Chapter 1 #2
Edward should have objected to being so easily read. Instead, he felt the first loosening in his chest since the carriage had turned into the avenue.
They walked out toward the stables together as twilight gathered over Ravensmoor. The horses knew him before the grooms had finished bowing. Orion lifted his head over the stall door and blew out a warm, impatient breath.
He was a powerful black gelding with a white star and the superb arrogance of an animal convinced that men existed chiefly to open gates. Edward stepped closer and laid a hand against the strong neck.
“There you are,” Edward murmured.
Orion nudged his shoulder with graceless affection.
Edward almost smiled. The other animals turned toward him with bright eyes and uncomplicated interest. They did not care that he was a duke.
They did not remember what he had failed to do.
They knew whether a man approached with fear or arrogance or understanding.
He had always preferred their judgement.
Thomas stood a few paces away, watching with the tact of a man who had no intention of interrupting until interruption became useful.
“At least one part of Ravensmoor hasn’t acquired the habit of conversation,” Edward mused.
“The horses, Your Grace?”
“They greet a man honestly.”
Thomas considered this. “They also bite when displeased. Society has fewer virtues in that respect.”
This time Edward did smile, though briefly. He took Orion’s bridle from the groom and led him into the yard himself. They rode out by the lower path, with Thomas mounted on a bay behind him.
The land opened before them in the last of the light, all wet fields and black hedgerows, with the hills rising beyond like sleeping beasts.
Orion moved eagerly beneath him, and Edward let him stretch into a canter once they reached the firmer ground.
When they slowed near the old stone boundary wall, Thomas drew alongside him.
“Her Grace was pleased to see you.”
“My mother is pleased by obedience, well-managed servants, and advantageous marriages. I happened to arrive in the midst of the third.”
Thomas’ mouth remained admirably straight. “The neighborhood is said to contain several eligible ladies.”
“So I have been informed in great detail. My mother appears to have reduced half the daughters of the county to dowries and accomplishments.”
“A practical system.”
“It is a livestock market with pianofortes.”
Thomas looked ahead. “And yet you did come home with marriage in view.”
Edward’s hands tightened almost imperceptibly on the reins. There were few men who could have said such a thing without presumption. Thomas was one of them because he never spoke from curiosity alone.
“I did.”
“And do you mean to choose as you choose horses, Your Grace?”
Edward glanced at him sharply.
Thomas’ expression was bland. “By soundness, breeding, steadiness, and whether she is likely to throw you in public.”
Despite himself, Edward gave a low laugh. It vanished quickly, carried off by the wind. “I mean to choose sensibly.”
“A dangerous word in marriage, I am told.”
“By whom?”
“Married footmen, mostly. They speak freely when polishing silver.”
“I shall remember to consult the pantry before proposing.”
They rode on at a walk. The early evening pressed close, fragrant with wet leaves and turned soil. Edward looked across the fields that were his, though the word did not sit easily in him.
“I have been very successful at arranging my life,” he said after a time. “In London, there was no inconvenience I could not reduce to order. No obligation I could not anticipate.”
Thomas waited.
Edward watched a pair of birds rise startled from the hedge. “Here I find myself expected to become, at once, landlord, neighbor, son, host, future husband, and symbol of continuity. It is an absurd number of roles for one man before dinner.”
“Most men perform badly with fewer.”
Edward let the reins move through his gloved fingers. Orion lowered his head, snorting at the damp grass.
“I do not object to the duties,” Edward continued. “Duties are simple enough when one knows their shape. It is the other matter that resists management.”
“A wife?”
“A marriage.” The distinction came before he had time to smooth it. “A wife may be chosen. A marriage must be lived.”
Thomas looked at him then, and Edward felt the quiet intelligence of the glance.
“You wish for more than suitability.”
The wind moved over the field, lifting the dark hair from Edward’s brow. He could have denied it. He was practiced in denials. They were the first defense of men who had too much to lose by being understood.
“I wish not to spend the rest of my life with a stranger who is grateful for my title and frightened of my temper,” he said instead.
“Then don’t marry one,” Thomas shrugged.
“A brilliant solution. I shall have it embroidered.”
Edward looked away. In the lowering light, Ravensmoor’s distant windows had begun to glow. The house seemed almost warm from here.
“Have you felt it?” Thomas asked.
Edward turned back. “Felt what?”
“That you might spend your life with a particular woman and not regard the prospect as a sentence.”
For a moment, no sound came except Orion cropping restlessly at the verge and the faint creak of saddle leather.
Edward thought first of no one. Then, unwillingly, of dark hair against a London pillow, of a pale hand on his sleeve, of laughter kept low behind a half-closed door, of perfume too expensive to be innocent.
Lady Constance Marlowe had never been a fool, never been coy, and never demanded tenderness where pleasure would suffice.
She had known him by sight from the old county days, though acquaintance had ripened only in London, where she had come to assist her sister in the final, uncomfortable months before childbirth.
Their affair had been brief, intense and carefully contained.
“Recently?” Thomas prompted, when Edward said nothing.
Edward’s jaw tightened. “There was Lady Constance Marlowe.”
Thomas didn’t react, which meant he was reacting with great discipline.
“She grew up not far from here. A widow now. She came to town for her sister’s confinement and remained some months.”
Edward stared across the fields. Memory, when unwelcome, sharpened itself. Constance had been beautiful with a composed, deliberate beauty, as if every glance had been arranged before a mirror and then improved by practice.
She understood the uses of silence. She also understood him, or at least the part of him he had allowed to be understood.
“It wasn’t courtship,” he explained.
“No, Your Grace.”
“I didn’t think of marriage then.”
“No, Your Grace.”
They had reached the rise above the southern paddocks. Below, the stables shone faintly, lanterns moving as grooms crossed the yard. The air had grown colder.
Edward felt, suddenly and with unwelcome force, the weight of the day: his mother’s list, Benedict’s ledgers, the house that had not missed him, the portrait he had not properly faced, the future advancing with all the subtlety of an army.
He had come home to act, to choose, to take up the life waiting for him.
Yet beneath all that competence was a quieter and more humiliating truth.
He wanted to be met by someone who could see past the title without being dazzled by it, and past the man without being disappointed.
The thought was so plain, so impossible, that he resented it at once.
Thomas, who had the irritating decency not to look at him, spoke again. “A wife chosen only for peace may provide none. A wife chosen only for admiration may soon offer too much of it. Perhaps Your Grace should look for someone who doesn’t quite know what to do with you.”
Edward gave a short laugh. “That sounds intolerable.”
“Very likely.”
“And this is your advice?”
“My advice, Your Grace, is that you listen, observe, and avoid any lady whose mother praises her docility before her sense.”
“You have developed opinions.”
“I have polished boots in many households.”
They turned back toward the stables as full evening settled.
By the time they dismounted, the lamps had been lit throughout the yard.
Orion tossed his head as if dissatisfied with the brevity of the exercise.
Edward removed his gloves and stroked the horse’s neck once more, feeling the warmth of life beneath his palm.
“Well?” Thomas asked quietly.
Edward knew he meant more than the ride.
He looked toward the house, where his mother was no doubt arranging the county like flowers in a vase, and his uncle was preparing more facts, more duties, more necessary truths. He himself would do what he had always done, observe, decide and act.
“I shall attend the ball,” he concluded.
Thomas took the reins. “Yes, Your Grace.”
He turned once more toward the dark line of fields beyond the yard, where the land disappeared into mist and wet trees. For the first time since his carriage had entered the avenue, Edward felt interest stir beneath the discipline of his return.
And interest, for a man who had trained himself to require very little, was a dangerous beginning.