Chapter 5 #3
When the ladies at last dispersed, appeased, if not satisfied, Lady Penworth sank into the nearest chair with visible relief.
Mrs. Fanshawe went to fetch her water. Mrs. Wexley began muttering about re-copying every card in the house before dawn.
Lord Penworth reappeared only in time to be told, with admirable brevity, that his wife had been spared social annihilation for the present.
Through all of it Harrison remained acutely aware of Genny.
She stood by the window now, one hand resting lightly against the frame, her profile turned toward the fading light.
The house had begun to move into late afternoon.
Outside, the square lay washed in that delicate gray-gold hour between brightness and dusk.
Inside, candlelight had not yet been called for, and so the room seemed briefly suspended between one state and another.
Much like his peace of mind.
He crossed to her before deciding whether he ought.
“You handled Lady Castlemain well,” he said.
She looked at him, startled and then guarded, as though praise from him still struck some uncertain place inside her. “Did I?”
“You know you did.”
“Yes,” she admitted after a beat. “But it is pleasant to hear you say so.”
The honesty of that answer unsettled him more than any flirtation could have done.
“You prevented a public quarrel.”
“For now.”
“For now,” he agreed.
Her gaze drifted back to the window. “Do you know what is worst in all this?”
He waited.
“That part of me is enjoying it.” She let out a soft breath. “Not the malice. Not the whispers. But the work of it. The seeing. The piecing together. The feeling that for once the very things people laugh at in me may prove useful.”
Harrison considered her profile, the loosened tendril near her temple, the intelligence alive in every line of her face when she forgot to hide it behind mischief.
“There is nothing contemptible in enjoying one’s own usefulness,” he said.
She turned then, and something in her expression softened so suddenly that he had the disquieting sense of having stepped too near a precipice.
“You make it sound very simple.”
“It is simple.”
“No,” she said, and the faint smile that touched her mouth held no mockery. “It is only simple to people who have always been permitted to matter.”
The words struck harder than she knew.
Harrison looked down at his own hands, hands that had been given keys, ledgers, signatures, authority. People had burdened him before he was ready, but they had never smiled while moving him gently out of the way. They had never called him delightful when they meant useless.
Genny’s fingers rested on the window frame, still and white-knuckled.
At last he saw the wound beneath the sparkle. Not recklessness. Not a lack of sense. Hunger, for the dignity of consequence.
He found himself saying, very quietly, “You matter to this.”
Her eyes lifted to his.
The room receded.
He was aware of distant voices, of Lady Penworth thanking Mrs. Fanshawe, of the muted tread of servants in the hall. Yet all of it seemed curiously far away compared with the look on Genny’s face.
“Harrison,” she said.
It was not the first time she had used his Christian name, but it was the first time he had felt it land quite like that. The sound of it in her voice altered the air between them.
He should have stepped back.
Instead he remained where he was, close enough to see the gold hidden in her brown eyes and the rise and fall of her breath.
Then Mrs. Wexley exclaimed over some missing bundle of cards, the moment broke like glass, and Genny blinked as though surfacing.
“I suppose,” she said, not looking at him now, “that if we are to preserve civilization, we ought to find the ledger before dinner.”
Harrison drew breath. “Yes.”
It was the correct answer.
It was not the answer he wished to give.
By the time he left Lady Penworth’s receiving room with Miss Moreland once more at his side, Harrison was forced to admit three further conclusions.
First, the culprit had altered the printed order more than once and likely moved through the house with enough confidence to avoid notice.
Second, the threat to the fête was broadening from private suspicion to public humiliation.
And third, most inconvenient of all, every hour spent with Genny Moreland made it more difficult to remember that his first duty in all this was not to her smile, her wit, or the dangerous new softness in her voice when she said his name.
It was to solve the matter before either her reputation or his own good sense was lost beyond retrieval.
That evening, before supper was announced, Harrison found himself alone with his sister, Lady Redford, in Lady Penworth’s back parlor for the length of precisely one conversation he had no wish to have.
His sister shut the door behind her.
That, in Harrison’s experience, was rarely a promising beginning.
“You are looking at Genny differently,” Esme said.
He glanced up from the papers in his hand. “Am I?”
“Yes. And do not attempt your viscount voice with me. I grew up stealing sugared almonds from your study and hiding behind curtains during Mama’s calls. I am immune.”
“I was not aware I possessed a viscount voice.”
“You possess at least six. This one is the voice you use when you hope everyone will be too impressed by your composure to notice you are avoiding the question.”
Harrison set the papers down because reading them had become impossible. “Miss Moreland has been of use.”
Esme’s eyes narrowed. “Of use.”
“Yes.”
“How very romantic. Shall I embroider it upon a sampler?”
He gave her a look. It did not work. It almost never had.
Esme crossed the room and perched on the arm of a chair, altogether too pleased with herself. “Harrison, I adore Genny. You know that. She is bright and reckless and dearer than she allows people to see. She also bruises more easily than she pretends.”
“I am aware.”
The answer came too quickly.
Worse, he felt the truth of it in his body: in the tightening across his shoulders, in the uncomfortable heat behind his breastbone, in the way Genny’s name seemed to alter the room even when she was not in it.
Esme’s expression changed.
“Oh,” she said softly.
Harrison disliked that softening more than her teasing. “There is nothing to oh.”
“There is a great deal to oh.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Esme.”
“Harrison.”
He looked toward the window, where the evening light had turned the glass dark. “The day has been trying. Miss Moreland was nearly made the object of a very damaging accusation. Any concern I feel is natural.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“Then why do you look as though someone has reorganized your soul and left the furniture in the wrong place?”
Despite himself, he almost laughed.
Sisters were troublesome in ways no enemy could hope to be. They were ruthless because they had loved one long before learning restraint.
Esme’s amusement faded. “Do not hurt her.”
“I do not intend to.”
“No one ever intends to. That is why I am saying it plainly.” She stood and came closer, all teasing gone now. “Genny has spent years letting people think her lighter than she is because it keeps the room fond of her. If you see more, be honorable with it.”
The rebuke, gently delivered though it was, found its mark.
“I know,” he said.
Esme studied him for another moment, then nodded as though satisfied by something in his face. “Good.”
At the door she paused. “For what it is worth, I think she sees you too.”
Harrison did not answer.
After she left, he remained in the quiet parlor, one hand resting on the back of a chair, and understood with inconvenient clarity that his sister was right.
Miss Genevieve Moreland had become dangerous not because she unsettled him, though she did.
She was dangerous because she saw past the order he wore like armor and did not seem to despise the man beneath it.
That thought should have left him wary. Instead it made something in him ache with a want he had not given permission to exist.
He had no idea what to do with that.
Which meant, very likely, that he was already lost.