Daphne, in the middle distance, was a small dark shape on the river path that Alice was almost certain was Lord Marbury on horseback.
He had, in fact, raised his hand in greeting.
“There you are, My Lady,” Sally said, hurrying over. “We had better go back home. Look at the clouds. We will be rained on if we are not quick.”
She was looking at Cassian as she said it with the particular attention of a lady’s maid who had been with her mistress since the latter was nine and who had in sixteen years learned to read the small change in her mistress’ face that indicated she did not like what she had been told.
“Of course, Sally,” Alice heard herself say. “We shall come at once.”
She did not move.
Cassian did not move either. He was, she registered with a part of her mind that was not currently doing the work of standing upright, looking at her with an expression that she had not seen on him before and that she did not, on the whole, wish to be looking at.
Because if she kept looking at it, she was going to cry, and crying was not a thing she did, especially not among plane trees in Hyde Park in front of her maid.
She lifted her chin. “Your Grace.”
“Lady Alice.”
“It seems we have run out of time this morning.”
“It seems we have.”
She turned and walked away with the small steady steps her governess had taught her when she was nine that a lady ought to use when she was walking somewhere very particular and did not wish to be judged on her gait.
She did not look back. In fact, she did not look back for the whole length of the path home. But she felt him standing among the plane trees behind her, watching her go for as long as the path remained in his sight.