Chapter 18 #2
“I heard what you were suggesting.” He moved to the mantel, one hand resting on the carved edge.
The movement had no aggression in it, only the weight of a man occupying the room he owned without needing to assert it.
“Let me be plain: Alice is the Duchess of Bearmoor. She manages this household, navigates a position for which she had no preparation and considerable opposition, and does so with a grace that I have watched this house improve under. If you have come to offer her your assessment of how well she measures against her sister’s hypothetical performance, you will find no audience for it here.
Not now, and not at any other time you choose to arrive unannounced at my door. ”
The fire crackled. A carriage moved across the square.
Lord Peltbury looked at his daughter. Alice looked back at him steadily, waiting to see which version of him would answer.
He reached for his hat. “Well,” he muttered, “I should not have come unannounced.”
“No,” Kenneth agreed. “You should not have.”
Silence ensued, brief and absolute.
Lord Peltbury rose, sketched a bow, and left. His footsteps crossed the entrance hall, and the front door closed with a sound that carried a finality Alice had not expected and did not know what to do with.
She sat very still.
Kenneth remained at the mantel. She could feel him looking at her, yet she kept her eyes on the empty fireplace.
“Alice.”
“I am quite all right.”
“I know you are.”
She turned. He was watching her openly and attentively.
“He has always been like that,” she explained.
“Yes,” Kenneth said. “But you don’t have to suffer ‘like that’ anymore. Not with me.”
She nodded, smoothing the front of her gown. “Thank you.”
Silence fell between them. It was not the silence of avoidance, but something she did not yet have a word for.
The man’s name was Carver. He was square and weathered, and he wore the unremarkable coat of a man whose profession required him to be forgettable. He sat in Kenneth’s study at three in the afternoon.
Alice stood near the window because Kenneth had sent for her, which meant there was news.
“A posting inn,” Carver said, “forty miles east of Bath. The landlord recalls a woman matching the description, blonde, traveling with a gentleman, three weeks ago, perhaps four. They stayed a night. Separate rooms.” He laid a folded paper on the desk.
“The landlord’s wife noted that the woman seemed anxious, as though she were waiting to hear something. ”
Alice’s hands were folded against her waist. She pressed them there and kept her breathing even.
“Name?” Kenneth asked.
“Mrs. Whitmore. The gentleman signed as Mr. Whitmore.”
“That is not her name.”
“No, Your Grace.”
“But you believe it is her.”
“The description is specific. The hair, the age, the manner of speaking. The landlord’s wife says that she played the pianoforte in the private parlor for an hour one evening and played very well. The woman said she was on her way to visit relations in Wiltshire.”
Alice looked at the sycamores beyond the window, green and steady in the afternoon light.
“The lead is an inn forty miles from Bath that a woman matching Rachel’s description left three or four weeks ago.
” Her voice came out even, and she was grateful for it.
“Heading for Wiltshire, or claiming to be heading for Wiltshire, which is not the same thing.”
“No, Your Grace,” Carver said. “It is not.”
“And there is nothing since.”
“Not yet. I have a man asking in Wiltshire. Well, two men, as of this morning.”
Kenneth was watching her. She could feel it without turning her head, the particular quality of his attention, fixed and careful.
“You will continue, Carver,” he instructed. “Whatever resources you require.”
“Of course, Your Grace.”
“Then that is all.”
Carver rose, collected his coat, and was gone in the manner of men whose usefulness depended on their capacity to disappear. The study door closed quietly after him.
Alice turned away from the window. She was aware of the room, the desk and the bookshelves and the familiar smell of cedar and ink that she now associated entirely with Kenneth.
An encouraging lead at last. A woman at an inn, three or four weeks ago, forty miles from Bath, who had played the pianoforte and was now elsewhere. Not Rachel, but a description of Rachel at a distance, already gone.
She pressed her palms flat against each other at her waist. The pressure helped. She was not going to do anything useless with her face in the study while Kenneth watched.
“It is something,” she said.
“It is.”
“She was not alone. That is something.”
“Alice.”
“It means she had help. She was not wandering—” She stopped and started again, quietly. “She was not wandering alone.”
Kenneth moved. Not toward her, but closer.
The desk was still between them, and he stood on the far side of it with his hands at his sides.
He looked at her with the expression that undid every prepared surface she assembled, the one that saw through the even voice and the steady hands and the straight spine, and arrived at what was underneath without asking permission to enter.
“I don’t know the man she is with,” she said.
“But the landlord’s wife said separate rooms, which means—I think it means she is not in any danger.
I think she is simply hiding, and when she is ready, she will…
” She pressed her lips together, her eyes stinging.
She absolutely was not going to cry. “Carver will find her. He is very thorough; you said so yourself.”
“He is.”
“Then it is only a matter of time.”
“Yes.”
She nodded.
At that moment, she was acutely aware of the distance between them, the width of the desk, the six or eight feet of floorboard and afternoon light.
“Thank you,” she said, “for sending for me.”
She turned toward the door, but his voice stopped her, quiet and without pressure. “You do not have to leave.”
Alice’s hand was not quite on the door handle. She did not turn. She looked at the grain of the wood and felt the warmth of the room behind her, the firelight against her back, and the particular quality of his silence, the one she had learned to read as something kept deliberately still.
She pressed her fingers to the doorframe briefly and then released it. “I know.”
She did not stay. But when she crossed the entrance hall and climbed the stairs and closed her door behind her, the quiet that settled around her was not the same quiet she had carried through a year of closed doors.
She sat on the edge of the bed and pressed her hands to her face, letting herself feel whatever it was for exactly one minute before she stood again.
The invitation arrived two days later, on a card engraved with a crest she did not recognize.
She was in the drawing room when Mrs. Finch brought it. Kenneth was not present, which meant she read it alone and then sat looking at the window for rather longer than the occasion warranted.
A ball. The Worthington house on Brook Street, Friday fortnight. The inscription across the top, in a hand that had the quality of a social obligation being discharged with the minimum possible warmth, was addressed to the Duke and Duchess of Bearmoor.
The Duchess, specifically, not a woman who had spent three Seasons without a single dance.
She heard his footsteps in the corridor before she heard the door, the particular cadence she had memorized without meaning to. She set the card on the table and composed herself. She was almost convincing by the time he appeared.
“We’ve received an invitation,” she announced.
He came forward, read the card, and set it down.
“The Worthington ball.” He straightened. “We will go.”
“I thought we might.”
“You will dance.”
She looked at him. The statement arrived with the flat certainty of a man who had considered the matter and intended it to conclude precisely the way he said it would.
“I have not danced in some time,” she said.
“I am aware.” He held her gaze. “You will dance. First with me.”
Something curled low in her chest, warm and immediate. She repressed it with the efficiency she was still refining, pressing it down flat before it could show on her face.
“Very well,” she relented.
He held out his hand, and she let out a shuddering breath before placing her hand in it. He pulled her in, his other hand finding the curve of her waist, and she rested her hand on his shoulder.
They stood there for a moment in the empty drawing room.
“You ought to hum,” he said, and heat rose to her cheeks.
“I cannot think of a single tune,” she admitted.
“Then I shall.”
His deep voice filled the room, and he led her calmly, slowing when she hesitated and pressing the barest correction at her waist before a misstep came.
They completed the figure. She did not stumble.
“There,” he said, looking down at her. “You are, I believe, almost ready.”
“Am I?”
He nodded and adjusted her hand on his shoulder. “Your timing is good, but you look down too often.”
Heat rose to her cheeks. “I… am looking at my feet.”
He shook his head with a smile. “Look at your partner. Your feet will follow.”
She could feel the heat of his hand through the silk at her waist.
They danced the figure again and again. His hand never moved from her waist between the figures.
She realized with a shock that she did not want it to.