The Dinner
The wheeled chair had been a kindness. Florinda kept reminding herself of this as Frederick pushed her into the dining room, the wooden wheels making a soft rumbling sound against the polished floors.
A kindness. Not a humiliation. Not a public announcement of her continued invalidity. Simply a practical solution that allowed her to join the household for dinner rather than taking her meals alone in the morning room like some sort of Gothic invalid waiting for the consumption to carry her off.
She had finally felt strong enough to attempt it—not merely sitting in the morning room in a day dress, but the full ritual of evening.
Her maid had spent an hour on her hair. Frederick had carried her upstairs to change, then back down again an hour later, her silk evening gown carefully arranged to hide the splint.
Two trips. Twenty-eight stairs. She had counted every one and tried not to think about the way his arms felt around her.
She was not grateful. She was irritated, which was much easier to manage.
"Your Grace," Lord Ashworth said, rising from his seat with a smile that did not reach his eyes, "how delightful to have Lady Florinda joining us at last. We had begun to wonder if she existed only in rumour."
"I assure you, my lord, I am quite corporeal." Florinda allowed Frederick to position her chair at his right hand—an honor she suspected was more about logistics than precedence. "Though I understand the confusion. Invalids do tend toward the spectral."
From across the table, Penelope offered her a warm smile. The Dowager, seated at Frederick's left, offered nothing at all—merely a cool assessment that suggested Florinda's continued existence was neither delightful nor particularly relevant.
The soup course arrived. Florinda focused on her spoon, on the precise angle required to bring broth to mouth without spillage, on anything other than the awareness that Frederick's sleeve was three inches from her elbow and she could feel the warmth of him even through the damask tablecloth.
This was absurd. She was a grown woman. She had attended hundreds of dinners. She knew how to navigate conversation and cutlery and the treacherous waters of aristocratic small talk.
She did not know how to navigate the way her pulse jumped when he passed her the salt.
"The soup is excellent," Lord Ashworth observed, in the manner of a man who considered silence a personal failing.
"It is," Frederick agreed.
"Cook's recipe, I presume? The Carthedge kitchens have always been exceptional. I remember your father saying—"
"The soup is excellent," the Dowager cut in, with the air of someone ending a conversation. "Let us leave it at that."
Lord Ashworth subsided. Florinda exchanged a brief glance with Penelope—a shared acknowledgment of the Dowager's magnificent capacity for social assassination.
The fish course replaced the soup. Conversation turned to the weather (mild), the roads (improving), and the upcoming assembly in the village (anticipated with varying degrees of enthusiasm by the assembled company).
"Lady Florinda," the Dowager said, in that particular tone that suggested a question was coming and Florinda would not enjoy it, "I understand your family seat borders Carthedge to the south."
"Ashbourne House, yes." Florinda set down her fork with careful precision. "Though my sister Ella—the Queen—holds the title now. I merely grew up there."
"Frederick spent a great deal of time at Ashbourne as a boy." The Dowager's gaze moved to her son. "You and the Ashbourne heir were inseparable, as I recall. Jon, was it not?"
The name landed on the table like a dropped knife.
Florinda's hand tightened on her napkin.
She had not heard her brother's name spoken aloud in—she could not remember how long.
Years, possibly. Her family had developed a talent for stepping around the absence Jon had left, as though his name were a hole in the floorboards that might swallow them if they acknowledged it.
"Yes," Frederick said. His voice was neutral. "Jon."
"Went to the Americas, I heard," Lord Ashworth contributed, apparently unable to resist inserting himself into any conversation. "Years ago, was it not? Seeking his fortune, or some such romantic nonsense."
Sixteen years. Jon had been gone for sixteen years. He had left when Florinda was ten, and she had spent weeks watching the road from her bedroom window, certain he would come back.
He had not come back.
He had not written. Not to her, not to Margot, not to anyone. Sixteen years of silence, of letters sent and never answered, of birthdays and weddings and funerals he had missed without explanation or apology.
"Does the family hear from him?" Lord Ashworth pressed, oblivious to the way Penelope was attempting to catch his eye, to the way Florinda's knuckles had gone white. "I imagine correspondence from the colonies must be—"
"The fish is excellent," Frederick said.
The non sequitur was so abrupt that Lord Ashworth actually stopped mid-sentence, his mouth still open around whatever observation he had been preparing to make about colonial postal services.
"I beg your pardon?" he managed.
"The fish." Frederick gestured at his plate with perfect composure. "Sole, I believe. Cook has outdone herself. Would you not agree, Lady Florinda?"
He was looking at her. Not at the fish, not at Lord Ashworth, not at anyone else at the table. He was looking at her, and there was concern in his face—or perhaps recognition—that made her want to either weep or throw her napkin at him.
She did neither. She was an Ashbourne. She had been trained from birth to maintain composure through dinner parties, scandals, and the occasional attempted regicide. She could certainly survive a passing reference to her estranged brother.
"The fish is excellent," she agreed. Her voice emerged steady. She was unreasonably proud of this. "Is that what we are discussing now? Fish?"
"I find fish safer than family, Lady Florinda." Frederick's gaze held hers for a beat longer than propriety allowed. "As a conversational topic, it rarely disappoints."
"And never fails to return correspondence." The bitterness surprised her; she had thought that wound healed over, scarred into acceptance.
Frederick's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. But all he said was: "Quite."
The Dowager, displaying either tremendous tact or complete indifference to emotional undercurrents, launched into a detailed assessment of the sole's preparation that occupied the remainder of the fish course and most of the meat.
Lord Ashworth, apparently chastened, confined himself to enthusiastic agreement with whatever opinion was most recently expressed.
Florinda ate without tasting. Her thoughts had gone elsewhere—to a ten-year-old girl watching the road, to letters she had written and never received answers to, to the particular ache of being abandoned by someone who had promised to teach her to fence and instead vanished across an ocean without explanation.
Jon had taught her chess. He had taught her to ride. He had told her she was clever and fierce and destined for great things, and then he had left and never looked back.
She had stopped watching the road by the time she was twelve.
Dessert arrived. Florinda pushed syllabub around her plate and counted the minutes until she could reasonably request to be taken upstairs. The wheeled chair, which had seemed humiliating an hour ago, now represented escape.
"You look tired," Penelope said gently, leaning across the table. "Shall I ask Frederick to—"
"I am perfectly well." Florinda manufactured a smile. "Merely unused to so much stimulating conversation after weeks of solitude."
"You are a poor liar, Lady Florinda." But Penelope said it kindly. "I shall instruct the footmen to—"
"I shall take her." Frederick was already rising. "If Lady Florinda is amenable. The footmen are clumsy with the chair on the stairs."
This was a lie. The footmen were perfectly competent. Florinda knew this. Frederick knew this. Penelope almost certainly knew this.
"How kind," Florinda said, and allowed him to wheel her away from the table, away from Lord Ashworth's oblivious enquiries and the Dowager's assessing gaze and Penelope's gentle concern.
They did not speak in the corridor. Her maid, Martha, followed at a discreet distance—propriety must be observed, even when one was being wheeled about like an invalid parcel.
Frederick maneuvered the chair with the same careful precision he brought to everything—around corners, past doorways, through the quiet passages that led to the main staircase.
At the base of the stairs, he stopped. "Ready?"
Florinda nodded. The routine was familiar by now—his arms sliding beneath her, the brief disorientation of being lifted, the way her hand found his shoulder without her permission.
Martha waited at the bottom, ready to follow once they had ascended—close enough for propriety, far enough for privacy.
He lifted her. She counted the stairs.
One. Two. Three.
"You do not speak of your brother," Frederick said.
Four. Five.
It was not a question. Florinda appreciated that. She did not have answers to questions about Jon—only silence, only absence, only the particular grief of loving someone who had chosen to disappear.
Six. Seven.
"No," she said. "I do not."
Eight. Nine.
Frederick did not ask why. He did not offer platitudes about time healing wounds or the importance of family. He did not do any of the things people typically did when confronted with someone else's pain.
Ten. Eleven.
"He taught me to play chess." She had not meant to say it. "When I was very young. I used to lose on purpose so he would play another round."
Twelve.
Frederick's arms tightened around her—not much, barely perceptible, but she felt it. A small, wordless acknowledgment.
Thirteen.
"I stopped losing on purpose when he left," she continued, not knowing why she was telling him this, only knowing that the words wanted out. "I decided if I was going to play, I was going to win. No more pretending to be worse than I was."
Fourteen.
They had reached the landing. Frederick did not set her down immediately. For a moment—three heartbeats, four—he simply held her, and she let him.
"He was my friend," Frederick said. "Before. I have not heard from him either."
Florinda looked up. His face was very close, his jaw tight with what might have been old hurt of his own.
"I am sorry," she said, and meant it—not just for herself, but for him, for the boy who had lost a friend the same year she had lost a brother.
"As am I."
Martha's footsteps on the stairs broke the moment.
Frederick adjusted his grip and carried Florinda down the corridor to her chamber, the maid trailing behind them with the steady presence of propriety restored.
He set her in the chair by the window. Straightened, stepped back, became again the composed Duke rather than the man who had held her on the landing.
Martha had already moved to the dressing table, busying herself with hairpins in the manner of a well-trained servant who had seen nothing and would remember less.
Frederick nodded once, a gesture that encompassed both farewell and something else she could not name. He turned toward the door.
"Your Grace."
He stopped.
"Thank you," Florinda said. "For the fish."
He understood. Of course he understood. "The fish was excellent," he said. "I shall ensure Cook knows her efforts were appreciated."
Then he was gone, and Florinda was alone with the ghost of her brother's name and the memory of Frederick's arms tightening around her on the twelfth stair.
She sat very still in the darkening room and did not cry.
She was an Ashbourne. Ashbournes did not cry over brothers who had abandoned them, or over dukes who noticed when they were hurting, or over any of the impossible things that had taken root in her heart during a fortnight of being carried up and down staircases.
She did not cry.
But when Martha came to help her undress, her eyes were red, and neither of them mentioned it.