Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Alice woke up to sunlight pooling across the coverlet.
For one disorienting moment, she lay very still, her body carrying the memory of Kenneth’s hand in her hair, his mouth against hers, the weight and warmth of him pressed against her through the thin cotton of her nightgown.
Then came the other memory: the abrupt withdrawal, the closed door while she stood in the parlor with her lips still burning and her heart beating wildly in her chest.
She sat up. The chamber felt too large, too quiet, the four-poster bed an expanse of linen that emphasized her solitude rather than comforted it.
She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes until the pressure displaced the ache behind them, and then she rose and rang for the maid.
She descended to breakfast with her chin level and her shoulders squared.
Freddie looked up first. His hair stood in its customary defiance of brushes and combs, and a smear of what appeared to be blackberry jam decorated his left cheek.
“You’re late,” he remarked. “We’ve been waiting ages. Charlie said we shouldn’t start without you because of manners, but I told him scones get cold, and manners don’t matter when there’s jam.”
Charlie, who had been dissecting a scone into precise quarters, glanced up briefly. “Good morning, Your Grace.” He returned to his plate, offering nothing more.
“Good morning to you both.” Alice took her seat and reached for the teapot. “And I must disagree with you, Frederick. Manners do matter, though they are sometimes a little outmatched by the persuasive power of jam.”
Freddie considered this with his head tilted, a scone halfway to his mouth. “Does that mean I can have more jam?”
“You may.” Alice passed the dish. “Though I would suggest applying it to the scone rather than your cheek.”
After breakfast, Alice met with Mrs. Finch in the morning room, where the household accounts lay open.
“The linen inventory requires updating,” Mrs. Finch said, her pencil moving down a column of figures with unhurried precision.
“And Cook has requested additional funds for the kitchen garden. The spring planting is behind schedule due to the wet weather last month, and she believes an investment in seedlings from the market would compensate.”
“Authorize it.” Alice initialed the relevant line in the ledger. “And perhaps we might consider expanding the herb bed near the kitchen door. Rosemary thrives in that corner, and Cook mentioned its scarcity last week.”
Mrs. Finch’s eyebrows lifted a fraction of an inch. “An excellent suggestion, Your Grace. I shall inform the head gardener.”
The title still did not fit. Alice heard it each time and felt the same small jolt of wrongness, as though someone had addressed her by a name that belonged to another woman.
The afternoon brought lessons. Freddie’s arithmetic primer lay open on the library table, its pages dog-eared at the chapter on long division. Charlie sat nearby with his geography text, one finger tracing the coastline of Cornwall.
“I don’t understand why anyone needs to divide things into equal parts,” Freddie announced, pushing the primer away with both hands. “If I have twelve apples and I want to eat them all, why would I give half to someone else? It’s foolish.”
“Because sharing is a social convention,” Alice said, pulling back the primer and opening it to the offending page. “And because arithmetic has uses that extend beyond the immediate gratification of appetite.”
“But I don’t want to share my apples.” Freddie crossed his arms. “I want to eat them. All twelve.”
Charlie looked up from his map. “If you eat twelve apples in one sitting, you will be ill. I’ve seen it happen last Michaelmas, with the cider apples from the orchard.
You were green for two days, and Papa had to send for the physician, who charged three guineas for the visit and told you to drink chamomile tea, which you refused because you said it tasted like boiled socks. ”
“It did taste like boiled socks,” Freddie said defensively. “But the point stands. Division is theft.”
Alice pressed her lips together. The urge to laugh arrived with such force that she had to reach for her teacup as cover, and even then she could feel the corners of her mouth betraying her.
“Perhaps,” she said when she had composed herself, “we might approach the problem from a different angle. Suppose the twelve apples are not apples at all, but hours in a day. And suppose you must divide those hours between lessons, meals, riding, and whatever mischief you typically get up to when you believe no one is watching. How would you apportion them?”
Freddie’s face underwent a series of rapid calculations. “Two hours for lessons. One for meals. Three for riding. And six for mischief.” He nodded, satisfied with his own arithmetic.
Alice smiled gently. “Let us continue.”
She helped Freddie through three problems of long division. She listened to Charlie recite the principal exports of Cornwall. She poured more tea. She adjusted a lamp.
For hours at a stretch, she managed not to think about Kenneth at all.
Days accumulated at Bearmoor faster than she had expected. The household settled around her adjustments like a garment that had been altered to fit a different frame.
The drawing room remained rearranged. The curtains stayed open. Fresh flowers appeared on the mantel each morning without anyone having to be asked twice, and Cook had taken to consulting her on the week’s menus.
Alice appreciated the deference. She appreciated the routine. She appreciated, most of all, the exhaustion that descended each evening. It was the kind of tired that left little room for anything else, and on her better nights, she fell into bed and slept without dreaming of firelit parlors.
She had not seen Kenneth properly in days. He took his meals in his study. He rode out early and returned late. On the rare occasions when their paths crossed, he acknowledged her with a nod.
The distance between them had calcified into something that felt permanent, a wall built of his avoidance and her pride and the memory of a kiss that neither of them seemed willing to acknowledge.
It was easier not to think about it. Easier to focus on Freddie’s marbles and Charlie’s maps and the growing pile of mending that accumulated each week because Bearmoor’s young masters treated their clothing with the same respectful attention that hurricanes brought to coastal settlements.
Until the letter arrived.
It came on a Tuesday afternoon. Alice was in the morning room, reviewing Cook’s proposed menus for the following week, when the footman appeared with the letter on a salver, his expression arranged into the careful neutrality the staff reserved for deliveries that might contain either invitations or calamities.
“From the Earl of Peltbury, Your Grace.”
She broke the seal while standing at the window, where the afternoon light fell across the page in a long golden rectangle that made the black ink gleam.
Mary looked at her curiously. “Do you want me to leave, Your Grace?”
Alice shook her head. “No, thank you, Mary. It… is from my father.”
She ran her eyes across the page, then dropped her hand to her waist.
“Is there… anything I can do for you, Your Grace?”
“I would like some tea, thank you.”
The maid nodded, then disappeared. When she returned, Alice had read the letter a second time.
“Mary, I suppose you know why… why I married His Grace?”
The maid blushed and nodded. “I do, Your Grace.”
“This letter is from my father,” Alice revealed. “They have not found my sister yet.”
Mary remained close, uncomfortably so.
“His Grace,” Alice continued. “Do you believe him to be a man of honor?”
“Oh, indeed, he is,” Mary replied at once. “They say that His Grace always keeps his promises and does more than expected. But…” She blushed. “He is a good man, Your Grace,” she finished, choosing not to ask the question Alice could see in her eyes.
“He promised he would find my sister.” Alice took a deep breath. “Rachel… I know what you must think—what the servants and the entire ton must think—but she would not run without cause. Never. I do not believe it for even a second.”
Mary merely looked at her.
Alice rose. “I… would like to speak to my husband, Mary.” She lifted her chin. “If you will excuse me.”
Her gown rustled behind her as she made her way out of the morning room and toward the study.
She knocked firmly, and the scratching stopped. A pause, just long enough to register as consideration, and then his voice, low and clipped: “Enter.”
She turned the handle and stepped into the study.
Kenneth sat behind the desk, one hand resting on an open ledger, the other holding a pen above the page. The lamplight caught the angles of his face and hollowed the spaces beneath his cheekbones, turning what had been merely severe into something that approached austerity.
He wore no coat. His waistcoat was unbuttoned at the throat, his cravat loosened to the point of informality, and the rolled sleeves revealed forearms that Alice had not, until this moment, permitted herself to notice.
They were corded with muscle, dusted with dark hair, and the sight of them did nothing to improve the coherence of the speech she had rehearsed on her walk down the corridor.
“Duchess.” He set the pen down. “What is the matter?”
Alice closed the door behind her and took two steps into the room.
“My father wrote to me.” She reached into her pocket and withdrew the letter, holding it out without offering it. “He has stopped searching for Rachel. He believes she has ‘made her choice,’ and that further public agitation would be… inconvenient.”
Kenneth’s expression did not change. His eyes moved from the letter to her face, assessing, and then back to the ledger as though the figures there held more interest than the crisis she had just laid at his feet.
“I see.”
“You see.” Alice heard the brittleness in her own voice and could not soften it. “Is that all you have to say? My sister is missing. My father has given up. And you… Please don’t tell me you’ve given up, too.”
That drew his attention. His head snapped up.
“I have men making inquiries.” His voice was level.
“The runner reports weekly. Thus far, nothing of substance has emerged. Your sister appears to have vanished with a thoroughness that suggests planning rather than impulse. Which means she is likely safe, wherever she is. She took her time. She prepared.”
Alice swallowed down the sudden prickle of hurt in her throat. It wasn’t just Rachel’s absence that made her chest ache. It was the formal tone Kenneth was using with her.
“You speak of her as though she were an estate problem to be solved,” she said softly, keeping the sharp edge out of her voice. “Or perhaps a task you are waiting to cross off a list so you can return to your routine.”
Kenneth’s hand paused over the paper. He set his pen down, the quiet click echoing in the stillness of the study.
“That is unfair, Alice.”
“Is it?” She took another small step forward, her eyes searching his.
“Since the night in the parlor, you have barely looked at me, Kenneth. Whenever I enter a room, you find a reason to leave it. If you regret what happened between us, I would rather you tell me, instead of hiding behind reports and duty.”
Kenneth stared at her, a flicker of something raw and unreadable breaking through his composure. He rose slowly from his desk, his broad shoulders blocking out the firelight behind him.
“Regret?” he repeated, his voice dropping an octave. “Is that what you think this is?”
“I don’t know what to think,” she admitted, her voice trembling slightly.
Kenneth walked around the desk, stopping just a pace away from her. Up close, she could see the faint shadows of exhaustion under his dark eyes, the rigid posture of a man constantly holding himself together.
“I stepped back, Alice, because…” he trailed off, each word low, guarded, and painfully deliberate.
He reached out, his hand hovering in the air for a fraction of a second, before his fingers lightly brushed against the sleeve of her gown.
“Because I learned a long time ago that the moment you let down your guard and allow yourself to care, things break. Life takes them from you, and no amount of effort or duty can fix it.”
Alice stared up at him. She didn’t know the full story behind the shadow in his eyes, but she could feel the weight of old, unspoken grief in his voice.
“You think if you… grow closer to me, something will break?” she whispered.
“I think,” Kenneth murmured, his gaze dipping to her lips before rising back to hold hers, “that you are dangerously easy to want, Alice. And every instinct I have tells me to retreat before I lose my footing.”
He took the final step, closing the distance between them. The heat radiating from his chest seeped through her gown, and her hand came up instinctively, her palm resting against his waistcoat.
“I don’t want you to retreat, Kenneth,” she said quietly.
Kenneth’s breath caught. His hand slid up her arm to the side of her neck, his thumb resting against her rapid pulse.
“Alice,” he breathed, his voice laced with quiet defeat.
He bent his head, his lips hovering mere inches from hers. Alice tilted her chin up, her fingers threading into the soft hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him down to bridge the tiny gap between them.
Suddenly, the door burst open.
The footman stood in the doorway, his face a study in mortification that would have been comical under different circumstances.
“Your Graces, forgive the intrusion, but… it’s the young masters. They’ve… That is to say, Lord Frederick has…”
“What is it?” Kenneth’s voice was rough, his composure reassembling itself with the visible effort of a man forcing order onto chaos.
“The pond, Your Grace. Lord Frederick was attempting to sail one of the boats, and Lord Charles attempted to dissuade him, and there was… an altercation. Both of them are in the water. Well, not anymore, because we pulled them out. They are safe and unharmed,” the footman added hastily upon seeing the color drain from Kenneth’s face.
“But they are soaked, and the head gardener is rather distressed about the water lilies.”
Kenneth closed his eyes. For one moment, Alice thought she saw laughter threatening the corners of his mouth, though it was gone before she could be certain.
“We’ll come,” she said, before he could speak.
She smoothed her skirts with hands that were not entirely steady, avoided his eyes, and moved toward the door.
Behind her, she heard him release a breath that might have been a sigh, and then his footsteps followed her into the corridor.