Chapter 15
Oliver watched her go. He watched her take Frederick’s arm, watched Frederick’s hand settle at the small of her back, watched her tip her chin up to laugh at a remark he could not hear. His stomach clenched. He picked up the claret from the marble ledge. He drank it in one swallow.
“Steady.” Sebastian appeared beside him with two glasses of port. “Lady Acker’s claret deserves better than that.”
“I was thirsty.”
“Thirsty. Of course.” Sebastian pressed the port into his hand. “Congratulations are in order, I understand. The house party.”
“Your arrangement appears to be a resounding success.”
“It is.” Oliver drank the port with more care than the claret. Across the supper room, Frederick was pulling out Louisa’s chair at a small table near the window. He murmured a remark. Louisa pressed her hand to her mouth, stifling a laugh. Frederick looked gratified. “She is doing well.”
“She is doing brilliantly. Lady Arden complimented her during the interval. Lady Arden has not complimented anyone since the Treaty of Amiens.”
“I believe that is an exaggeration.”
“It is barely an exaggeration. The woman once told the Austrian ambassador his French was provincial.” Sebastian sipped his port. “Miss Fairchild managed to make her laugh.”
“Louisa is easy to like. People are finally noticing.”
“People. Or Frederick?”
“Both. That is the point.”
“Of course. The point.” Sebastian turned to face the supper room.
Frederick was refilling Louisa’s glass from the claret jug, leaning close, his elbow on the table between them.
The posture was intimate, deliberate. Oliver watched Frederick’s fingers brush hers as he passed the glass. He looked away.
“You seem tired,” Sebastian observed.
“I am tired.”
“And yet you claimed the final waltz with Miss Fairchild. Which, for a tired man, seems an unusual expenditure of energy.”
“It was the only dance remaining on her card.”
“Because you arrived late.”
“I was detained.”
“You were in the corridor for five minutes adjusting your cravat. I saw you through the door.”
Oliver set the port glass beside the claret glass on the marble ledge. Two empty glasses. He straightened his cuffs.
“Your cravat was flawless. It is always flawless. You could tie a cravat in your sleep. You once tied a cravat during an earthquake in Naples without dropping the mirror.” Sebastian’s voice was mild, conversational, carrying the easy register he employed when he was about to say precisely the thing Oliver least wanted to hear.
“What I find interesting is that you spent five minutes preparing yourself to enter a ballroom you have entered a hundred times before, as though tonight required more armor than usual.”
“You are reading too much into things.”
“I could not disagree more.” Sebastian paused. He studied Oliver’s profile. “Are you going to tell me what is bothering you, or shall I guess?”
“Nothing is bothering me.”
“Excellent. Then you will not mind that Frederick is currently describing his family’s rose garden in Kent to Miss Fairchild with the earnest devotion of someone planning his proposal speech.”
Oliver’s hand twitched toward his empty glass. He stopped it. He folded his arms.
“I am delighted for them,” he said.
“You look delighted. You look precisely as delighted as a man watching his dentist approach with pliers.”
“Sebastian.”
“Oliver.”
They stood in silence. The supper room was emptying around them, guests drifting back toward the ballroom.
The orchestra had started the next set, its melody faint through the doorway.
Frederick stood, offering Louisa his arm.
She took it. They walked through the doorway together, her blue silk catching the candlelight as she passed.
She glanced over her shoulder. Her eyes swept the room. They found Oliver. She held his gaze for a heartbeat, her expression uncertain, asking a question he could not answer from across twenty feet of polished marble.
He lifted his hand. A brief wave. Casual. She smiled. She turned away. She disappeared through the door.
Oliver pushed himself off the paneling. He crossed to the window. The garden below Lady Acker’s supper room was dark except for a row of lanterns strung between the lime trees, their glow smudged by the mist that had crept up from the river.
“The arrangement is working,” he said to the window. “Frederick is attentive. Louisa is gaining confidence. Lord Ashton’s wife has invited her to Wiltshire. Every piece is moving into position.”
“I did not ask whether the arrangement was working.”
“Then what are you asking?”
Sebastian was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, the teasing had left his voice.
“I am asking whether you are going to spend the next fortnight in Wiltshire watching Frederick Langley court a woman you cannot stop looking at, and I am asking whether you have considered what that will cost you.”
“I am not going to Wiltshire.”
“You were invited.”
“I will decline.”
Sebastian’s eyebrows rose. “The Duke of Ashford, who has never once declined an invitation from Lord Ashton, is suddenly unavailable for a fortnight in the country during the height of summer.”
“I have estate business.”
“You do not.”
“I have correspondence.”
“You have a secretary.”
“I have a great many responsibilities that do not involve house parties.”
“You have a great many excuses that do not involve honesty.” Sebastian set his glass on the window ledge. “Oliver. I have known you since we were fourteen. I am not going to pretend I do not see what is in front of me.”
“There is nothing in front of you. There is a man who is tired, who drank too much claret, who would very much like to go home.”
Sebastian watched him for a long moment. The supper room was nearly empty now. A footman was clearing the tables, stacking plates with practiced efficiency. The candles had burned to stubs in their silver holders.
“Very well,” Sebastian said. “Go home. Get some sleep. But I will say one thing, and then I will leave it alone.”
“I doubt that.”
“Be careful.” Sebastian’s voice was quiet.
“Be careful that you do not mistake arrangement for armor. You built this scheme to protect yourself from the Season’s matchmakers.
Perfectly sensible. But I have watched you for weeks now, and the person you are protecting yourself from has changed.
You are not shielding yourself from ambitious mothers anymore, Oliver. You are shielding yourself from her.”
He squeezed Oliver’s shoulder. He left.
Oliver stood at the window. The lanterns swayed between the lime trees. The mist thickened above the garden wall. Below, a carriage clattered past on the wet street, its lamps cutting two bright lines through the dark.
He was tired. That was all. The evening had been long, the dances numerous, the champagne indifferent. Sebastian was being dramatic. The arrangement was working. Everything was fine.
He collected his coat from the footman at the door. He found his carriage on the lamplit street.
He sat in the dark. The horses moved. London passed outside the glass.
He thought about Wiltshire. He should go.
Declining would raise questions. Besides, Louisa might need his guidance during the house party.
Frederick’s friends would be assessing her.
She would want to make a good impression.
She might need him to steady her nerves, to catch her eye across a drawing room, to remind her with a glance that she belonged in every room she entered.
She might need him.
The carriage turned onto Park Lane. He loosened his cravat, the one Sebastian had correctly identified as flawless. He pressed his head against the seat.
Louisa did not need him anymore. That was the truth of it.
She had handled Lady Arden alone. She had charmed Lord Ashton’s wife without coaching.
She had filled her dance card before he arrived.
She had managed the entire evening with the confidence he had spent weeks trying to show her she already possessed.
She did not need him. The arrangement was nearing its purpose. When Frederick proposed, when she accepted, the transaction would be complete. She would move to Kent. He would return to Ashford Hall. The Season would end. Another would begin.
A frown formed between his brows. He would still need her, however. The arrangement was for the Season, and Frederick could wait. Would wait.
He lifted his chin. The arrangement was that they would help each other. She had no right to find fulfilment in the arrangement and run off with the man of her dreams before finishing her part.
The carriage stopped before Ashford House. He stepped out. The night air smelled of damp stone and honeysuckle. The house was dark except for a single lamp in the entrance hall.
He climbed the stairs. He sat on the edge of his bed, still dressed, coat still on. The longcase clock in the study below ticked through the silence.
He was tired. He was simply tired. Any sensible man would be tired after an evening of dancing, champagne, conversation.
The tightness behind his ribs was fatigue.
The hollow feeling in his chest was hunger.
The fact that he could still feel the warmth of her waist beneath his palm, two hours after the waltz had ended, was simply a matter of the body remembering what the mind had already dismissed.
The clock struck one.
He pulled off his coat. He lay back. He stared at the ceiling.
He was tired. He was fine. The arrangement was working. Everything was fine.
He pressed his eyes shut and told himself this until the words lost their meaning, which took considerably less time than he expected.