Chapter 10 #2
Harper looked straight ahead between his horse’s ears.
“There is nothing to work for. The household is settling and the estate matters are largely in order. It is fine.”
“And the women?” Nicholas said. “The dowager viscountess and the daughter. What are they like? Actually like, not diplomatically like. You have to share.”
“I agree,” Edmund prodded.
Harper was quiet for a moment. The path curved ahead of them, the grass on either side still wet from the previous night’s rain.
“The dowager,” he said finally, “is not what the papers make her.”
“No?”
“No, she is genuinely sharp, in a way she disguises very well. She says things that sound like nothing and mean a great deal, and she watches everything and gives the impression of watching nothing, and she is kind.”
“Kind?” Edmund raised an eyebrow.
Harper glanced at him.
“Yes,” he said, as though the word had surprised him slightly on its way out. “She is kind to her daughter, and to the staff, and to my son, and she doesn’t make a production of it.”
“Huh,” Nicholas said.
“She has had a difficult life. More difficult than I understood before I arrived. Her husband was not a good man, yet she came out the other side of it still generous with people,” he shook his head slightly. “I did not expect that.”
Nicholas was quiet for a moment, which was unusual enough that Harper glanced at him.
“What?” Harper said.
“Nothing,” Nicholas said. “I’m just noting that you said more words about the dowager viscountess than you have said about any subject in a while. It’s the most animated I’ve seen you in months.”
“I was simply answering your question,” Harper brushed it off, not wanting to make a big deal of it.
“And what about the daughter?”
“She is managing the situation with more grace than I deserve,” Harper said. “Given how I handled certain things in the early weeks. I was not… I did not approach things correctly at the beginning.”
“What did you do?” Edmund asked.
“I told her she had to marry.”
“On arrival?” Nicholas said.
“At breakfast the following morning.”
“Harper,” Edmund said. “You told a woman you had met twelve hours earlier that she had to marry?”
“I said I am aware,” Harper said, irked, “I handled it badly, but we have since reached a better understanding.”
“A better understanding,” Nicholas said, curious, “How much better?”
“We can be in a room together without….” Harper stopped. “She is not what I expected. She is considerably more… she is not what I expected,” he repeated again.
Nicholas looked at Edmund, and they shared a look.
“In a good way?”
“I haven’t decided it,” Harper replied. “But enough. I think I’ve spoken all I had to say.”
He brushed off the topic, but Temperance remained on his mind. He did not know what it was about her that made him react so strongly to her. It was rather unusual, and he hadn’t even known her for long.
Best to not think about, he told himself.
They rode for another hour, and the teasing had subsided into something more comfortable.
They talked about Nicholas’s estate in Wiltshire, which was having drainage problems, and then about Edmund’s wife, who was expecting their second child and was, according to Edmund.
They talked about a bill before parliament that Harper had opinions about.
It was, Harper thought, on the way back, a good morning.
They came off the park path and onto the street, heading back toward the area where they would separate and go their respective ways, and Nicholas pulled up outside a shop with a sign above the door that Harper glanced at and identified as a dressmaker’s.
“Eleanor’s gloves,” Nicholas said, by way of explanation, swinging down from his horse. “She asked me three times and I can’t go home without them.”
He handed his reins to Edmund without ceremony. “Two minutes.”
“You always say two minutes,” Edmund said.
“This time I mean it.” Nicholas pushed open the door and went inside.
Edmund and Harper waited on the street with the horses. In the meanwhile, Harper looked at the window.
It was a nice shop, he thought. There were fabrics folded in careful cascades, and a hat on a stand that was very fine, and at the back of the display, half-turned as though caught mid-movement, a dress on a form that had been made in a stunning color.
He looked at it.
It was a deep, particular green. Not the bright green of the dress Temperance had worn to the Pembridge dinner, but much richer and darker.
He was aware that he was looking at a dress in a shop window with the focused attention he usually reserved for estate documents and was finding this difficult to stop.
He thought of Temperance’s eyes, which were green and thought of her at the ball in the green silk, and of how he had looked twice, and of the fact that he had looked twice at all.
“I’ll be back in a moment,” he said.
Edmund looked up from where he had been examining something on his saddle. “What?”
But Harper had already handed over his reins and pushed open the door.
The shop was quiet and smelled of fabric and something faintly floral. A woman behind the counter looked up when he entered with the expression of someone recalibrating her morning.
“Your Grace,” she said, “How can I help you?”
“The dress in the window,” he said. “The green one at the back.”
“Ah.” She came around the counter with a pleased expression. “That just came in this week. The fabric is from Italy.”
“Can it be tailored to fit?”
“What are you looking for?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, suddenly realizing that he did not have her measurements. “Can it be adjusted if necessary?”
“Of course, Your Grace.”
“Good.” He looked at the dress, which had been brought out from the window and was now on a stand in better light. It was, he noted, even better in better light. “I’ll take it.”
“I shall have it delivered to the estate, Your Grace.”
“When?” he found himself growing impatient, which was out of character for him.
“In a few days, I shall make sure of it.”
“See that you do.”
The transaction was completed in under four minutes, which was, he thought, a considerably more efficient deployment of time than two minutes with Nicholas ever turned out to be. He walked out of the shop with a coy expression.
Edmund looked at him, laughing.
“What were you doing?” he said. “Looking at dresses?”
“I don’t see how that is any of your business. Anyways, Nicholas is taking a long time,” Harper said, not wanting to discuss it further.
Edmund looked at him but said nothing. He had the wisdom, occasionally, to say nothing, and this was one of those occasions. They waited for another three minutes, at which point Nicholas emerged with a pair of gloves.
They rode the rest of the way home in relative silence. Harper rode with the box under his arm and his eyes on the road ahead.
It was just a dress, after all.