Chapter Six
Jane surveyed the drawing room as May hurried around studying the servants as they laid out the tea table by the windows.
They were in the small drawing room, not the grand Gold Room planned for parties, but their own area tucked into a corner of Shore’s Edge.
The place was washed in sunlight from the tall windows draped in pale sea-green silk, gently stirring in the ocean breeze.
The ceiling was trimmed with delicate wedding-cake-like plasterwork in wreaths of roses done by Italian artists and the walls were papered in more green silk, bringing the gardens inside.
Delicate gilt French sofas and chairs, upholstered in green-and-white stripes and scattered with May’s needlepoint cushions, dotted a faded floral carpet.
May’s desk in the corner was piled with her monogrammed stationery and invitations, and books were stacked everywhere.
The gleaming white marble mantelpiece was carved with scenes of Neptune and mermaids, with the sea just beyond the garden, and decorated with porcelain figurines, an ormolu clock and pink roses in engraved silver vases.
May’s portrait hung above it, and the everywhere was cluttered with work boxes and Eddie’s toys.
Jane surveyed it all in some dismay, as it was too late to tidy. She wondered what Benedict’s grand estate looked like, no doubt filled with ancestral antiques and always spotless.
‘Maybe we should have used the Sevres china,’ May murmured as she adjusted an arrangement of white and yellow flowers in a blue porcelain vase.
‘You ordered that set especially for the ball,’ Jane said. ‘It’s not even completely unpacked yet.’
‘Yes, but I want everything to look just right,’ May said. ‘To make him feel at home! He lives at Rollston Court, you know. It’s one of the oldest houses in England, with sections dating back to the Conquest. I’m sure he’s used to such grandeur. I want him to feel comfortable.’
‘And his house has a roof that leaks like a sieve, so I hear,’ Connor said, turning the page of his financial newspaper from his armchair in the corner. ‘Sounds like our old room on the East Side, only bigger.’
‘Roofs can be repaired! An Elizabethan gallery with original linenfold panelling is unique,’ May scolded.
‘I am sure he’ll be quite happy with how the drawing room looks,’ Jane said. ‘It’s lovely! And he isn’t snobby.’
And she realised that was quite true. For all Benedict’s reserved demeanour, his unreadable, chilly stillness, he showed no trace of Old World disdain.
None of the hauteur everyone expected from a duke.
Surely that meant something good? It must mean that her Benedict, that young man who was so passionate about his work in life, was in there somewhere under the caution and reserve.
Or maybe she was just being ridiculously hopeful. A duke couldn’t help but be distant. They seemed to live in a different world from everyone else. Dukes lived in a world that was profoundly different from ordinary people. How could Benedict be different?’
‘Well, the man knows his yachts, I’ll say that for him,’ Connor said with admiration. ‘He goes to Cowes every year, and saw America’s Cup a few years ago. I heard that…’
May smiled at him with fond exasperation. ‘You and your boats! You’re like a pair of little boys at a pond in the park with paper ships.’
‘The Eos is not a boat, May m’eudail. It’s a schooner.’
‘If you say so. I’m just glad you have a hobby other than going to the office at all hours, my love,’ May said.
A maid hurried in with a tiered, flowered china tray of freshly baked scones. ‘At least we have plenty of scones,’ Jane said.
May laughed ruefully. ‘Well, I did promise him plenty of scones, didn’t I?
It turns out they are a specialty of Mrs Smythe; the woman is a marvel.
She made blueberry and strawberry as well as plain.
Do you think that’s too non-traditional?
And then there will be almond cake and cucumber sandwiches.
Salmon paste, too. Some of the jam from the raspberries in the garden, clotted cream… ’
Jane crossed her arms and contemplated all this trouble for tea.
‘I’m not sure we need to work so hard to impress him.
’ But of course, deep down inside, she also wanted to impress him, or at least make him feel comfortable in their home.
It suddenly felt as if ordinary things, things she hadn’t even noticed before, carried such weight.
May stepped back to study the tables as the maids rearranged the trays and platters. ‘I thought he was rather nice. I admit, he quite surprised me. He was so unaffected and friendly, not haughty at all.’
‘I thought I might ask him if he’d like to go out on the Eos some time,’ Connor said.
Jane was quite surprised. Her brother was very choosy indeed about who got to share his precious boat, and he wasn’t a man to be impressed by an English ducal title.
May looked surprised too. She and Jane exchanged a startled glance. ‘Well, if the duke can listen to you going on about the engine or mast or whatever, and spare the rest of us, I do like him more and more.’
Jane’s mother came in, bouncing little Edward in her arms. ‘Are you talking about the duke, mo chlann ghradhach?’
‘What else?’ Jane muttered. She straightened a few tea cups, trying to shake away those feelings.
‘He rather reminded me of Eagen,’ her mother murmured.
Jane gasped. How on earth could Benedict make her mother think of her father? He’d been no duke; he had just been a dock worker. Her few memories of him were of laughter and hugs. ‘He reminded you of Papa? How?’
‘Well,’ she said, letting Eddie chew on the ends of her cap ribbons as she stared dreamily out the window.
Jane knew the tale of her parents’ romance so well.
They’d known each other from childhood, growing up in the same village, and had dared to set out for a new life in American together.
They’d had only each other and baby Connor then, but her mother spoke of those days as the best of her life.
How could she ever settle for less for herself?
‘Both of them are handsome, of course. The duke’s eyes were more blue than my Eagen’s, I think.
And there’s something so serious about both of them, as if they’re always lost in thought, lost by themselves.
Something… Well, something kind, I suppose you could say.
The duke really listens to people, doesn’t he? ’
‘Kind?’ Jane whispered.
‘Oh, yes.’ Her mother suddenly turned and looked right into Jane’s eyes, as if she saw her daughter’s hopes and fears there. ‘Don’t you see it, nighean?’
And Jane thought she had seen it, maybe just for a moment. Afraid she would reveal her emotions, she turned and made her way through the glass doors to the garden, murmuring an excuse about gathering flowers.
She’d long known she couldn’t marry, couldn’t let her life, her work, be taken from her.
But, ever since she’d seen Benedict again, she had to admit there was some tiny, fluttering hope deep inside.
It lived in the spaces between the words and the silences they’d shared, in the way she caught herself imagining his smile or the sound of her name on his voice.
It was a cautious hope, and she didn’t know if she dared hold onto it at all.
Benedict hurried along the ocean-side path, hardly seeing the stunning seascape, the brilliant azure of the sky or the white sails dotting the waves like toys.
He hardly saw the people who strolled past, their glances and whispers as they realised it was the duke.
He could only think that he would soon be at Jane’s home and would have to think of what to say to her, and how not to fall into the fountain again.
‘Dukes don’t have to say anything,’ Aunt Louisa had informed him. ‘Just stand there and look important! People will flock to your side.’
She hadn’t been able to fathom why he would walk to Shore’s Edge and not take the carriage, arriving as a duke should.
Being in nature was always an escape for him, a way to think clearly.
His thoughts were tangled too tightly to sit still; he needed motion and space to unwind them.
The world outside was indifferent and uncomplicated, unlike a duke’s life.
Trees didn’t expect anything from him. Out here, he could just think about Jane and be free. At least for a moment.
He stopped to stare out over the ocean, the waves that always ebbed and flowed no matter what happened in the world around them.
He remembered dancing with Jane, holding her close; the way her hand had fitted in his as if it had always belonged there, and how the rest of the ballroom had seemed to blur around the edges and vanish.
All he’d known then was how she felt close to him, and the way time had slowed down.
With his hand at her waist, no words had been needed between them at all.
It was like that golden kiss they’d shared so long ago, just the two of them in the whole world.
He’d told his aunt he didn’t understand American ladies—and he didn’t, Jane least of all. But he knew he had to find a proper wife, a wife who wouldn’t wreak such havoc with his mind and emotions as she did. But he couldn’t help going to her house now. Couldn’t wait to see her again.
As he made his way past a stand of jagged, boulder-like rocks touched with the swoosh and crash of waves, he heard a strange whining sound caught on the wind—soft, weak, but urgent, almost like a lost toddler.
Benedict stopped in his tracks and glanced around.
He didn’t see anything strange, just the boulders, washed smooth by endless ocean waves.