Chapter 5 #2
"I will say this for you, cousin," Anthony announced, swirling the last of his brandy.
"I have attended a great many balls in this city, and I have never once watched a man frighten half the House of Lords without raising his voice.
Cavendish has not been that color since his horse came in last at Ascot.
" He lifted his glass in something between a salute and an accusation.
"You could put the fear of God into the worst criminals in London, Alex, and never touch your collar. "
"One scar," Margaret said serenely, not looking up from the fire, "could hardly frighten anyone. Half the cavalry has worse, and they are the silliest men in England."
"I was not referring to the scar, Aunt Margaret."
Margaret did look up then. Her gaze moved between the two of them — Anthony's careful innocence, Alexander's careful nothing — with the particular narrowing of a woman who had raised one of these men and very nearly the other.
"You two," she said, "are plotting something. Again."
It broke them both. Anthony laughed outright, and Alexander — to his own evident surprise — found himself smiling, the genuine one, the one that still felt unfamiliar on his face.
"We are entirely innocent, Mother."
"You have never been innocent a day in your life, either of you. I found a garden statue in the Thames the summer you were twelve, and to this day neither of you has accounted for it." She settled back, satisfied. "Plotting. I know the look."
Alexander raised his glass. "To being home, then. And to mothers who notice far too much."
"To mothers who notice far too—"
Margaret rose, crossed the small distance between them, and removed the glass from Alexander's hand mid-sentence. She took Anthony's as well, plucking it neatly from his fingers before he had quite registered the threat.
"You two," she said, "have had quite enough for one night."
"Aunt Margaret—"
"Quite enough."
Anthony watched his brandy depart with the wounded dignity of a man robbed in his own home.
"Do not despair, cousin," he said to Alexander.
"We shall finish that toast properly at the Pemberton ball.
Anna hosts it next month — the liveliest evening of the season, and I have it on good authority we will be invited, given tonight's triumph.
" His grin sharpened. "You will want to attend.
I should think a certain earl's daughter will be among the company. "
"Lady Catherine," Alexander said, with the even tone of a man declining to be drawn, "has interesting ideas and uncommonly strong convictions. She makes a great conversation partner. That is all."
"Mm. I am sure that is all." Anthony tilted his head, enjoying himself enormously. "Though I will say — a woman with eyes like that, fixed on a man across a terrace, could have his every secret out of him before the second dance. A great conversation partner, indeed."
A pause.
"I nearly did," Alexander admitted.
Anthony sat up, delighted. "There. You see? Welcome home, cousin, to London — where the beautiful women are trained from the cradle to dig the truth out from under a man's performance, and to make him grateful for the excavation."
"Do not be so dramatic, Anthony," said Margaret.
"I am never dramatic. I am observant." He turned back to Alexander, struck by a thought. "Tell me — were the women in South Africa the same? Or is it a particular cruelty of the English variety?"
Margaret's look could have curdled milk. "Discretion, Anthony, is a quality you persist in forgetting you possess."
"It is all right, Mother." Alexander considered the question for a moment, and when he answered, something quieter moved beneath the lightness.
"Primarily, yes. The women there also tested a man — to see whether he was genuine, whether his word and his conduct were the same thing.
" He turned his glass in his hand, though it was no longer there.
"I came to think it the most sensible habit I ever encountered.
A man should be made to prove he is what he claims."
"Oh, my dear boys." Margaret shook her head, and there was real affection in it, and real amusement. "You have so very much to learn about the nature of women."
"You underestimate us, Aunt."
"I do not underestimate you in the slightest. That is precisely why I worry.
" She gathered both confiscated glasses and turned for the door, pausing only at the threshold to deliver it over her shoulder, dry as winter.
"I only hope, between the two of you, that you do not reveal our safe password to the first pair of beautiful eyes that asks for it. "
◆◆◆
Anthony took his leave not long after, pausing at the door to inform them both that he intended to sleep until noon and would receive no callers, no correspondence, and no moral instruction of any kind before then.
And then it was only the two of them, the way it had been in the worst of the years — Margaret and a single chair's worth of distance, and the fire burning down between them.
She did not fill the silence. She never had. It was one of the things he had forgotten about her and was only now remembering — that his mother, alone among the people he knew, could sit with a quiet and let it be quiet.
"You performed beautifully tonight," she said at last. "Every soul in that room left believing they had glimpsed something of you.
" She looked at him, and the lightness went out of her voice, gently, the way a tide goes out.
"I watched you do it for five hours, Alexander.
And I am the only person in that room who saw how tired it made you. "
He said nothing. There was nothing to say that would not be a performance of its own.
"I will not ask you what happened out there," Margaret went on.
"I promised you that, and I will keep it.
But I want you to hear one thing, and then I will leave you to your sleep.
" She rose, and crossed to him, and laid her hand against the side of his face — not searching this time, not taking inventory, only resting there.
"Whatever it is you came home to carry — you do not have to carry the whole of it alone.
Not anymore. I do not need to know its shape to help you bear its weight. "
For a moment the careful architecture of him very nearly came down. She felt it — he saw her feel it — the slight give beneath her palm, the boy somewhere under the stranger's bones.
"I know, Mother," he managed.
"Good." She patted his cheek once, briskly, the tenderness folded away again before it could undo either of them. "Now go to bed. You look a hundred years old."
He climbed the stairs alone, the great house settling into its night-time quiet around him, and by the time he reached his room the weight of the evening had caught up with him entirely.
He shed the costume piece by piece — the coat, the waistcoat, the immaculate cravat that had sat at his throat all night like a well-made collar on a dog — and with each one something in his shoulders dropped, until what remained standing at the window was not the Duke of Wexford at all but only a tired man with scars he had not been wearing for the crowd.
The performance had a weight to it. People imagined charm was effortless.
It was the most exhausting labor he knew.
He crossed to the writing desk and drew out the portfolio.
He did not open it. He only rested his hand flat upon the worn leather and let the cold fact of it settle him.
Years, this had taken. Years of patience and silence and risk measured out in single careful steps, every one of them paid for by someone whose name was written inside.
And tonight, on a moonlit terrace, with a clever woman looking at him as though she could see straight through to the spine of him, he had come within one sentence of speaking aloud the very thing these pages existed to protect.
What am I doing, he thought. I have guarded this for years. And I nearly undid all of it in a single evening, because a woman asked me a question and I wished — God help me — to answer it honestly.
He set the portfolio down.
The necklace lay where he had left it on the nightstand, the carved bone pale against the dark wood. He picked it up, and his thumb found the worn surface of it the way it always did, and for a moment he was not in London at all.
"You told me to trust it," he said quietly, to the cord in his hand, to the woman an ocean away who had pressed it there.
"The thing beneath the thinking. You said the mind learns to lie but the instinct does not.
" He turned it slowly. "My mind says I was a fool tonight.
That I let my guard fall for a pair of clever eyes and very nearly paid for it.
" A breath. "But you would tell me to ask what my instinct saw.
And my instinct says she is genuine. That what she is and what she shows are the same thing.
" He almost smiled. "A person should be made to prove he is what he claims. She has not proven it yet.
But she is the first person in this entire country I find myself wanting to let try. "
He set the necklace back on the nightstand, where he could see it, and turned down the lamp.