Chapter 7 #2
“The feud,” Alistair said carefully, “was a matter of a surveyor’s error and two men too proud to admit they were wrong. That is not principle. That is vanity.”
Lady Beatrice turned. Her expression had not changed, but something in the air between them had tightened. “Who told you that?”
“It does not matter who told me. Is it true?”
She did not answer. She did not need to. The silence was confirmation enough.
“The Ainsworths are not in a position of strength,” she said at last. “Their country estate has been poorly managed. Their Brighton residence is modest. Lady Eleanor Ainsworth has not been seen in new silks for two seasons, and her daughter’s dowry is rumoured to be smaller than it should be for a family of their standing. They are not our equals.”
“I was not aware that conversation required equality of income.”
“Conversation leads to association. Association leads to expectation. You know this.” She moved away from the window and came to stand before his desk, close enough that he could smell the lavender water she wore.
“I am not forbidding you from speaking to the girl. I am advising you to consider the implications. You carry this family’s name wherever you go. Your choices reflect on all of us.”
Alistair held her gaze. “I am aware of my responsibilities.”
“Are you?” she asked again, and this time the question landed differently. Softer. Almost sad. “I sometimes wonder if you think of anything beyond your own amusement.”
She left before he could answer. The door closed behind her with a soft, definitive click, and Alistair was alone with the thin light and the cold coffee and the uncomfortable knowledge that his mother was not entirely wrong.
He had spent years cultivating the appearance of a man who cared for nothing.
It had been a useful disguise. It had protected him from the expectations of others, from the machinations of matchmaking mothers, from the exhausting necessity of sincerity.
But the disguise had become too effective.
His own mother believed it. And somewhere along the way, he had begun to believe it himself.
Until the Observer essays had appeared, and he had felt something stir beneath the performance. Curiosity. Hunger. The recognition of a mind that saw the world as he saw it, and was not afraid to say so.
And then there was Miss Sophia Ainsworth, with her sharp eyes and her sharper tongue, who had stood at the seaside railing and laughed at something he said as if she could not help herself.
Who had looked at him with something other than calculation or desire or fear.
Who had seemed, for one unguarded moment, as tired of the masquerade as he was.
He did not know if she was the Observer.
He suspected. The suspicion had been growing since the Hargraves’ reception, since he had watched her navigate the room with a composure so flawless it had to be deliberate.
But suspicion was not proof, and proof was not what he wanted.
What he wanted was to sit across from her in a quiet room and ask her what she thought.
About the essays. About the season. About the endless, grinding machinery of expectation that shaped every choice they were permitted to make.
He wanted to know if she saw him. Not Lord Alistair Cavendish, the rake, the disappointment, the inheritor of a feud he had never chosen. But him.
The thought was so absurd that he laughed aloud, a short, humourless sound that echoed in the empty study.
He was a fool. He was a fool, and he was tired, and he had a ball to prepare for, and somewhere in Brighton a woman with a pen was preparing her next assault on the pretensions of the ton.
He would find her. He would offer her patronage, protection, the freedom to write without fear.
And he would not think about Miss Sophia Ainsworth’s laugh, or the way the sea-breeze had pulled a strand of dark hair across her cheek, or the fact that she had not bothered to push it back.
He would not think about any of it.
He thought about all of it for the rest of the morning.
* * *
Across town, in a sitting room that faced the Channel, Sophia Ainsworth was sorting through the morning’s correspondence and trying very hard not to think about Lord Alistair Cavendish.
She was failing.
The letters were spread across the small writing desk by the window, a disorderly fan of paper and ink that reflected the disorder of her thoughts.
There was a note from Eliza, full of cousinly gossip and questions about the Brighton season that Sophia did not feel equipped to answer.
There was an invitation to a musical evening at Lady Pemberton’s, which she set aside with a grimace.
There was a letter from Benedict, still sealed, which she had been avoiding for reasons she could not quite name.
And there was the memory of Alistair’s voice, low and amused, saying I look forward to it with a weight that had nothing to do with courtesy.
She had replayed that moment more times than she cared to count.
The seaside encounter had unsettled her in ways she was still trying to understand.
She had gone to the Marine Parade expecting solitude, expecting the familiar comfort of salt air and grey water, and instead she had found herself in conversation with a man who saw too much and concealed too little.
He had referenced the Observer essays. He had spoken of them with admiration, with curiosity, with a hunger that matched her own.
And he had looked at her as if he was trying to read something written beneath her skin.
It was dangerous. He was dangerous. And she could not stop thinking about him.
The door opened. Sophia looked up, expecting Eliza’s letter to have summoned her cousin bodily from the page, but it was her mother who entered.
Lady Eleanor Ainsworth was dressed in a morning gown of pale blue, her hair arranged with its usual elegance, but her face carried a tension that Sophia recognised immediately.
It was the tension of accounts that did not balance, of letters that brought unwelcome news, of a future that refused to arrange itself into the shape she had planned.
“Good morning, Mama.”
“Good morning, my dear.” Lady Eleanor closed the door behind her, which was unusual. She rarely closed doors. Open doors were a safeguard against gossip, against the appearance of secrecy. A closed door meant something private was about to be said.
Sophia set down Eliza’s letter. “Is something the matter?”
“No. Yes.” Lady Eleanor crossed to the window and stood looking out at the Channel, her hands clasped before her. “I wished to speak with you. About the Season.”
“We have spoken about the Season.”
“We have spoken about the Season in general terms.” Lady Eleanor turned. Her eyes were tired. “I think it is time we spoke about it in particular terms.”
Sophia felt something tighten in her chest. “What particular terms?”
Her mother did not answer immediately. She moved to the chair beside the writing desk and sat down with the careful grace that had carried her through thirty years of social obligation.
“The Brighton residence is more expensive to maintain than I had anticipated. The rent has increased, and the servants’ wages, and there are other expenses—” She stopped.
“Your father’s investments have not performed as well as we hoped.
The estate in Derbyshire requires repairs that we have been postponing for too long. ”
“What kind of repairs?”
“The roof of the east wing. The drainage in the south field. Matters that cannot be postponed indefinitely.” Lady Eleanor’s voice was steady, but her hands were not.
They moved in her lap, fingers twisting together in a gesture Sophia had seen a hundred times and never truly noticed until now.
“Your brother’s commission was expensive.
More expensive than we anticipated. And there have been unforeseen costs. ”
“Unforeseen costs,” Sophia repeated. The phrase felt hollow.
“Benedict wrote to me last week. He did not wish to alarm you, but the letter mentioned certain difficulties. The estate’s steward has been unwell.
The harvest was poor. There are debts that must be serviced.
” Lady Eleanor met her daughter’s eyes. “I am telling you this not to burden you, but so that you understand the importance of this Season. It is not merely a matter of social success. It is a matter of—”
“Money,” Sophia said.
The word landed between them like a stone dropped into still water.
Lady Eleanor did not flinch. “Yes. Money. I wish it were otherwise. I wish I could tell you to follow your heart, to wait for a match that satisfies your intellect as well as your duty. But we do not have that luxury. Your father’s health is not what it was.
The estate cannot sustain another year of poor returns.
And your brother—” She stopped again. “Benedict is doing what he can. But he cannot do everything.”
Sophia looked down at the letters spread across her desk. Eliza’s gossip. Lady Pemberton’s invitation. Benedict’s letter, still sealed. The weight of her family’s expectations pressed against her ribs like a physical thing.
“I understand,” she said.
“Do you?”
“I understand that I am to marry well. That my preferences are secondary. That my wit and my opinions and my—” She caught herself before she said essays. “My intellect is not the currency that matters.”
Lady Eleanor’s expression flickered. “That is not what I said.”
“It is what you meant.”
Silence. The Channel glittered beyond the window, indifferent and beautiful, and Sophia felt the familiar ache of wanting something she could not name. Freedom. Purpose. The right to choose her own life. All of it was impossible. All of it was already slipping through her fingers.