Chapter 4 #2
"Heaven forbid," Anthony said, bowing over her hand with a grin. "Lady Anna, may I present my cousin — His Grace, Alexander Harrington, Duke of Wexford. Alex, Lady Anna Pemberton, who is entirely as dangerous as she looks, and her companion Lady Catherine Fairfax."
Alexander bowed. His eyes moved briefly to Catherine, who had turned from the room and now met his gaze with the same composure she had maintained when he had looked straight past her from the staircase. She curtsied with the precise depth the occasion required — no more, no less.
"Your Grace," she said.
"Lady Catherine," he replied.
One second. Two. Then Anna reclaimed the conversation with the cheerful efficiency of someone who found silence in company mildly intolerable.
"Your Grace, I hope you will forgive us for staring earlier," she said, with the candor of a woman who had calculated exactly how much playfulness she could deploy before it became impertinence. "You created quite the impression upon entering. Half the room is still recovering."
"And the other half?" Alexander asked.
"Still staring, but with more discretion.
" Anna smiled. "Your Grace," Anna said, her eyes bright with the particular enthusiasm of someone who has decided that social caution is considerably less interesting than the alternative.
"I hope you will forgive my curiosity, but the entire city has spoken of nothing else since your return.
How did you survive? The reports said there were no survivors from the Valiant. "
"There were few," Alexander said. "I was fortunate."
Anna waited for more. Nothing followed.
"But — the sea, the wreck itself — surely the circumstances of your survival alone must be remarkable. How does a man find himself alive on a foreign coast with no ship and no company?"
"One manages," Alexander said pleasantly. "The instinct for survival is rather more resilient than one imagines, under sufficient pressure."
Anna blinked. She regrouped with admirable speed. "And afterwards — the years that followed. Is it true that you lived among the native peoples of the region? That you were entirely — I mean to say, that you existed wholly outside any British presence for all that time?"
"For a considerable portion of it," Alexander said. "I found a great deal to admire in the people I encountered. They were generous beyond anything I had reason to expect."
"And the danger," Anna pressed, leaning forward slightly. "Surely there was danger. That scar alone—" her eyes moved briefly to his jaw — "must contain quite the story."
"It is something of a badge of honor," Alexander said. "The man who gave it to me was a worthy opponent."
Anna's expression settled into something warm and genuinely admiring. "How noble, to speak of one's enemies in such terms."
"Yes," said Catherine, from beside her. Her voice was entirely pleasant. "Noble. And extremely vague."
Alexander turned to look at her.
She did not look away. She did not adjust her expression or offer any qualification. She simply held his gaze with the stillness of someone who had said precisely what she intended and found no reason to retreat from it.
He smiled. It arrived without his full permission — a brief, genuine thing, entirely different from the controlled expressions he had deployed all evening. He held her gaze for several seconds in silence. She remained perfectly calm.
"I am well aware," he said, "that you wish to hear more of my time abroad, Lady Catherine. I will simply say that the full account of it would in all likelihood keep you awake at nights."
"I do not believe," Catherine said, "that everything you encountered could have been terrible."
"No," Alexander said. "Not everything. I met people of remarkable character during my time away. People who showed me a great deal that I could not have learned anywhere else."
Catherine looked at him steadily. "And I would assume that to hear anything of substance about any of those people would be equally impossible."
Anna turned to her friend with the expression of someone attempting to redirect a carriage that has already left the road. "You must forgive Lady Catherine, Your Grace. She is passionate by nature and has a habit of pressing where perhaps she ought not."
Alexander looked at Anna. Then back at Catherine. Then he said, simply: "Clearly."
Both women looked at him.
A pause of precisely the right length.
"However," he continued, "you need not apologize on her behalf."
Anna and Catherine exchanged a brief glance — the particular glance of two women jointly reassessing the same situation from slightly different positions.
"I find passionate people considerably more valuable than comfortable ones," Alexander said.
"A passionate man to whom I owe a great deal believed that ruminating upon the past, or troubling oneself with the future, was entirely futile.
" He paused. "He believed the present moment was the only thing that could be relied upon. "
"One can learn a great deal from studying the past, Your Grace," Catherine said. Her voice was entirely even. "The English past. The African past. The past shapes our present.’’
Alexander looked at her. Something moved behind his eyes — brief, deliberate, contained.
"You are right," he said.
He allowed that to sit for a moment. Then: "Though if I recall correctly, it is gossip that has always dominated an English ballroom. And I confess I would find it most agreeable to hear what the past several years have produced on that front. I have missed a great deal."
Catherine regarded him for a moment with the expression of someone carefully weighing what they are actually being asked.
"You do not strike me," she said, "as a man with any appetite for mere gossip, Your Grace."
"No," Alexander agreed.
A pause. He was aware of Anna watching them both with the alert attention of someone following a conversation whose subtext she has not yet identified.
"You know," Alexander said, after several seconds that he allowed to run slightly longer than comfort required, "I find myself grateful to be back among London's high society. I have missed this world terribly."
Something shifted in Catherine's expression — brief, involuntary. Her eyes sharpened.
"What precisely did Your Grace miss?" she asked. Her voice carried an edge that had not been there a moment before. "The elegant performance of caring? Or the elegant performance of not noticing what that performance costs others?"
The words arrived in the space between them with the particular weight of something that cannot be unsaid.
Anna went very still beside her. Anthony, standing at Alexander's shoulder, found something of sudden interest in his wine glass.
Catherine's face changed immediately — the flush of someone who has just understood what has left her mouth. "I — that is to say — forgive me, Your Grace. It was an inappropriate jest. I sometimes speak without sufficient thought. I apologize."
Alexander looked at her. She held his gaze for precisely three seconds before looking away — not with retreat, but with the contained mortification of someone who has just committed a significant social error and knows it.
"If you will excuse me," she said, with the careful composure of someone exercising considerable control. She dropped into a curtsy that was entirely correct in its depth and execution. "Your Grace. Lord Anthony."
She turned and moved into the crowd with the unhurried dignity of someone who refuses to be seen fleeing. Anna followed after a fractional pause, throwing one uncertain glance back at them before disappearing into the assembly.
Anthony was quiet for a long moment. Then: "That was rather dangerous."
"Indeed," Alexander said.
"Words like that, in a room like this, from a woman of her position." Anthony kept his voice low. "People have been ruined for considerably less. If the wrong person overheard—"
"No one overheard." Alexander watched the crowd where Catherine had vanished. "And if they had, they would have dismissed it as youthful impetuosity. A clever girl saying something provocative to be interesting."
"And is that what it was?"
Alexander turned to look at his cousin. "We both know it was not."
Anthony studied him. "You admire her."
"I admire people who speak honestly," Alexander said. "Passion and conviction are considerably more useful than the alternative."
"Useful," Anthony repeated. "An interesting word."
"I would rather be in the company of passionate people who speak their minds," Alexander said, "than smiling faces digging graves behind their courtesy."
"Quite admirable," Anthony said. "To a fault. Words like that are dangerous here, Alex. You know that as well as I do."
Alexander turned to look at him fully. His eyes were very dark — the particular darkness that Anthony had begun to recognize as something that belonged to the years his cousin would not discuss. "Here," Alexander said quietly, "people believe that words can be dangerous."
A pause.
"I promise you, cousin," he continued, in the same level tone, "you have no idea what real danger is."
Anthony looked at him for a long moment. "There it is again," he said finally. "That look. It is rather unsettling."
"Good."
"Though I suspect," Anthony added, recovering slightly, "that you have lived through situations considerably more dangerous than comments in a ballroom."
Alexander said nothing. His gaze had moved past Anthony to a group of men near the card tables — five, perhaps six of them, clustered in conversation with the ease of long acquaintance. He watched them with the patient attention of someone conducting an assessment.
"That man," Alexander said, without looking away. "Grey hair, dark coat. Beside the pillar."
Anthony followed his gaze. "Sir Edmund Thornhill. He was the last director of the East India Company before it was dissolved and seized by the Crown." He paused. "You know him?"
"I met him once," Alexander said. "Before I left. His name appeared again during my time away. Along with the Duke of Cornwall."
"Ah." Anthony's expression shifted into something more knowing.
"Yes, they are close friends. Business partners in several ventures.
Both have substantial interests in the African colonies.
Mining operations, I believe. Diamonds. Some other metals.
" He glanced at Alexander sidelong. "Cornwall sent his regrets for this evening — he is traveling on business.
Sent an absurdly expensive gift by way of apology. "
Alexander nodded once. His gaze remained on Thornhill, who was laughing at something one of his companions had said — the easy, unguarded laugh of a man entirely comfortable in his position.
"Come," Alexander said. "Let us introduce ourselves."
"Of course," Anthony said. "I know most of them already."
They crossed the room.
The introductions proceeded with the smooth efficiency of men practiced in such exchanges.
Sir Edmund Thornhill greeted Alexander with the particular warmth reserved for returning prodigals of sufficient rank, and the conversation that followed was entirely unremarkable — condolences for his father, pleasure at his return, the usual expressions of sympathy and curiosity delivered with professional precision.
Alexander responded with equal precision.
He said very little. He listened a great deal.
He noted who spoke to whom, who deferred, who deflected, who changed the subject when the colonies were mentioned directly.
He noted that Thornhill's hands were very clean and his cufflinks were South African diamonds.
He noted everything.
After twenty minutes, he excused himself with the courtesy the occasion required. The group parted to let him pass, and he moved through the ballroom with the unhurried purpose of a man who knows exactly where he is going even when he does not.
His mind remained on the conversation he had just left.
Thornhill. Cornwall. Men who spoke of colonial investments with the easy comfort of those who had never seen what those investments actually required.
Men who wore South African diamonds in their cufflinks and did not trouble themselves with how those stones had been extracted, or by whom, or at what cost.
The weight of it settled on his chest like something physical.
He needed air. He needed silence. He needed to be away from these people and their careful performances and their willful blindness to what held their world together.
The French doors to the terrace appeared on his left.
He took them without conscious decision.