Chapter 6 #2
The coach stopped. He stepped down first and offered Aurelia his hand tentatively.
She took it, and they walked toward the door where Mrs. Foulger was already standing with the assembled household behind her, twelve of them in two lines, the way it had always been done.
Evander found it too serious for a place like Carrstone.
“Your Grace.” Mrs. Foulger addressed him and then Aurelia directly, with the tight smile he was familiar with.
She looked the exact same as when he had left her after the winter, two months ago, but the grey in her hair had overtaken more of the brown.
“Welcome to Carrstone Manor. We are very glad to have you.”
Aurelia received this neutrally and fell into a curtsey. She asked Mrs. Foulger's name as a small courtesy, he noted.
He was showing her the entrance hall next, once the staff had been dismissed to prepare a supper for them and take their belongings to their respective rooms. The hall was the result of a renovation his great-great-grandfather had begun.
He was about to say as much, staring up at the stonework of the ceiling, when he heard a sound that made the whole trip worthwhile: claws on stone.
He had about a second's warning before Titan came around the corner at full speed, all four legs losing traction on the flagstones, skidding to a halt directly against Evander's legs with a force that almost knocked him over.
“All right, that’s quite enough,” Evander said, going down onto one knee and letting Titan's enormous head push against his chest. “Yes. I know. I was gone, and I am sorry.”
Titan communicated his feelings about this at length, his slim ash-brown tail wagging emphatically back and forth. Evander bore the onslaught with a smile, wincing at the volume of his barks and the foul but comforting smell of his mouth.
When he looked up, Aurelia had taken two steps back. Her hands were together at her front, squeezing her fingers. Her expression was doing its best to communicate politeness, but her ears had gone red.
Then the second dog appeared. Titan's younger sister, Nike, a little less large and enthusiastic, a pale spotted grey, who proceeded to investigate Aurelia's hem with tremendous interest.
“Off her, Nike,” Evander said, standing roughly. He caught Nike by the collar and drew her back. “Forgive me. I should have warned you. They are,” he looked at them, Titan still pressing against his leg, Nike attempting to reapproach, “enthusiastic creatures to say the least."
“You say creatures but…” Aurelia’s neck worked and she took another step back when Nike stirred again. “What are they?”
“Dogs.”
“What dogs?”
“Great Danes.”
“I have never seen dogs so large in my life. They look more like ponies. They could swallow Margie and the rest of Violet’s pack whole.”
Evan laughed, patting Titan on the head. “Does that mean you do not like them?”
He had said it as a joke, but she seemed genuinely panicked by the question.
“No. How could I not like them? They are wonderful, so different. But they will take some getting used to.”
“You don't have to–”
“I mean it. I’m not in the business of lying, especially not to you,” she repeated more firmly, and crouched down on the stones in the same casual manner he had, and let Nike sniff her hand.
Evander watched her hold very still while Nike completed her assessment, and then Nike licked her gloved wrist. Aurelia glanced up with surprise, and then she steadied herself and scratched behind Nike's ear until she smiled and Nike began panting.
“She is named Nike,” he said.
“I hear that, and I see why.” Aurelia rubbed Nike’s one white ear, laughing when the dog tried to climb into Aurelia's lap. “She will never fit. She is very large.”
“She is exactly the size of her mother, who was also very large.” He called Titan back and held his collar. “The other one is Titan. They have the same parents but they are from different litters. He is better behaved. And thank God for it, given the size of him.”
Titan chose this moment to sit on Evander's foot, obscuring his muddied Wellington boot.
Aurelia looked up at him from her crouching position, Nike's paws on her knees and what he was fairly certain was dog hair already on pale yellow travelling coat from her wedding trousseau. She laughed again, a real and sudden laugh.
And the doubt he had about her and Carrstone began to dissipate.
He was giving her the eastern wing and took her there now, Nike and Titan trailing behind them and sniffing the dusty parquet.
He had thought about this on the journey, and then told himself he was not thinking about it, and then found himself thinking about it again.
It was a strange thing to give someone. A wing.
It had been strange when the thought had first arrived three days ago, and he had not been able to talk himself out of it since.
The east wing had not been opened in eleven months.
It smelled of beeswax and old wood and the dryness of a room that had not been used for too long.
He lit the lamps himself. Mrs. Foulger had been dismissed for the evening now that supper was waiting for them elsewhere, and they wanted to be alone.
Aurelia followed him through the connecting doors without speaking. She had been quiet since the entrance hall, looking around cautiously, mostly keeping pace with Nike.
The music room was at the far end. He opened the door and stood back to let her in first, and he watched her stop in the doorway.
The instruments were more or less arranged as his great-aunt had left them.
Her collection, gathered over forty years.
Every piece was unique. The pianoforte at the centre, a Clementi & Co, was in better condition than it had any right to be.
Around it, cases of smaller instruments, a viola da gamba in its stand, two lutes, a harpsichord against the far wall that had been built in Antwerp supposedly, which Evander's father had once offered to sell and the entire household had revolted. And so much more it made his head spin.
Aurelia walked into the room slowly, a hand pressed against her neck.
“It is a little cold in here,” Evander said, moving to light more candles. “But I see they removed the dust sheets for you. They must have heard that you were a musician. Who can say how. Word travels fast. About musical duchesses. About eloping brothers and brides.”
She ran her hand along the edge of the pianoforte without touching the keys.
She stopped at the harpsichord and looked at it closely, stopping at the painted panels on the lid: birds, flowers, a small hunting scene in the corner.
She looked at the viola in its stand, at the lutes in their cases, at the shelves of bound and sometimes crumbling music books along the east wall.
Evander only realised he was staring when a bead of wax dropped on his hand, and he flinched with a hiss.
“Is this the surprise you mentioned in the coach?” Aurelia asked.
Her voice was strange. He worried he had done something wrong.
“Yes. This was hers,” he said, setting down his candle steadily.
“The duchess had no children, which meant she could spend her husband’s money on things she actually wanted.
Evidently she wanted a great deal of instruments.
” He paused. “This room has not been used since my father's time. He could not play and did not see the point of a room that only meant to host a musician. Mother had no ear for music, and my brother and I are completely without rhythm.” A pause. “Is something wrong? Is this–”
He stopped, because Aurelia had turned around, and she was crying.
Her face had barely registered the emotion, but her eyes glistened in the candlelight, and he heard her sniff. Evander had not expected this. He had thought she would be pleased.
“Aurelia,” he said, and then stopped, because he did not know what he should say next.
She pressed her fingers to her mouth for a moment, then wiped her eyes with her sleeve. She looked at the pianoforte, looked back at him.
“Would you really give me this room?” she said.
“Yes, but only if you want it,” he replied carefully.
“It occurred to me that you might…" He stopped again.
He was not, as he had told her, an eloquent man.
“It is yours. If you want it. Of all the areas of this manor this wing is the emptiest. That is all. I thought it would help for someone to care for it, and it would give you something to do in the meantime.”
She looked at him for a long moment in that old music room, with its beeswax smell and its centuries’ old instruments, and he could not read her expression at all, which was unusual. He did not look away.
Not even when she parted her lips to speak, and his heart threatened to beat out of his chest. Her opinion should not have mattered so much to him about these small things. And yet…
And yet.