Page 32 of How Not to Marry a Duke

She did not know how to navigate the way her pulse jumped when he passed her the salt.

"The soup is excellent," Lord Ashworth observed, in the manner of a man who considered silence a personal failing.

"It is," Frederick agreed.

"Cook's recipe, I presume? The Carthedge kitchens have always been exceptional. I remember your father saying⁠—"

"The soup is excellent," the Dowager cut in, with the air of someone ending a conversation. "Let us leave it at that."

Lord Ashworth subsided. Florinda exchanged a brief glance with Penelope—a shared acknowledgment of the Dowager's magnificent capacity for social assassination.

The fish course replaced the soup. Conversation turned to the weather (mild), the roads (improving), and the upcoming assembly in the village (anticipated with varying degrees of enthusiasm by the assembled company).

"Lady Florinda," the Dowager said, in that particular tone that suggested a question was coming and Florinda would not enjoy it, "I understand your family seat borders Carthedge to the south."

"Ashbourne House, yes." Florinda set down her fork with careful precision. "Though my sister Ella—the Queen—holds the title now. I merely grew up there."

"Frederick spent a great deal of time at Ashbourne as a boy." The Dowager's gaze moved to her son. "You and the Ashbourne heir were inseparable, as I recall. Jon, was it not?"

The name landed on the table like a dropped knife.

Florinda's hand tightened on her napkin. She had not heard her brother's name spoken aloud in—she could not remember how long. Years, possibly. Her family had developed a talent for stepping around the absence Jon had left, as though his name were a hole in the floorboards that might swallow them if they acknowledged it.

"Yes," Frederick said. His voice was neutral. "Jon."

"Went to the Americas, I heard," Lord Ashworth contributed, apparently unable to resist inserting himself into any conversation. "Years ago, was it not? Seeking his fortune, or some such romantic nonsense."

Sixteen years. Jon had been gone for sixteen years. He had left when Florinda was ten, and she had spent weeks watching the road from her bedroom window, certain he would come back.

He had not come back.

He had not written. Not to her, not to Margot, not to anyone. Sixteen years of silence, of letters sent and never answered, of birthdays and weddings and funerals he had missed without explanation or apology.

"Does the family hear from him?" Lord Ashworth pressed, oblivious to the way Penelope was attempting to catch his eye, to the way Florinda's knuckles had gone white. "I imagine correspondence from the colonies must be⁠—"

"The fish is excellent," Frederick said.

The non sequitur was so abrupt that Lord Ashworth actually stopped mid-sentence, his mouth still open around whatever observation he had been preparing to make about colonial postal services.

"I beg your pardon?" he managed.

"The fish." Frederick gestured at his plate with perfect composure. "Sole, I believe. Cook has outdone herself. Would you not agree, Lady Florinda?"

He was looking at her. Not at the fish, not at Lord Ashworth, not at anyone else at the table. He was looking at her, and there was concern in his face—or perhaps recognition—that made her want to either weep or throw her napkin at him.

She did neither. She was an Ashbourne. She had been trained from birth to maintain composure through dinner parties, scandals, and the occasional attempted regicide. She could certainly survive a passing reference to her estranged brother.

"The fish is excellent," she agreed. Her voice emerged steady. She was unreasonably proud of this. "Is that what we are discussing now? Fish?"

"I find fish safer than family, Lady Florinda." Frederick's gaze held hers for a beat longer than propriety allowed. "As a conversational topic, it rarely disappoints."

"And never fails to return correspondence." The bitterness surprised her; she had thought that wound healed over, scarred into acceptance.

Frederick's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. But all he said was: "Quite."

The Dowager, displaying either tremendous tact or complete indifference to emotional undercurrents, launched into a detailed assessment of the sole's preparation that occupied the remainder of the fish course and most of the meat. Lord Ashworth, apparently chastened, confined himself to enthusiastic agreement with whatever opinion was most recently expressed.

Florinda ate without tasting. Her thoughts had gone elsewhere—to a ten-year-old girl watching the road, to letters she had written and never received answers to, to the particular ache of being abandoned by someone who had promised to teach her to fence and instead vanished across an ocean without explanation.