Chapter 10
Ten
“Come Nike, come here!”
The dog heeded her immediately, returning to her from where she had been digging in the hedges near the terrace for something.
Aurelia laughed as Nike settled clumsily on the blanket laid out underneath them.
“You are such a good girl,” she was saying, kissing the dog’s head.
“Even if I could saddle you and ride you like a horse, you are still the best dog there ever was, a perfect size.”
She stroked Nike’s ears as she glanced across the garden, rearranging her sketchbook. The morning was bright enough to sketch by, which meant it was a good morning overall.
She had found the habit sometime in the second week.
Rather the habit had found her. Art had never been her forté, but she wanted a reason to be outside that did not involve riding.
A few days ago, she had sent to Norwich for pencils and a decent sketchbook through Mrs. Foulger, who had procured them without comment.
The grounds of Carrstone offered more subjects than she could exhaust in a season: the beech avenue, the farms, the old mill on the stream.
This morning, it was the folly at the east edge of the park, which was a small stone tower that notorious great-aunt had commissioned on a whim years ago.
It leaned slightly to the left in a way that was either charming or alarming depending on the weather.
She was working on the lean when she became aware, without looking up, that she was being watched. She had noticed this about Evander. He was quiet in his observation and did not make himself obvious or approach immediately. But she could always feel him nearby.
To be fair, she thought rather than chastising herself, the dogs usually gave him away, Titan appearing from nowhere and settling at her feet with the sigh of mission accomplished.
But today Titan was already there, and she could still feel it.
And that did not bode well at all as she turned the page and started drawing something new…
Really, he had not meant to stop. Evander was walking out from the house with Poole, his estate manager, talking about the properties for sale in Suffolk – which was in fairness a conversation that required walking – when he had seen her under a tree down the lawn.
She was sitting on a blanket with a sketchbook and the dogs, her coat pulled around her, her pencil moving with focused attention.
“--which brings me to the Scottish property, Your Grace," Poole was saying, consulting his ledger, “the Knowles hold in Perthshire.
We have had an enquiry about a purchase from a family in Edinburgh.
The figure they are suggesting is…" He named a figure, and Evander could hardly believe the sum.
“Which is generous, yes, given the current state of the property. It is my understanding it has been in disuse for nearly two decades. If Your Grace wished to consider–”
“We are not selling it,” Evander said.
Poole made a note, having visibly anticipated this but written the figure down anyway for completeness. “Of course,” he said succinctly, turning to another page.
The house in Perthshire was her parents' property which he had come into through her dowry.
It was technically his now, which was a fact of law that he found straightforwardly wrong and had no intention of acting on.
She would want it for ever. She might not know yet that she wanted it, but she would. It was the place her family was from.
“The guests will begin arriving Saturday, so it will collide with our trip,” Evander said, turning to other matters that were somehow still connected to Aurelia, like most things were nowadays.
“Mrs. Hartwell and Miss Penrose are arriving. I would like the south guest rooms prepared, the ones with the view of the rhododendron gardens. They will be blooming soon. If you catch Mrs. Foulger on your way out, tell her for me.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” Poole noted this, then paused.
He was a man in his early sixties who had kept himself healthy and looked much younger.
He was professional, but still a close relation, having worked for Evander’s father.
Which meant his next comment was not inappropriate in the slightest. “The Earl of Norwich has asked to delay the meeting about the fair at Booton Farm on account of the events Friday evening. Shall I tell him we can accommodate the change? Perhaps next Monday?”
Evander nodded. Poole meant the ball Norwich was hosting in a few days. “Yes,” he said. “Confirm it.” He paused, unable to ignore Aurelia’s presence in the garden a second longer. “Come and meet the Duchess, why don’t you?”
She heard them coming before she saw them, voices coming closer, and she closed her sketchbook on instinct. She feigned interest in the folly again and reached for a sandwich on the tray beside her.
“You don't have to close it,” Evander said with a smile as he approached. The sun almost made his black hair look dark brown.
“I wasn’t.”
He looked at the closed sketchbook then at her with a smile. Then he introduced Poole, who was a compact man in his sixties with a face somehow un-weathered by the Norfolk climate. He seemed a kind gentleman overall.
“Your Grace,” he said, and the title came without the slight uncertainty she still occasionally heard in newer staff.
She asked him about what they were doing, about Booton, because she had heard Evander mention it every morning this week. Evander stood slightly behind Poole's eyeline and said nothing, but she could feel him grateful for her interest.
After Poole had excused himself, she opened her sketchbook again and looked at the folly, expecting Evander to leave with the agent. But he didn’t.
“There is a ball,” Evander said, evidently not very enthusiastic about it.
She looked up and shielded her eyes from the sun where her bonnet failed her. “So I have heard.”
“It’s just outside of Norwich, hosted by the Earl of Norwich and his wife. They were friends of my father's, as might be expected given the proximity of our properties.”
“Booton Farm sits on the border between them,” Aurelia said. “That’s what all this fuss is about.”
“Partly.” Evander sighed. He looked at the folly. “They host every spring. I have attended for six years and have not yet found a way to avoid it that does not cause me a greater inconvenience than the ball itself.”
“You say that as though balls are inherently catastrophic.”
“Hm, no. I say it as though this particular ball is a four-hour exercise in people asking me why I spend so much time in the country – as though they do not live here themselves.”
“And what do you tell them?”
“I tell them I find it more interesting than town and leave it at that.” He put his hands in his coat pockets. “You will be a significant distraction thankfully. I expect they will mostly want to talk to you.”
She opened her book again to look at her sketch of the folly. “Ah. Now I see why you wanted a wife after all. A sacrificial lamb.”
“Yes and no,” he joked, crouching down to stroke Nike. Her stomach flipped now that he was closer, his voice taking on a familiar playful rumble. “But you are considerably better at speaking with people than I am.”
“That is a very low bar and you know it.”
“Regardless, I shall be glad to have you by my side.”
Her heart did an involuntary flutter, and she shrugged one-shouldered to hide her embarrassment.
“You should go now and Nike for a walk. She is getting restless, I can feel it.” She stroked leftover eraser marks from the page.
“And I need my full concentration to finish this sketch before it gets dark.”
Nodding, Evander rose and bid Nike to follow him as he left down the lawn. Aurelia privately turned the page from the folly to what she had actually been drawing: Evander, as he was now, walking with his dogs.
The ball was held in a converted church on the east side of Norwich.
It had been deconsecrated some time in the last century and repurposed with candelabras and a sprung floor that were sufficient to make the nave feel festive.
The proportions were extraordinary, the acoustics mostly awful.
But the effect of two hundred Norfolk society figures in their spring finest beneath fourteenth-century vaulting was strangely magnificent.
Aurelia took in the sight from the great yawning entrance and felt Evander's arm under her hand.
She was glad he was there, looking as handsome as the day she had married him.
Which in theory made it sound like it had been long ago.
But it had only been two weeks. They had dressed without too much ceremony; she wore an ivory silk she had brought from London and had not yet worn, and he wore a dark coat that made him look scarily dukely.
The carriage ride had been forty minutes of conversation about the Earl of Norwich, his wife, and their seven children.
In Evander’s eyes he was a reasonable man and his wife was formidable in the way of women who excelled in polite societies, very warm and agreeable, always knowing how to keep a conversation going by taking real interest in the people she encountered.
“Especially when they are young artistic women,” Evander was saying then to Aurelia, keeping his voice low. “You will like her.”
“You sound very confident.”
“Why not? She will tell you things about Norfolk that I could never teach you. She knows everything about the people here. It would do you good to become close with her.”
Thankfully, Aurelia had liked her. Lady Norwich was sixty, broad-shouldered and with a direct but vibrant way of being. She had taken Aurelia's hands when they were introduced and looked at her frankly but kindly, holding her hands tight for too long.
“Good. Very good to have you, Your Grace. Just wonderful,” Lady Norwich had said after introductions, which was apparently her verdict, and had then moved on.