Chapter Seven #2
But it meant she was already self-conscious as they entered the dining hall, which fell silent as every head turned.
Sarah’s hand tightened on his arm and she tried to halt. “Perhaps this is not a—”
“Nonsense,” said Montague heartily, though he too was flustered by the sudden silence. “I usually eat at the top table with the dons, but as most of the students are away, I am sure we can find a spot on a bench.”
Their footsteps echoed throughout the hall as they walked. Montague tried not to pay attention to how Sarah was leaning on him—a difficult task, as he was not the most stable on his feet at the moment.
It was with some relief, therefore, that he placed her on a bench at the end of one long table, then stepped around the end to sit opposite her.
A footman swiftly brought over a plate and placed it before him. Montague looked down. It was meat pie, just as he’d thought, with a plethora of vegetables and gravy, just as he liked it.
Sarah cleared her throat uncomfortably. Montague looked up.
The footman had declined to put a plate before her and was resolutely refusing to meet her eye.
A spark of irritation flickered through Montague’s heart. Well, he was hardly one to be manning the barricades to demand ladies be admitted as students—but really!
“My guest requires her luncheon,” he said coldly to the footman.
The footman colored. “The rules are—”
“A pox on the rules,” Montague snapped. “Bring me a second plate then, if your obsession with the rules is so demanding.”
Sarah did not look up from her hands, folded in her lap, even after the footman brought a plate and put it equidistant between them on the table. It appeared, Montague thought in bad temper, that was the best the servant could manage.
“Oh, go away,” he snarled at the man.
The footman bowed and departed. The entire room was still watching them.
Montague swallowed. He had not wished to draw any attention when he had come to Oxford. That was the point. What did he think he was doing?
He pushed the plate toward Sarah and tried to smile. “I don’t know how you stand it, you’re so composed.”
Sarah returned his smile with a watery one. “I suppose I just assume it will be this way, so I am not disappointed.”
It was such a bleak outlook, Montague rather wondered where it had come from. Being a woman, perhaps? Being without wealth, or title?
For the first time in his life, he tried to imagine what it was like without the advantages he had been born with. It was strange, isolating, as though the world were against you.
Montague shivered. He did not like it one bit.
“What would your parents think,” he said aloud, hoping to change the subject, “if they could see you here!”
He glanced about them. The Wessex College dining hall was spectacular. Tudor in origin, one could still see the old oaken beams in the ceiling. The paintings along the walls were all in different styles, different provosts having their portraits taken in the style of the day.
Sarah shook her head as she took her first mouthful of pie. “My father would have been astounded, though sadly, I will never know precisely his response. He died when I was very young.”
Montague’s heart twisted. “As did mine.”
Their eyes met and Montague wondered why he was so desperate to seek similarities between the two of them. They were worlds apart, after all. He was a duke, about to go back to France, and she…
She will have to marry well.
The thought knocked him for six. Dear God, all this time he had spent with her and he had not even asked whether she was courting anyone. Because she must be. Who in their right mind would meet Miss Sarah Lockwood and not wish to pursue her?
“A-And your mother?” he said aloud.
Sarah rolled her eyes. “She thinks it scandalous I’m learning fencing in the first place.”
“It is, rather.”
Montague had not intended to speak out of turn, merely calling it how he found it. It was scandalous. And remarkable. And bold.
All this time, he had thought of Sarah as shy—and shy she was. But she was also determined, and strove for what she wanted in a way no other woman in his acquaintance ever had.
It was intoxicating.
Sarah sighed with a shrug as irate murmurs started around them. “I am…well, I am not the sort of person who does anything scandalous. In truth, I avoid the spotlight.”
“Yes, I can see that,” Montague said slowly.
His food lay forgotten, cooling on his plate as he looked at her. Truly looked at her.
He had been remiss in his estimation of her. Beautiful, yes, very pretty. Vivacious, in a sort of quiet, shy way. Intelligent, he supposed. No one who aimed to write an epic poem could be accused of being dull.
But there was more to Sarah as a person. Any woman could be a medley of those characteristics, but they would not be Sarah.
Montague’s gaze roved over her. Examining her even as irritable words complained about her presence rose around him, his eyes caught the intricacies that made Sarah who she was.
Inky fingers. Ink-stained nails, as though she had been up all night attempting to work on her poem. She probably had been.
That was perhaps why her eyes were bold yet with bags underneath them. Sparking with passion, yes, but passion for something a little out of the ordinary. For poetry, for words, for passion itself.
“Did you stay up all night working on your poem?”
Sarah breathed a laugh as she caught his gaze. “Yes. Yes, how did you know that?”
Montague swallowed. He could not say, “Because I finally looked at you not just as a woman, as a person I want to ravish and hear cry my name. But as an individual. As a person with wants, and needs, and desires.”
And it has shaken me.
Thankfully, he did not have to answer her question. The murmuring around them was now impossible to ignore.
“Absolutely outrageous!”
“Don’t know what they were thinking, letting her—”
“—in our own dining hall!”
Montague frowned. “I’ve had just about enough of—”
“No, Montague—wait!”
But he paid Sarah no heed. Ignoring the jerking pain in his leg as he suddenly rose, he glowered at those around him.
The dining hall fell silent almost immediately.
“My name is Montague Lancaster, Duke of Caelfall,” he bit, his words the only sound in the place. “And this is my guest. Does anyone have a problem with that?”
He met the furious gazes of lesser men, staring them down until they looked at the plates or at their fingernails.
A rush of pleasure soared through him. He had done it. He had defended her.
“There now, that’s settled, and all it took was a short conversation,” he said magnanimously, looking back at Sarah—at where Sarah had been sitting.
Montague blinked. She was gone. A swish of blue skirts whisked around the door to the corridor, the only evidence Sarah had been there at all.
He cursed under his breath.
“I say!”
“Oh, go boil your heads,” he snarled, stepping out from the bench as swiftly as he could manage and snatching up his cane.
Montague found her leaning against the wall outside the dining hall. Sarah’s cheeks were blotchy, her breath rapid, and she looked like a hare before hounds.
“I don’t like—the attention of so many—I am sorry,” she managed to say.
Guilt twisted Montague’s heart. She had not asked for this.
“I am sorry,” he said awkwardly. “I did not think—”
“No, I am grateful for the way you invited me in and attempted to make me feel at home,” Sarah said, laying a hand on his arm. “I really am.”
Montague looked at her hand. It was such a simple gesture. It was probably made every day by people all over the country. But for some reason, her making it now…it earthed him in a way he could never have predicted.
It also warmed him. Far too much.
“No, thank you,” he said quietly. “I did not know of the injustice before, of the way you would be treated.”
Sarah smiled ruefully. “It is indeed an injustice, and I believe it is likely to remain so. But then you like to overturn injustice, don’t you? I saw that in you, the first time we met.”
Montague stared. She did? He had never articulated it in that fashion…but she was right. It was why he must return to France at the soonest opportunity.
And the thought stiffened both his resolve to return, and his determination not to become…entangled, perhaps was the best word. Sarah Lockwood would not thank him for giving her expectations of affection he could not return.
Even if he was not going to France, he was a duke. Unequal marriages of that kind simply did not happen. Even if Penshaw had lowered himself to such a ridiculous state.
“I…our lesson,” he said stiffly.
Sarah nodded. “I think…perhaps it is best if we do not have our lesson today. A slight headache, I hope you do not mind—”
Montague grasped at the excuse immediately. “Headache, right, yes. You had better go.”
She looked at him for a moment—just a moment.
Then she walked away.
Once she had curved around a corner, it was Montague’s turn to lean against the wall. Dear God. What was he going to do with himself?