Chapter 28
“Ihave been speaking with my steward.”
Frederick announced this between the second and third courses at Lord and Lady Cresswell’s dinner.
He spoke as though resuming a conversation they had already been having.
He had spent the fish course discussing the merits of a new carriage spring with Lord Barrett, and Louisa had spent it cutting her turbot into progressively smaller pieces and wondering how long a woman could survive on silence.
“About what?” she asked politely.
“About the autumn. And the years that follow.” He accepted the lamb cutlet the footman set before him and inspected it briefly. “We shall retire to Langley Park after the wedding, as we discussed. But the question of how long we remain there each year deserves a more permanent answer.”
Louisa opened her mouth to respond.
“I believe,” he continued, “that we should plan on spending the greater part of the year in Kent. London is useful during the Season, naturally, but the Season lasts only three months, and the remainder of the year is better spent at the estate, where one’s energies can be directed toward the household and the tenants. ”
Louisa set down her fork. “The greater part of the year?”
“Ten months, perhaps. Returning to town in March for the Season, departing again by July. The pattern is well established among the best families. My parents followed it for thirty years.”
A frown formed between her brows.
“Your parents did not have friends in London?”
He shrugged. “My mother had acquaintances. She managed them by correspondence.”
Louisa looked at her plate.
“What about Eleanor?” she asked after a long silence.
“Miss Whitmore is welcome to visit. I have already said so.”
“Twice a month, according to the schedule.”
Frederick’s knife paused against the plate. He looked at her, and she recognized the expression. The mild, patient surprise of a man who believed he was being generous and could not fathom why generosity was insufficient.
“Twice a month is reasonable, Louisa. More frequent visits become disruptive to the household routine.”
Still, she pushed forward.
“Eleanor is my closest friend. She has been my closest friend since I was fourteen years old.”
“And she will remain so.” He cut a precise slice of lamb and placed it in his mouth.
He chewed, swallowed, dabbed his lips with the napkin.
“Friendship does not require proximity. My mother maintained her connections for decades from Langley Park. She found the quieter pace of the country far more suited to meaningful correspondence than the chaos of London.”
“Your mother may have preferred it. I have not been asked whether I prefer it.”
She spoke without considering it. Lord Barrett glanced in their direction. Lady Cresswell’s laughter dimmed by a fraction.
Frederick set his knife and fork together on his plate and turned to face her patiently.
“I am not imposing a preference, Louisa. I am describing what is practical. Langley Park requires management. The household requires attention. The tenants require a visible mistress of the estate. These are not punishments. They are responsibilities.”
“And my interests outside the household?”
“Which interests?”
“Lady Fitzwilliam invited me to her Thursday salon. I have attended three times. She introduced me to Sir Humphry Davy’s widow, who is doing extraordinary work collecting his papers for publication. I had hoped to continue.”
Frederick sighed deeply. He reached for his wine.
“Lady Fitzwilliam’s salon is a London fixture, Louisa. You will be in Kent.”
“I could come up for Thursdays. The coach takes four hours.”
“Four hours each way for an afternoon of conversation.” He set down the glass. “That is not practical. You will find the local society in Kent more than adequate. The vicar’s wife holds a very respectable reading circle.”
The vicar’s wife. A reading circle. He was offering her a replacement the way one offers a child a wooden horse after taking away the living one.
“Lady Fitzwilliam considers my opinions worth hearing,” Louisa insisted. “She told me so at the Academy.”
“I am sure she was gracious. Lady Fitzwilliam is generous with encouragement.” He smiled. “You will not miss it as much as you imagine. The country has a way of clarifying one’s priorities.”
She stared at him. He had reduced Lady Fitzwilliam’s invitation, the first time a woman of genuine influence had looked at Louisa and seen a mind worth cultivating, to a pleasantry.
A kindness extended out of generosity rather than genuine regard.
He had not been in the gallery when Lady Fitzwilliam called her the most refreshing voice in the room.
He had not seen the six faces turning toward her when she spoke about Dido.
He did not know because he had never asked, and he was not asking now.
“I have also written to the vicar at Langley Park about the parish charities,” Frederick continued, moving past the subject smoothly.
“He assures me there are opportunities for a woman of your sensibility. Visiting the poor, that sort of thing. You will find it fulfilling. It is a responsibility the mistress of an estate is expected to assume. My mother found it very rewarding.”
“Did your mother choose to find it rewarding, or did she simply run out of alternatives?”
Frederick’s hand stilled on his wine glass. For a moment the table shrank to the narrow distance between his chair and hers. Lord Barrett had turned to his other neighbor. Lady Cresswell was occupied with the footman.
“My mother was a sensible woman,” he said at last. “She understood that a wife’s place is beside her husband, and that the comforts of country life are not a deprivation but a privilege. I do not know why you insist on treating Langley Park as though it were a prison.”
“Because you are describing it as though the doors only open when you decide they should.”
She watched the surprise register, brief and genuine, the look of a man who had expected the conversation to end three exchanges ago and could not understand why it continued.
“You are overwhelmed,” he sighed. “These decisions are large, and they are arriving all at once. Once we are settled, the picture will clarify.”
“The picture is already clear, Frederick. You have drawn it for me. You have told me where I will live, how often I may see my friends, which charities I may support, and which interests I must set aside. You have presented every one of these decisions as settled.” She held his gaze.
“At what point does the consultation begin?”
He studied her for a long moment. His composure did not crack.
“I am trying to build us a life,” he said. “I am sorry if the construction is not to your liking. But these are decisions that must be made, and I have made them with your welfare in mind.”
“My welfare,” she repeated. “Not my wishes.”
“Your wishes and your welfare are not always the same thing.”
He said it gently. Kindly. As though he believed every word.
The dessert arrived. A syllabub in glass cups, each one trembling when the footman set it down. Frederick took his spoon and ate. He rested his hand on the back of Louisa’s chair and leaned close enough that the starch in his cravat pressed against her bare shoulder.
“I shall collect you at ten on Monday,” he murmured. “I want us to call on Lady Ashton together. She has opinions about the wedding breakfast that I should like us to manage before they become instructions.”
She nodded and ate the syllabub, tasting nothing.
The ladies withdrew after the covers were cleared. Louisa stood beside the drawing room fire while Lady Cresswell distributed coffee and Mrs. Fenton recounted a story about her daughter’s wedding that Louisa could not follow.
Eleanor was not there. Eleanor had not been invited to Lord Cresswell’s dinner because Eleanor’s family, though respectable, did not rank high enough for Lady Cresswell’s table. Her absence felt like a missing wall.
The carriage ride home was quiet. Louisa let herself in and trudged upstairs. She settled into a chair and allowed a sigh that she had been holding in to escape.
She pulled off her gloves. The sapphire sat on her bare finger, and she turned it slowly, feeling the cool metal against her skin.
The band was fractionally too large. Frederick had not asked her size.
He had guessed. He had guessed, and the ring sat loose on her finger, and she had worn it for weeks without mentioning that it slipped when her hands were cold.
He did not know her hands. He did not know she took her tea without milk. He did not know she was afraid of horses or which books she enjoyed and why.
He admired her. He admired her capability, her composure, her willingness to listen while he spoke. He admired the parts of her that served his plans. He did not know the parts that did not.
Oliver had known.
She pressed her palm against the arm of the chair. The upholstery was worn thin at the edges.
Oliver had seen her. Not the capable version Frederick admired.
Not the restful, sensible, biddable woman who would run a household and manage correspondence and reduce her friendships to twice a month.
He had seen the woman who argued about Carthage in front of strangers and held ten-minute conversations with botanists about ferns and laughed until she could not breathe at jokes about a valet’s grief over a lost evening coat.
He had looked at her as though she were already enough. He had never once asked her to be less.
She pulled the ring from her finger. It was a ring selected by a man who had evaluated his options, assessed the field, and concluded that Louisa Fairchild would make a sensible investment. Not because he loved her. Because she fit.
She set the ring on the windowsill.
The truth settled within her and refused to let go.
She did not love Frederick. She had loved the idea of him for so long that the idea had hardened into certainty, and the certainty had carried her through two Seasons of hoping and a third of pretending, and now the pretending had worn through and what lay beneath it was not devotion. It was habit.
She loved Oliver.
She loved him even though he had walked away.