Chapter Ten
‘Now, you see that florist’s shop over there?
’ Jane said, gesturing with her furled parasol to the display window across the street.
Hodgson’s florist’s was filled with colour—red, pink, yellow and purest white.
She had tried so hard to forget their day on the water, that kiss.
But no matter how far she ran from the thought, it lingered at the edges of her mind: the touch of his lips, the taste of him, the way their breath had caught for a heartbeat.
She tried to bury it under distractions, but it always surfaced in quiet moments.
Then he’d appeared on the doorstep of Shore’s Edge, asking her for a walk. How could she ever forget if he was going to be there? But soon, she knew all too well, he would not be there at all. He would find his American wife and go back to his English estate.
‘Indeed,’ he said, tilting his head to study the floral display.
She wondered if he thought of their kisses too.
She caught herself trying to read every glance, every smile, every pause between words, searching for the answer.
It would be better for everyone when he did go home and she could pick up the threads of her life again.
‘When you meet the American lady you want to woo, you must buy her Somerset carnations from just there, the silver-edged white ones. It is the only fashionable place in town; they furnish all of the Mrs Astor’s parties.’
‘Hodgson’s. Yes, I see.’ He swung his walking stick as they strolled past the shops, and she was so glad to see he seemed lighter that day, happier. She wondered what had happened. Could he have settled on a certain lady already? ‘Are those carnations your favourites?’
‘Not really, but etiquette demands it. They are the most popular flowers this season.’
‘Then what is your favourite?’
‘Yellow roses, I think,’ she said after a moment of thought.
‘Yellow ones?’
‘Of course. They feel like sunlight held in your hands, all warmth and joy. They don’t shout, like red roses, but glow.’
He flashed her a smile, one of his real ones, where the edges of his eyes crinkled. ‘They do suit you, then.’
Jane felt her cheeks turn warm and glanced away before he could realise she blushed at his words.
They stopped in front of a bookshop, and Jane remembered their first meeting at the 8th Street Bookstore, when they’d moved through the towering shelves together and she’d glimpsed a rare understanding.
‘And what if I wanted to buy her a book?’ Benedict said. ‘The lady I should be courting.’
‘Well, then, I am really sure she would adore you for ever!’ Jane laughed.
Well—she would surely adore him for ever if his book landed on her dressing table.
She was much too perilously close to that as it was: perpetual adoration.
She knew he would leave soon, and it was like watching a storm form on the horizon—too far to touch yet, but close.
‘But etiquette insists it must be just the right sort of book, or it would be a great scandal,’ she made herself say lightly.
‘What a terrible minefield etiquette and courtship are.’
‘Truly they are.’
‘Should we go inside and have a browse? You could show me exactly which books I must avoid at my peril.’
Jane laughed. She would never have thought it could just be so fun to be with a duke. If he had to leave, at least she would have these moments to look back on. ‘You know I would never say no to a bookshop visit.’
As they stepped into the shop together, Jane became aware of other shoppers watching them, whispering about the duke, but she didn’t care.
Walking into a bookstore always brought a quiet, soul-deep kind of happiness for her.
The moment she opened the door, the scent of paper and ink greeted her like an old friend.
Every corner felt like a discovery filled with a quiet, private joy in knowing she belonged here.
It was even finer with Benedict beside her. They walked along an aisle side by side, fingers brushing now and then. There was no pressure to fill the silence; it felt full, not empty, almost as if they could begin to write a new story there.
They paused at a display of new French novels: Maupassant, Pagnol, Hugo; romances, poetry, mysteries. She ran her gloved fingertip over a beautiful, gilt-edged cover.
‘I assume these would be strictly forbidden, being…’ He lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘French.’
‘Of course. You are catching on. You shouldn’t send these to a young lady when you are first courting.’ She picked one up and rifled through its pages. ‘Though I must admit I’ve been longing to read this one. The poems of Musset: they say he is quite scandalous.’ She put it down wistfully.
‘What of these?’ Benedict gestured to a shelf of etiquette tomes.
Jane laughed. ‘I’m sure the eligible ladies of Newport have known all this since their nursery days.
’ Though truly a few ladies she’d met in Newport hadn’t advanced much further than that.
Benedict deserved better. She thought of the likes of Regina Van Joort and her friends—the smirk just before she spoke, the way her barbed words flew, not randomly but aimed, as if she knew exactly where to hit.
That cold flicker of satisfaction in her eyes.
No, Benedict needed a much better wife. ‘I would suggest this.’ She took a volume of Walter Scott down from the most-travelled shelf.
‘Historical novels are always correct. And maybe she can get a glimpse of life in a castle!’
Benedict sighed dramatically. ‘And here I thought being a duke would be sufficient! Now I must remember the correct flowers and books…’
‘To tell you the truth, Benedict, being a duke probably is enough. Any young lady and her parents would welcome you! This is just to add a little fillip of real courtship. Of romance.’
She imagined Benedict walking down the aisle with a veiled young lady, organ music swelling.
She had known it would come to this; that was why he was in Newport.
She smiled because she was supposed to, because his future had come to matter to her so much.
But she feared some part of her would always remember how it had felt when he’d looked at her.
He stared down at the book, his expression suddenly quite serious, like a cloud passing over the sun—swift, subtle, unmistakable. The lightness that had been there a moment ago faded.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. She reached out to touch his hand, but something made her draw away. She shivered at the sudden distance.
‘I’m not really sure. I knew, coming here, that my bride search would be exactly this. I just… Well, I can’t help wanting a little more now. It’s all so…’
‘Chilly?’ she whispered. But surely that was how dukes had to look for wives?
Marriage for a duke was not a romantic adventure, it was a dynastic strategy.
He had to choose a bride of proper breeding, with impeccable manners and a spotless reputation.
Her family name would matter. Her dowry would matter more.
‘It’s a cruel world we live in. It will freeze us at every turn if we let it. Even for dukes.’
‘You don’t let it freeze you, Jane.’
‘That’s where you are quite wrong. I see so much that makes me despair…’ She remembered the cramped rooms and crowded, dirty streets of her childhood; the hardships her students faced. ‘I just can’t let it. I have too much to do.’
‘Your charity work in the city?’
She turned away and walked deeper into the shop, past towering shelves.
‘Yes, exactly. Like you said of your grandmother, I see how vulnerable girls are when they have no skills, nothing to carry them into the world. I found a school being run by an old tutor of mine, a place where she hopes to help girls who have nowhere else to learn skills to help themselves. She needed assistance a few times a week, showing the girls how to read, some simple mathematics, things like that. I do my very best to help them, but it’s a small school, and there is so much we need. ’
‘What do you teach?’ He watched her as if he was actually interested, as if the rest of the world had gone quiet and only that moment mattered. He leaned towards her just slightly, pulled closer by that genuine attention.
‘Reading, a bit of mathematics, penmanship, some music…though I am not so good at that.’ She climbed a few steps up a rolling ladder, only to catch her foot on the edge of her skirt. She started to tumble down, only for Benedict to catch her.
She braced for the fall, instinctively tense, panicked.
And then Benedict was there, warm, certain and familiar.
In that moment, her fear didn’t just fade, it made everything different.
She looked into his face, his expression concerned, amused.
He’d already reached for her before she’d even had the chance to ask.
He placed her on her feet, and they stepped apart, flustered, blushing.
‘I wish we’d had someone like you at my school,’ he said roughly.
‘A woman?’ Jane teased. ‘I’m sure the boys would have enjoyed that!’
He laughed. His laugh always sounded like sunlight—warm, bright and contagious. It lit up his whole face, crinkling the corners of his eyes, softening everything.
‘Yes, a beautiful lady would have certainly grabbed our wayward attention spans! But what I meant was a teacher so dedicated, interested in her students and their future. Someone kind.’
They left the sanctuary of the shop and moved back into the daylight. ‘What was your school like, then?’ she asked.
His laughter faded, almost as if it had never been, and he looked so distant.
‘Cold, of course. Old, stone buildings; long hallways that stretch endlessly in silence. And it’s not that no one is there, it’s that there are too many people and none that really sees you.
It didn’t help that I was the youngest one there.
I was sent there as soon as we lost my mother, and I didn’t know how to build my armour at first.’