Chapter 21 #2
“I am to be your wife in six days.”
“Yes.”
“And I am supposed to convince a great many people that we are madly in love.”
“You are.”
“Then I must know a great many small ordinary things about you. I would very much like to begin with the ordinary things. What is your favorite color, Your Grace?”
Cassian regarded her with a careful look. It was clear that he had not been expecting to be asked that question in the gallery in front of his brother’s portrait.
“I can’t say.”
“You can’t?”
“I have never been asked, Alice.”
“In thirty years.”
“In thirty years.”
“That is a long time to not have been asked about one’s favorite color, Your Grace.”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, think of one right now.”
“It’s green.”
“Green?”
“Green, Alice. And I did not think of it right now. I have had two years to think about it. I have decided green.”
Alice felt her face warm.
She did not answer at once. She was wearing pale yellow this evening, not green. She had worn green at Almack’s a week ago. She set that small fact aside in the careful place she had been keeping such facts about Cassian since the ball, and she moved on.
“And your favorite hobby?”
“Boxing.”
“You box?”
“I have been boxing since I was fifteen. Lord Greencliff taught me. I have boxed three times a week in every week of my life since I was sixteen, except for the week of my father’s funeral and the week of Joanna’s measles. I am a moderately competent boxer.”
“You—”
“Yes.”
“Your Grace, I have known you for two years, and I have not, on any single occasion, been told that you box.”
“You did not ask, Alice.”
“I should not have thought to.”
“No.”
She laughed. She laughed in the gallery in front of his only surviving painting with her tears not yet quite dry on her cheeks, and it was a bright sound.
The corner of his mouth twitched. “And you, Alice?”
“Me?”
“Your favorite color.”
“Yellow.”
“That I had guessed.”
“You had?”
“I have noticed.”
“My favorite hobby is to embroider.”
“That I had not guessed.”
“It is very tedious, Your Grace, but I am very good at it. And in my experience, a thing one is very good at is the only thing one can do in a drawing room for three hours straight without going mad. My mother taught me. My grandmother taught my mother. My grandmother’s mother taught my grandmother.
Embroidery has been in my family for at least four generations, and I am the latest in the line. ”
“And what are you not good at, Alice?”
She laughed. “Painting, Your Grace.”
“Painting.”
“Indeed. I am the worst painter in Buckinghamshire. My governess despaired of me. My mother despaired of me. The drawing master my father hired from London at great expense when I was fourteen despaired of me before luncheon on the first day. I cannot make a tree look like a tree. I cannot make a face look like a face. I once painted an apple on a table, and my father very gravely asked me what variety of pear it was.”
“Alice.”
“It is a small irony, Your Grace, that you and I are standing in front of your only surviving painting, given the particular catalog of mine.”
“What did you tell the drawing master?”
“I told him that I did not see the point of painting a thing I could already see. He did not recover from the conversation.”
“And your sister?”
“Daphne does not like any of these much. She prefers to read about insects.”
“Insects?”
“Yes. She has been reading about a particular butterfly for the last three years. She has a small book. On more than one occasion, she tried to read it to me at breakfast, and on every one, I threatened to throw it into the kitchen fire. We have a small understanding now—she reads the book silently, and I do not ask any questions about it.”
“Lord Dowton…”
She nodded before he finished.
“… reads about insects.”
“He reads about a great many of the same insects, Your Grace. They are extremely well suited.”
“I agree.”
“I was relieved when I understood it.”
“I know.”
She looked at him. She looked at him because she had not, in the ordinary catalog of favorite colors and embroidery, expected him to say I know in the quiet way he had. He had not taken his eyes off her face since she had begun to laugh.
She drew a slow breath.
“I have not painted in sixteen years,” he said quietly. “And I will not paint at any point in the future.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Why?”
He did not answer her at once.
Cassian looked at the painting of his brother, whom he had loved more than anything. The love that had been at the back of his ribs when he was twelve had not gone anywhere.
“Because it distracts me from my duties.”
“That is your father’s reason, Cassian.”
“Yes.”
“It is not yours.”
“No.”
“Then what is your reason?”
He did not answer. He could not.
For sixteen years, he had not asked himself the question.
He had taken the answer his father had given him at fourteen and had carried it in the careful, undisturbed place inside him where his answers about himself were kept, and he had not since that fated Tuesday in October taken it out and looked at it.
Alice had just taken it out. She had taken it out in his gallery with her hand hanging at her side and her face very serious, had looked at it, and had told him, with the small unanswerable courtesy of someone unwilling to let a man lie about himself, that the answer was not his.
He did not know what his answer was. He did not know whether he had ever had one.
He looked at her. She looked back.
“We are expected in the long drawing room for the card game,” he said quietly.
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Joanna has organized whist.”
“Has she?”
“With small forfeits for the losers.”
“What sort of forfeits?”
“I have not been told.”
She smiled. She gave the bright, tired smile she had given on the lawn at nuncheon when she had been wet to the knees and her hair had been loose at one side.
Cassian, who had been wanting to see that smile again ever since, felt the small wanting of it land in his chest in a place he had not known a smile could land.
“Then we had better go down, Your Grace.”
“Yes.”
He offered her his arm, and she took it.
He led her out of the gallery without closing the door behind them. He left it open.