Chapter 26 #2
“I… Mr. Talbot,” she used his surname to establish some sort of formality between them, “I am not sure if I am able to continue to have this conversation with you.”
Not when I have the fresh memory of kissing the Duke imprinted on my mind.
“I cannot accept,” she went on. “Whatever you were going to say, I cannot accept it. I am sorry. You are a good man and you deserve someone who feels the thing that I do not feel, and I hope very much that you find her.” She said it plainly, without apology.
Elias looked at her for a moment, stunned.
“Oh, thank goodness.”
Temperance stared at him.
“I am sorry,” he said, and he did look sorry, though also considerably relieved.
“That came out badly. I only meant…” He stopped.
He looked at the ceiling briefly, in the way of a man reorganizing himself, and then looked back at the room.
His gaze moved past Temperance and settled somewhere behind her.
“I was going to ask you first because I thought it was the right way to go about it. Being discreet. But I can see that perhaps I was not as discreet as I imagined.”
Temperance turned around and realized Elias was looking at Albina.
Who in turn had gone very still. Her expression was the one she had when something had surprised her, which was rare, because very little surprised Albina Hosmer. Her cheeks were pink.
“Lady Wilmington,” Elias said, and his voice had changed from the voice he used for everything else, “I have been wanting to speak to the Duke about the possibility of courting you. I thought that speaking to Miss Hosmer first was the more considerate approach, given the circumstances, and I did not want there to be any confusion about my intentions. I am sorry if the confusion happened anyway.”
The ballroom was very quiet. Albina opened her mouth.
“You,” she said. “Am I hearing this correctly?”
“Yes,” Elias said, “my only regret is that it took me too long to say it.”
“You have been coming to this house,” Albina said, “and attending these events, and sending flowers, and all of this time you were….”
“Yes,” Elias said again, with the same patient, steady certainty.
Temperance looked back at her mother and felt the laugh arriving before she could do anything about it.
“I thought he was here for you,” Albina said, and she sounded genuinely astonished, which from Albina was extraordinary.
Albina had recovered herself somewhat, though her cheeks were still pink, which Temperance found both extraordinary and wonderful.
Her mother, who had walked into a ballroom in trousers and never cared what anyone thought of her, was sitting on a chair with a sleeping dog beside her looking flustered.
“I am not opposed to being courted,” Albina said finally, and said it with the dignity of a woman reclaiming her composure one piece at a time. “In principle.”
“Only in principle?” Elias said.
“In practice as well,” Albina said, and the smile arrived then, the real one, and Elias received it with the expression of a man who had been hoping for exactly that and was glad to have it confirmed.
Temperance looked at her mother and felt something warm and uncomplicated settle in the middle of her chest.
Then she felt Harper beside her.
He had crossed the room at some point, quietly, and was standing close enough that she was aware of him with the specific awareness she always had, and she did not look at him and he did not say anything, and across the room Albina and Elias were talking and Joseph was telling Biscuit something in a low voice and Midge had relocated to Temperance’s feet and Soot was on the refreshment table again.
“So,” Harper said, very quietly.
“So,” she said.
“Talbot was never interested in you,” he said.
“Apparently not,” she said.
“I sent away a great many men,” he said, “on the basis that they were not good enough for you.”
“You did,” she said.
“And the one man I permitted,” he said, “was in love with your mother.”
She pressed her lips together. “Yes.”
“I find,” Harper said, “that I am not especially sorry about that.”
She turned to look at him then, and he was already looking at her, and the ballroom was warm and the candles were burning down and her mother was laughing at something Elias had said, and Joseph was watching his father with the small, contained expression of a child who was very pleased with how the evening had turned out and was trying not to show it.
“Neither am I,” Temperance said.
“Though I have to say,” Harper was delighted now. “This derails your plans a bit.”
“Does it?” Temperance looked back at the duke, who gave her a coy smile.
“We will find out.”
“So,” Temperance said, “what do you think of him?”
Albina did not pretend to misunderstand. She set down her embroidery, which she had not been making any progress with anyway, and looked at her daughter with bright, considering eyes.
“I think,” she said, “that he is the most interesting man I have spoken to in thirty years. Possibly longer.”
“That is quite the assessment.”
“It is an honest one,” Albina said. “You asked what I thought and I am telling you. I am too old to be coy about things that matter.”
Temperance smiled. “And does it matter?”
Albina looked at her for a long moment. Outside the window, the morning was doing what it did at this hour, the garden catching the early light, the lavender beginning its slow spread past the path’s edge.
She had looked at this garden for three years now and she still found something new in it every morning, which she considered a hopeful sign about most things.
“Yes,” she said simply. “It matters very much.”
Temperance said nothing, which was the right response, and Albina appreciated it.
She had not wanted to be argued with or redirected or gently cautioned about the wisdom of feeling things at her age.
She had simply wanted to say the truth of it to someone who would receive it properly, and Temperance had always been good at that.
“He sent a note this morning,” Albina said.
“Did he?”
“Very short. He said that he hoped I had slept well and that he was looking forward to calling on Thursday.” She paused.
“He also said that he had been thinking about the conversation we had at the picnic about the south end of the garden and that he had some thoughts about the space near the old bench if I was interested.”
Temperance raised an eyebrow. “He remembered the bench.”
“He remembered everything,” Albina said. “That is the thing about him. You speak and he listens as though what you are saying is the only thing in the room worth attending to. I am not accustomed to that.”
“No,” Temperance said quietly. “I don’t suppose you are.”
Albina looked at her daughter and understood that there was more in those four words than Temperance intended to show, and she chose to let it sit where it was for now.
“Tell me what you think of him,” Albina said. “Honestly. You know him better than I do in some respects. He came here as your suitor, after all.”
“He came here as someone’s suitor,” Temperance said, with a slight smile. “I am not entirely sure it was ever mine.”
“Perhaps not,” Albina allowed. “But you spent time with him. You talked to him. What did you find?”
Temperance considered this with the genuine attention she gave to questions she was taking seriously. “I found that he was kind and he made me laugh, which is not nothing.”
“I see.”
“He is a good man,” Temperance said.
Albina nodded slowly, feeling the truth of this settle in her chest alongside everything else that had been settling there since the evening of the ball when Elias Talbot had stood in her drawing room and said what he said so simply and directly, as though it was the most natural thing in the world.
“Can I ask you something?” Temperance said.
“You may always ask me something.”
“Are you frightened?”
Albina thought about this honestly, turning it over in the way she turned over things she wanted to answer properly.
“A little, but not of him, I should say. He is not a frightening man. But of the whole of it. It has been a very long time since I allowed myself to want something like this. And wanting things, really wanting them, means that not having them costs something. I had rather forgotten what that felt like.”
“But you are willing to feel it?” Temperance said.