Chapter Two #2
The Duke did not smile. He held her eyes a moment past comfort, as though weighing a thing he did not mean to share, then bowed again and was gone into the crowd, and the warmth of the room seemed to drop by a degree as he went.
“He does not like me,” Helena said, when Sylvester led her out for the second.
“Rhysand does not like noise, or laughter, or most evidence that the species means to carry on regardless.” He turned her under his arm.
“You must not take it for yourself. He dislikes me, and I am the best thing that has ever happened to him. Ask anyone in the room. Ask him, if you have a free hour and a strong constitution.”
“That seems a very lonely way to pass a life.”
“He calls it duty.” For half a bar, the polish went out of his voice.
“He has called a great many lonely things duty over the years. It spares him the bother of calling them by their proper names. Our father taught him the trick and was proud of how well he took to it, and I was let off the lesson for being the spare. No one minds what shape a spare grows into.”
“You sound almost sorry for him.”
“I am never sorry for Rhysand. He would return it with interest and attach a short lecture.” The brightness came back up over whatever had briefly shown beneath it.
“And were you ever sorry for yourself? Being let off the lessons.”
“Never for a moment. I had the better end of the bargain by a mile.” He turned her, and the answer came a shade too quickly to be the whole of it.
“He took the title and the sermons and the early mornings in the cold. I was given leave to be liked instead, which is far pleasanter work and pays nearly as well. I have always held that I had the best of it. I have only lately begun to wonder whether anyone troubled to ask either of us which we should have chosen.”
“And if they had asked you?”
“Then I should have given a charming answer and meant none of it, which is the one thing I do better than dance.” He smiled the question off. “Now cease asking after my brother while you are dancing with me. It is very bad for my character, and I keep so little of it about me as it is.”
***
Rhysand had known it the moment Sylvester led her in, and had spent the hour since building reasons it did not signify.
She listened. That was the first thing he noticed, and the least convenient.
She gave whoever spoke the whole of her attention, head tipped, eyes on the speaker’s face, none of the practised half-attention with which young women surveyed a room for better prospects over a partner’s shoulder.
She had grieved lately, and grieved still, quietly, in the seams of an evening she had plainly meant to enjoy.
And she looked at Sylvester as though he had done a noble thing.
“You frightened the girl,” the Dowager said, arriving at his shoulder with a glass she had no intention of drinking.
“I spoke to her for the length of a minute.”
“You spoke to her for the length of a minute in the voice you keep for tenants behind on their rent. The poor child could not decide whether to curtsy or run.” His mother followed his line of sight to where Sylvester turned Helena beneath his arm.
“She is a sweet thing. Better than he deserves, and exactly the sort he spoils without intending to. He never finds any other kind. The hard ones see him coming a mile off.”
“You have decided a great deal in so short a time.”
“I do not decide. I watch, and I am usually right, and I take no pleasure in it.” She sipped after all. “I am fond of your brother, Rhysand. It is permitted. He is fond of me in return, and you are not, on most days of the week.”
“I am fond of you, Mother. I will not say so where you can make use of it.”
“There.” Her mouth curved. “That was very nearly charming. Practise it. You may have need of it before the summer is out, though I could not yet tell you why I think so.” She drifted off into the candlelight and left the remark sitting where she had set it, exactly where he would trip on it later.
He found Sylvester by the card room when the second dance ended, between a potted palm and a tray of glasses, well pleased with the evening and with himself.
“Do not trifle with Miss Fairford,” Rhysand said.
“You have exchanged ten words with the woman, and already you sound like her guardian.” Sylvester chose a glass without hurry. “It is a remarkable economy of acquaintance, even for you.”
“She seems respectable.”
“How tragic for her. Am I forbidden from admiring respectable women now, or only from being admired by them in return?”
“You are forbidden from damaging them.”
“I have damaged no one.” The ease flickered, there and gone. “I found a lady’s purse in a hedge and earned two dances for my pains. If that is damage, the magistrates have been asleep at their posts for years.”
“You are enjoying this.”
“I am enjoying a glass of indifferent claret and a conversation I never asked for. The two are quite unrelated.” Sylvester set the glass down at last. “You have appointed yourself the lady’s protector on the strength of one bow and a frown.
Has it crossed your mind that she might prefer the brother who smiles at her? ”
“It has crossed my mind that she does not yet know you well enough to distrust you.”
“No one ever knows enough. That is rather the point of risk, and the only reason anyone dares to take one.” He smiled. “You would have her informed first. A signed schedule of every fault, initialled in advance. It is a wonder you were ever born at all, with Father drawing up the terms.”
“You earned those dances by a means you have not told me. You would have told me otherwise, since you tell me everything that flatters you and nothing that does not, and you have not breathed a word of how the coin came to be found.” Rhysand kept his voice beneath the music.
“I am asking you once, as your brother. Do not make sport of her.”
“And if I do?”
“Then I shall think less of you than I do tonight, and I had not believed I had room left in me to do it.”
Sylvester drank, and smiled, and gave him nothing whatever, which was its own plain answer.
Rhysand left him there and crossed back towards the long room, meaning to serve his half-hour among the neighbours and then go up.
He did not reach them. Across the floor, Miss Fairford stood at the edge of the dancing with one hand pressed to her collarbone, laughing at something her sister had said, the whole of her face given over to it without guard, the way a person laughs who has not yet learnt to count the cost of spending it.
The sound reached him beneath the low music and the murmur of the tables, and did precisely what he had spent the hour insisting it could not.
She was not for him. The fact would have to be built into a wall, and built quickly, before it was given the chance to become a wound.