Chapter 12
Shared Vulnerabilities
The ledgers were wrong.
Alistair had spent the better part of an hour confirming it.
Three columns of figures that refused to reconcile, a guest list with two Lady Ashworths where there ought to have been one, and a seating arrangement that placed a known Whig beside a man who had once challenged him to a duel over a remark about turnips.
The charitable ball’s planning committee had left him a magnificent tangle, and he had volunteered—actually volunteered—to untangle it.
He set down the pen and pressed his thumb against the bridge of his nose.
The morning light through the ballroom’s tall windows was too bright, too clean.
It showed every scratch on the mahogany table, every ink-smudge on his fingers.
The room itself felt strange in its emptiness.
No music, no chatter, no rustle of silk.
Only the smell of beeswax and old paper, and the distant sound of a servant sweeping the marble floor in the corridor beyond.
She was late.
He had not expected her to be punctual. Punctuality would have been out of character. But the waiting had given him too much time to think, and thinking had never been his preferred occupation before breakfast.
The door opened without a knock.
“You began without me,” Sophia said. She stood in the doorway, one hand still on the handle, as though she had not yet decided whether to enter or retreat.
Her dark curls were pinned more loosely than usual, a few strands escaping at her temple.
She wore a walking dress of pale green muslin that had seen at least one previous Season, the hem slightly darkened from a morning walk through damp streets.
“You are late.” Alistair did not rise. He leaned back in his chair and let his gaze travel over her with deliberate slowness. “I had begun to suspect you’d reconsidered.”
“And miss the opportunity to watch you wrestle with arithmetic? I wouldn’t dream of it.” She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. The latch clicked softly. “Though I see you’ve already lost the first round.”
She gestured toward the scattered papers, the inkwell pushed dangerously close to the table’s edge, the crease between his brows that he had not managed to smooth away.
“The committee’s bookkeeping is an act of war,” he said. “I am merely surveying the battlefield.”
Sophia crossed to the table and stood opposite him, looking down at the chaos. She did not sit. Her fingers brushed the edge of a guest list, tilting it toward her. “Lady Ashworth appears twice.”
“I noticed.”
“And you’ve seated Lord Pemberton next to Mr. Whitmore.”
“I noticed that as well.”
“They despise each other.”
“Hence the turnips.”
She looked up, and something flickered in her eyes—not quite amusement, not quite approval. “Turnips?”
“A long story. I’ll spare you.” He swept the papers into a neater pile, more for something to do with his hands than from any hope of order. “Sit down, Miss Ainsworth. You’re making the room feel untidy.”
She sat. The chair she chose was the one farthest from his, at the opposite end of the table. A small, precise declaration of distance.
They worked in silence for several minutes.
Alistair attacked the ledger with fresh ink and a steadier hand, crossing out figures, pencilling corrections in the margin.
Sophia took up the guest list and began sorting through the names with quick, efficient movements.
Her lips moved occasionally, silently testing combinations, discarding them.
She did not ask for his opinion. He did not offer it.
The quiet was not uncomfortable. That was the strangest part.
He had spent years cultivating an allergy to silence, filling every pause with wit or provocation, keeping the world at arm’s length with a well-timed barb.
But this silence—punctuated by the scratch of nibs, the rustle of paper, the soft exhale of a woman concentrating—this silence did not require filling.
He watched her without appearing to. The fatigue he had noticed at the ball was still there, tucked into the shadows beneath her eyes, the slight downturn of her mouth when she thought no one was looking.
She had been sleeping poorly. He recognised the signs with the unwelcome intimacy of a fellow sufferer.
“You’ve placed the Hargraves at the centre table,” she said, without looking up.
“Lady Hargrave expects prominence.”
“Lady Hargrave expects a great many things she does not deserve.”
Alistair set down his pen. “That is dangerously close to an opinion, Miss Ainsworth.”
“I have been known to harbor them.” She turned a page. “In secret. Under lock and key. Like a fugitive.”
“How very Ainsworth of you.”
The words left his mouth before he had examined them. A small, careless cruelty dressed in silk. He saw it land—the fractional stiffening of her shoulders, the way her pen paused mid-stroke.
“And what,” she said, very quietly, “does that mean?”
He could have retreated. A laugh, a deflection, a self-deprecating remark about his own family’s eccentricities. The old weapons, polished and ready. He had used them a thousand times.
“It means,” he said, “that your family clings to its principles with a tenacity that borders on the theatrical. The feud, the pride, the refusal to bend. It’s all very quaint. Very Derbyshire.”
Sophia set her pen down with deliberate care. She folded her hands on the table and looked at him. Not with anger. That was the unsettling part. Her gaze was level, curious, as though he had just revealed something he had not meant to.
“And your family’s traditions?” she asked. “The grand Cavendish legacy. The unshakeable certainty that you are always in the right. Does it serve you well?”
The question hung between them. Not a counterattack. A genuine inquiry, offered without heat.
Alistair found that he did not have an answer ready.
“I don’t know,” he said.
The honesty surprised them both. He saw it register in her face—the slight widening of her eyes, the way her folded hands relaxed. She had expected a parry. He had given her something else.
“I don’t know,” he repeated, more slowly. “I have never asked myself the question.”
“Perhaps you should.”
“Perhaps I am.”
The clock on the mantle ticked. Somewhere in the building, a door opened and closed. The servant’s broom continued its patient rhythm against the marble.
Sophia returned her attention to the guest list. But something in the air had shifted. The distance between their chairs felt smaller than it had a moment ago.
They worked through the remaining names with a new efficiency.
Alistair found himself listening to her suggestions—truly listening, not merely waiting for his turn to speak.
She had an instinct for the invisible architecture of social events, the hidden currents that could carry a gathering toward harmony or disaster.
When she proposed seating Lady Margaret Harrow as far as possible from any unmarried gentleman under the age of forty, he laughed before he could stop himself.
“You have a gift for strategic cruelty,” he said.
“I prefer to call it preventative diplomacy.” She was almost smiling. “Lady Margaret’s conversation has been known to cause permanent damage.”
“To intellect, reputation, or will to live?”
“All three. Simultaneously. It’s really quite efficient.”
He leaned back in his chair and studied her.
The fatigue was still there, but something else had surfaced beneath it.
A quickness, a warmth, a mind that refused to stay still.
He had known clever women before. He had charmed them, flattered them, occasionally bedded them.
He had never sat across a table from one and felt the conversation itself become a form of sustenance.
“What would you write?” he asked.
The question came out before he had decided to ask it. Sophia’s hand stilled on the paper.
“I beg your pardon?”
“If you could write anything. Without consequence. Without your family’s name attached. What would it be?”
She was silent for a long moment. He watched her weigh the question, turning it over like a coin whose value she had not yet determined. Her fingers traced the edge of the guest list, a small, unconscious gesture.
“Essays,” she said finally. “Observations. The things I notice and am not supposed to say aloud.”
“Social commentary.”
“You make it sound respectable.”
“I make it sound dangerous.”
She met his eyes. “It is.”
The word landed with more weight than she had probably intended. Alistair felt something tighten in his chest—recognition, perhaps, or the first stirring of a hunger he had not allowed himself to name.
“I read the Brighton Observer,” he said.
He watched her face carefully. The flicker was almost imperceptible, a fractional pause, a deliberate steadiness that was itself a tell. She was good at this. Better than most. But he had spent years studying the gap between what people showed and what they hid.
“Have you?” Her voice was neutral. “I understand it has become quite popular.”
“It has become necessary.” He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “Someone in this city is saying what no one else will say. Someone is paying attention. Do you know how rare that is?”
“I imagine it is very rare indeed.”
“It is almost non-existent.” He held her gaze. “I would very much like to meet the person responsible.”
Sophia did not blink. “Would you?”
“I would. I have questions.”
“What sort of questions?”
He could feel the ground shifting beneath them. The conversation had become something else, a negotiation conducted in half-sentences, a dance where neither partner would admit to hearing the music.
“I would ask what she sees,” he said. “When she looks at the people around her. Whether she sees through them. Whether she sees anything worth keeping.”
“She?”
“A guess.”
Sophia picked up her pen. She did not write anything. She simply held it, as though the familiar weight might anchor her. “You assume a great deal, Lord Alistair.”