Page 54 of A Bride for the Ruthless Duke

“Charles.” It came out too quickly and too gladly, and she heard it leave her mouth and could not call it back, and saw the small flick of his eyes that registered it and put it away for later. “I did not know your regiment was anywhere near.”

“Quartered just out of town for the autumn. We have the old barracks down by the mill.” He glanced past her shoulder, once, the first of several times she would count before the thing was done. “I had heard the duke kept a place in the county. I did not look to find the duchess at a draper’s window.”

“You have been near, then. Lately?”

“The better part of two months. We came up at Michaelmas.”

The better part of two months. The figure went into her like cold water down the back of the neck. Two months quartered seven miles from her door, after a whole summer of silence, after the September notes that had begged her to wait, and he had not sent so much as a line nor ridden out nor done one single thing but laugh in a street with a brother officer until she happened to stand in his path at a shop window.

“Two months,” she said, and was proud of how level it came. “You have been a busy man, Lieutenant.”

“Soldiering is a wearisome pursuit, made up of a vast deal of trifling employments.” The practiced smile again, still without warmth, and again the glance past her shoulder. “And how do you find marital life, Your Grace? You are looking very well on it.”

“Well enough.”

“Only well enough?” He tilted his head, and something sharpened under the idleness, an attention that had not been there a moment before. “They say your duke is a cold sort of man. Severe in the Lords, severe at home, by all accounts. I confess I have wondered how a creature as warm as you were would find such a household.”

She understood, all at once and very clearly, that he was asking her a question he meant to keep the answer to. She did not know yet what for. She only knew that the warmth she had folded and unfolded all summer until it wore through had never once been turned on her the way his attention was turned now, which was the attention of a man taking an inventory.

“You should not believe everything that is said in the Lords, Lieutenant,” she said. “My husband is a great deal kinder than his reputation, and a great deal more watchful, and I have found both qualities a comfort.” It was truer than she had meant it to be, and she heard the truth of it surprise her own ear.

“Watchful.” Vance gave the word the same small turn Mrs. Aldous had given political. “He keeps you close, then. Is he much in the country, your duke, or does the Lords claim the better part of him?”

“He is where his business takes him.”

“And does his business take him often from home? A man with his interests must be a great deal in town through the season.”

“I do not keep his diary, Lieutenant.” She said it lightly enough, but a small cold instinct had woken in her that she did not pause to name. “Why should his comings and goings interest you?”

“Idle curiosity, Your Grace. The county is dull, and a great man’s movements are the nearest thing we have to news.” He smiled, and the smile did not warm, and his eyes went past her shoulder a final time, to a point across the street she did not turn to find. “I must not keep you from your silk, nor from your good woman there, who is glaring at me most respectably. I hope I may see you again, Your Grace. The county is a small one.”

“So I am told,” Ellen said, and did not add that she hoped so, because she found, with a small clean shock, that she no longer knew whether she did.

He walked away up the hill to rejoin the brother officer, and did not once look back, and she watched the red of him go until Mrs. Selby’s hand came to rest on her elbow, light and steadying and without a word in it.

She went back into the draper’s and bought three yards of a green silk she did not want and would never make up, because the grey-blue was at the window and the window faced the street and she could not stand at it another moment.

***

She rode Heather hard that afternoon, up the south ride and along the river and home, and brought the mare into the yard dark with sweat and blowing.

Hibbert took the reins, ran a hand down the wet chestnut neck, and looked at Ellen rather than at the horse.

“You’ve warmed her well, Your Grace.”

“I am sorry. I rode her harder than I ought.”

“She’ll take no harm of one hard afternoon. It isn’t the mare I’m minding.” He loosened the girth without hurry. “A horse will carry your trouble a mile or two for you, my lady, and gladly. But she can’t carry it home and set it down. That part stays yours, and galloping only puts off the doing of it.”

“You are very philosophical, for a groom.”

“Forty years behind horses, my lady. A man learns to read what’s sat on the saddle as well as what’s in it.” He turned the mare toward the cooling walk. “Go in and set it down, Your Grace, whatever it is. It will be lighter by morning or it will not, but it will never be lighter out here.”

The riding had not helped, which she had known it would not and had done anyway, and Hibbert had read the whole of it from the ground, which she had not bargained for.

At dinner the duke looked at her once.

It was a long look, level and complete, the look of a man reading a page he already half knew, and she felt it find the color the ride had left and the something underneath the color, and then he turned to his plate and did not look at her again for the whole of the meal, and the determination not to look was vastly more conspicuous than the original glance had been. Augusta carried the dinner alone, glanced between them once, and for the first time in Ellen’s memory asked nothing at all.