Chapter Nine #3
The lane was quiet after Piers left. The hedgerow rustled. A bird called somewhere in the darkness, and the ordinary sounds of an ordinary evening returned with the tentative quality of things that had been frightened and were testing whether it was safe to come back.
Thomas turned to her.
His eyes were on her arm, on the place where Piers’s grip had pressed the sleeve against the skin. His eyes were intent and focused, and Jane could see in it something she had not seen in Thomas before. Fury, held at a distance just sufficient to keep it from becoming action.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“No, not hurt. He held my arm, nothing worse than that.”
His gaze stayed on her arm. “Are you frightened?”
Jane wanted to deny it. She was Jane Rennet, who had survived Mrs. Vale’s kitchen and the collapse of tartlets under the eyes of a duke. But Thomas had asked without solving. The asking deserved the answer.
“A little,” she said.
Thomas’s expression changed. The fury did not leave, but it was joined by something softer. The combination sat on his face with a weight that made Jane’s throat tighten. No one had ever looked at her in that manner. Angry on her behalf and gentle in the same breath.
“Then permit me the carriage,” he said. “Not as a privilege. As a courtesy to my own peace.”
He had framed the offer as something he needed. He understood she would refuse a favour. He was giving her a way to accept that did not cost her pride. The courtesy was to his peace, not her weakness. The distinction was the kindest thing anyone had said to her on a darkening lane.
“Yes,” Jane said. “Thank you.”
Thomas walked beside her back to the gate, matching her pace, keeping the distance that said he understood. The gig Whitlock had kept ready was still waiting.
Jane climbed in. Thomas handed her the basket, and the care he took not to touch her hand was deliberate. After what Piers had done, touch tonight was not comfort. It was trespass. Thomas would not be the second man to cross that line.
“Goodnight, Miss Rennet.”
“Goodnight, Your Grace.”
She did not call him Thomas. She was not ready, and he did not press.
The gig carried her home through the last of the light, the driver a young man from the stables named Ferris, who offered little beyond a careful greeting.
“His Grace said I was to see you all the way to your own door, Miss Rennet,” he said, when they reached the Millcombe road, “and not to leave until you were inside it. He was most particular about the door.”
“He was, was he?”
“Most particular, Miss. I have never seen him so particular about a thing in my life, and I have driven for him three years.” Ferris kept his eyes on the road. “I’ll not say more than that. He’d have my position.”
Jane permitted the silence to fall once more, and was truly grateful for the respite as it afforded her room to breathe and allowed the gravity of the evening to settle into her understanding.
Thomas had pursued her. He had been sufficiently anxious to follow, which implied he had been keeping watch at the gate, which meant, in truth, he had lingered only to see her safely away.
She pressed her hand against her forearm, where Piers’s grip had left an ache. The ache would fade by morning, but the memory of Thomas’s voice saying “you will not touch her again” would not.
***
By the arrival of morning, the inhabitants of Millcombe were entirely possessed of the matter.
It was not that they were acquainted with the precise particulars, nor indeed with the absolute truth of the event but merely a rough semblance of it, altered by the darkness of the lane and the remarkable swiftness with which intelligence ever travels in a small neighborhood.
The story, as Margaret reported it over the bakery counter before the first customer arrived, was that the Silent Duke had come down from Aldermere and threatened Piers Garrick over the baker’s daughter.
“Threatened,” Margaret said. “That is the word they are using.”
“He did not threaten. He told Piers not to touch me.”
“In Millcombe, that is a threat.”
“It was protection.”
“I know what it was. The village does not know what it was.”
“The Garricks will hear it by noon,” Margaret continued, sliding bread onto the shelf. “And they will not hear the version that favours you.”
“I know.”
“His protection may do more damage to your name than Piers’s grip did to your arm.”
“I know that too.”
Margaret looked at her, and her expression held tenderness. “And what of the duke? Was he of a kindly disposition?”
“Yes. He was kind without being presumptuous.”
“Then he is a better man than most.” Margaret paused. “That does not make the situation simpler.”
“No. It does not.”
“What did he say to Garrick? Exactly.”
“He said, ’You will not touch her.’ And that Piers was not to approach me except in a public room with witnesses.”
Margaret considered this. She was quiet for a long moment, which meant the information was being sorted and filed.
“Five words,” Margaret said.
“What?”
“’You will not touch her.’ Five words. From a man who barely speaks.
” Margaret slid another loaf onto the shelf.
“That is not a man protecting his household’s reputation, Jane.
That is a man protecting a woman he cares about.
And the village, whatever else it gets wrong, will most definitely hit upon the truth. ”
Jane did not answer. Margaret had said what she had been thinking since the lane. Thomas’s protection had not been professional. It had been personal. The fury in his eyes when he looked at Piers’s hand on her arm had not been the anger of a duke whose household was disrespected.
“We bake,” Margaret said, turning to the ovens. “We open the shop. We sell bread. We do not apologise and we do not explain.”
Jane tied her apron and began measuring flour, her hands steady and her arm still aching, and somewhere at Aldermere a duke who had broken four years of silence to say what he said on a darkening lane was sitting in his study, and she suspected he had not closed his eyes.
She had been quite as sleepless herself.