Chapter 24 #2
He scoffed. “Your mother’s auction will proceed without you.
She has managed it perfectly well for years.
” He steered the horses around a knot of riders near the gate.
“And you will see Miss Whitmore again at Christmas, or whenever she cares to visit. I shall not forbid your friendships, Louisa. I simply believe that a new wife’s place is in her husband’s home, establishing herself. Society expects it.”
“I suppose you expect it too. But… What if I would like to stay closer to my mother?”
He laughed shortly.
“You will think differently once we are married,” he said. “The country changes one’s perspective. There is a rhythm to the year at Langley Park, and once you settle into it, you will wonder why you ever preferred London.”
She looked at him, then away. “And if I do not think differently?”
“My mother felt precisely as you do. She was a London girl. Loved the theatre, the galleries, the bustle. Within a year at Langley Park she never mentioned them again.”
“Perhaps she stopped mentioning them because nobody listened.”
The words left her mouth before she could arrange them into a safer shape. Frederick glanced at her, and for a brief moment his expression shifted into genuine confusion.
“I hardly think that is fair,” he said then. “My father was a devoted husband.”
“I did not mean to offend. I only meant that stopping speaking about a thing is not the same as ceasing to want it.”
Frederick adjusted his grip on the reins. “You are tired. The Season has been long, and wedding preparations are exhausting. I understand entirely.” He reached across and patted her hand gently.
“I have arranged for my solicitor to draw up the marriage settlement next week,” Frederick said when she did not respond. “There is no need for you to attend. These are dull affairs, and I see no reason to burden you with legal language.”
“I should like to attend.”
“There is truly no need.”
She frowned and looked at him. “It is my settlement, Frederick. My name will be on it.”
He smiled. “And I shall make certain every clause protects your interests. That is my responsibility. You need not worry about any of it.”
She looked down at her hands. Was this what she had been dreaming of? He was offering her safety. He was offering her comfort. He was offering her a life in which she would never be asked to make a difficult decision, because Frederick would make them all for her.
Oliver would not have chosen for her.
The thought arrived unbidden and cut cleanly.
Oliver would have handed her the settlement and asked what she wanted changed.
He would have argued with her about the clauses, laughed when she cited precedents she had read in her father’s old legal almanac, and spent the carriage ride home debating whether the pin money was sufficient or insulting.
He would have treated her opinion as though it mattered.
The curricle turned out of the park onto Park Lane. Frederick did not notice that she was quiet.
“We are invited to dinner with Lord Ashford,” he announced. “On Thursday.”
Louisa simply nodded.
“Excellent. I shall send word.” He glanced at her. “Fresh air suits you. You have more color than usual.”
He said it warmly, approvingly, surveying her the way he might survey a newly purchased garden showing its first bloom.
Louisa looked at the houses passing on her left.
Frederick hummed faintly under his breath, and he did not ask what she was thinking because it had not occurred to him that she might be thinking at all.
He pulled the curricle to a halt outside her door and climbed down first, then offered his hand. She took it. His grip was firm, correct, practiced. He handed her down exactly as instructed, exactly as he always did.
“I shall call tomorrow at four,” he said, and kissed her gloved knuckles. His lips barely touched the leather. “We must discuss the wedding breakfast. My mother has opinions about the menu, and I should like us to present a united front.”
Louisa frowned slightly at this. “A… a united front? It is a menu for our wedding.”
He nodded pleasantly. “Precisely. Good evening, my dear.”
She watched the curricle turn the corner. The sound of hooves on cobblestones faded, and the street was quiet, just a lamplighter working his way toward the far end of the road and a cat watching him from a windowsill.
Inside, her mother was writing acceptances at the parlor desk, a fresh pot of ink beside her and the good stationery fanned in an arc. She looked up when Louisa entered. “How was the drive?”
“Lovely. Frederick sends his regards.”
Her mother frowned slightly. “You do not sound like a happy woman, Louisa.”
Louisa shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I am tired, Mama. That is all.”
“You are engaged to a fine man, Louisa. A little fatigue is natural. There is so much to arrange.” She dipped her pen and returned to her letters, already composing the next line before the ink was dry.
Louisa climbed the stairs. In her room, she closed the door and stood in the fading light from the window. The Guizot treatise sat on the shelf beside her bed, between two volumes of poetry. She reached for it, opened to the page she had marked, and read the first line again.
Every child possesses, from the earliest age, the capacity to learn, provided the opportunity is not withheld by the indifference of those who govern them.
She read it twice. Then she sat on the edge of her narrow bed, still wearing her gloves, the sapphire hidden beneath the leather, and pressed the open book against her chest.
Frederick admired her. He would provide for her. He would give her a well-ordered home. He would never know her. And until this moment, sitting in the grey dusk with a French treatise held tight against her breastbone, she had not realized how much that mattered.