Chapter Eight
“Men like Ravenhurst do not become other men because a quiet girl has read a clever book, and I will say this once and not again, because you are old enough to choose.”
Bethany had arrived at Ravenhurst Park an hour after the Goodalls, in her own carriage, with a small trunk and an expression that suggested she had spent the entire journey rehearsing what she was about to say.
She had not gone inside. She had not greeted the housekeeper or admired the entrance hall or allowed the footman to take her traveling case.
She had walked straight across the gravel sweep to the spot where Imogen was standing watching Cassie explore the rose garden.
She had taken Imogen’s arm and steered her away from the house, the servants and the windows where anyone might be watching, and she had said it.
“He is going to leave a mark on you, Imogen. Be sure you are willing to wear it.”
The gravel crunched under their boots. The house rose behind them, vast and honey-colored in the afternoon light, more windows than Imogen had ever seen on a single building; the kind of house that made you understand that the word estate was not a description but a statement of fact.
The gardens stretched away on both sides, formal and immaculate, the sort of gardens that required a team of men to maintain and that existed primarily to demonstrate that a team of men could be afforded.
Cassie’s laughter was audible from the rose garden, bright, uncomplicated and entirely unaware that her sister was standing on the gravel being warned about dukes.
“I know what I am doing, Bethany.”
“You do not. You think you do, and that is more dangerous than not knowing at all, because a woman who thinks she knows what she is doing walks into the fire on purpose and calls it a choice.” Bethany’s grip on her arm was firm, and her voice carried the particular quality it took on when she was saying something she did not want to say, but she had to.
“I have watched you from my window come home every evening with your cheeks flushed and your eyes doing something I have never seen them do before. I am not going to pretend I do not recognise it, because I do, and what I recognise frightens me.”
“Bethany.”
“I will say this once and not again. He is a duke, Imogen. He is the most pursued duke in London and he has chosen you, and that is either the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to you or the most dangerous. I cannot tell which, and the fact that I cannot tell is the reason I am standing on his gravel in my traveling boots telling you this instead of going inside and pretending everything is fine.” She released Imogen’s arm, straightened her gloves and looked at the house.
“I am here for the duration. I will not interfere. But I will be watching, and if he breaks you, I will be the one holding the pieces, and I should like to know in advance how many pieces I should prepare for.”
Imogen stood on the gravel and looked at her oldest friend and tried to find the words to explain that the fire Bethany was warning her about was not the fire she was walking into.
The fire she was walking into was something quieter and more complicated than Bethany’s warning allowed for, something that had to do with a man who had pressed her hand against his body and had given her the choice to leave.
The honesty in his voice had been the thing that had undone her, not the desire.
But the words would not come, because the words required her to admit things she had not yet admitted to herself, and admitting them on a gravel sweep in the late afternoon light with Bethany’s frightened eyes on her face was not how she wanted to arrive at them.
“I will be careful,” she said, because it was the only thing she could say.
Bethany did not smile. She picked up her traveling case and walked inside. Imogen stood on the gravel for a moment longer, alone, and looked up at the house and found, on the upper gallery behind a tall window, a face she had not expected to see.
Lord Stormont was watching her from the gallery railing.
She recognized him from the Montford, the fair-haired man who had leaned toward Ash in the music room and murmured something she could not hear, the one whose smile had made her stomach tighten without explanation.
He was standing at the window with his arms folded, his weight on one hip, and was looking down at her with an expression that was not quite amusement and not quite interest. It was, if she was reading it correctly, something closer to assessment.
He was cataloguing her. Measuring something she could not identify, weighing her against some standard she was not aware of, and the weighing was cold, and made her want to step backwards off the gravel and into the carriage and ask to be taken home.
She did not step backwards. She lifted her chin, walked inside and climbed the main staircase to her room.
When she passed the gallery landing where Lord Stormont had been standing, the gallery was empty.
The space where he had stood smelled faintly of tobacco and something expensive and sharp, but she walked past it quickly and did not look back.
***
Dinner that evening was the first test.
The dining room at Ravenhurst Park was enormous, a long room with a vaulted ceiling and portraits of Hambridge ancestors arranged between the windows.
The table had been set for twenty, which was the full complement of the house gathering, and the silverware and the flowers in low arrangements down the center were all exactly correct.
They were expensive and all arranged by someone who understood that a duke’s dinner table was a stage and the guests were both audience and performers.
Ash seated her beside himself, and the seating was improper, but the impropriety was deliberate, and every person at the table knew it.
A duke seating an unmarried woman of no particular rank beside himself at his own table was a declaration, not an arrangement, and the declaration landed on the room and produced the particular quality of silence that arrived when polite society was thinking very loudly and saying nothing.
Lady Asquith, across the table, raised one eyebrow a quarter of an inch.
Lord Rourke, four seats down, glanced at Devlin.
Devlin did not glance back. He was looking at his wine glass, turning it slowly between his fingers, and the gesture had a quality to it that suggested he was not thinking about wine.
Bethany was three seats down, beside a viscount’s wife whose name Imogen did not catch.
Her eyes moved between Imogen and Ash throughout the first course, tracking the angle of his body toward Imogen’s, the frequency with which he refilled her wine glass, and his hand resting on the tablecloth near hers without touching it.
It was close enough that the proximity was visible from three seats away and the not-touching was, to anyone who was paying attention, louder than touching would have been.
Imogen ate her soup, and then her fish. She participated in the conversation to her left, which was about the gardens and whether the Ravenhurst roses were superior to the Asquith roses, a subject on which she had no opinion and which she navigated by agreeing with whoever had spoken most recently.
Her right side, the Ash side, was a different country entirely.
She was aware of his sleeve near her arm, the heat of his body through the layers of their clothing, the low sound of his voice when he spoke to the man on his other side, a conversation about horses that she was not included in and did not need to be included in because the sound of his voice was, at this proximity, a physical thing.
It was a vibration she could feel in her ribs, but the feeling was not unpleasant, and that was becoming a recurring problem.
He turned to her once during the meat course, his eyes finding hers at close range, and said, very quietly, so that only she could hear: “The blue suits you. I should have said so earlier.”
“You prepared a blue bedroom for me, Your Grace.”
“I did.”
“That is saying so, Your Grace. With considerable planning.”
He almost laughed, but she saw him stop his laugh and hide it. He looked at her with a mix of amusement and something warmer, and that warmth touched her face and stayed there.
She looked back down at her food and didn’t look at him again for the rest of the meal. If she did, she knew she would blush. And blushing at a ducal dinner table, in front of Lord Stormont, Bethany Mercer, and all the other guests, was not something she wanted.
Devlin spoke to her once during dessert. He was at the far end of the table, and the question carried across the conversation, pitched to arrive at her ears specifically, the way a man aimed a bullet at a target.
“Miss Goodall, I understand you are a great reader. Ravenhurst tells us you have opinions about novels.”
The table quieted slightly, but Imogen looked at him. His face was charming, his smile wide, his eyes absolutely still.
“I have opinions about most things. Novels are simply the ones I am most willing to share.”
He laughed. The laugh was short and polished but carried no warmth at all. Imogen turned back to her plate and did not look at him again, but the cold thread she had first noticed at the Montford tightened slightly in her stomach and stayed there for the rest of the meal.
***
It was the second night, past midnight, and the house was still.