Page 33 of How Not to Marry a Duke

Jon had taught her chess. He had taught her to ride. He had told her she was clever and fierce and destined for great things, and then he had left and never looked back.

She had stopped watching the road by the time she was twelve.

Dessert arrived. Florinda pushed syllabub around her plate and counted the minutes until she could reasonably request to be taken upstairs. The wheeled chair, which had seemed humiliating an hour ago, now represented escape.

"You look tired," Penelope said gently, leaning across the table. "Shall I ask Frederick to⁠—"

"I am perfectly well." Florinda manufactured a smile. "Merely unused to so much stimulating conversation after weeks of solitude."

"You are a poor liar, Lady Florinda." But Penelope said it kindly. "I shall instruct the footmen to⁠—"

"I shall take her." Frederick was already rising. "If Lady Florinda is amenable. The footmen are clumsy with the chair on the stairs."

This was a lie. The footmen were perfectly competent. Florinda knew this. Frederick knew this. Penelope almost certainly knew this.

"How kind," Florinda said, and allowed him to wheel her away from the table, away from Lord Ashworth's oblivious enquiries and the Dowager's assessing gaze and Penelope's gentle concern.

They did not speak in the corridor. Her maid, Martha, followed at a discreet distance—propriety must be observed, even when one was being wheeled about like an invalid parcel. Frederick maneuvered the chair with the same careful precision he brought to everything—around corners, past doorways, through the quiet passages that led to the main staircase.

At the base of the stairs, he stopped. "Ready?"

Florinda nodded. The routine was familiar by now—his arms sliding beneath her, the brief disorientation of being lifted, the way her hand found his shoulder without her permission. Martha waited at the bottom, ready to follow once they had ascended—close enough for propriety, far enough for privacy.

He lifted her. She counted the stairs.

One. Two. Three.

"You do not speak of your brother," Frederick said.

Four. Five.

It was not a question. Florinda appreciated that. She did not have answers to questions about Jon—only silence, only absence, only the particular grief of loving someone who had chosen to disappear.

Six. Seven.

"No," she said. "I do not."

Eight. Nine.

Frederick did not ask why. He did not offer platitudes about time healing wounds or the importance of family. He did not do any of the things people typically did when confronted with someone else's pain.

Ten. Eleven.

"He taught me to play chess." She had not meant to say it. "When I was very young. I used to lose on purpose so he would play another round."

Twelve.

Frederick's arms tightened around her—not much, barely perceptible, but she felt it. A small, wordless acknowledgment.

Thirteen.

"I stopped losing on purpose when he left," she continued, not knowing why she was telling him this, only knowing that the words wanted out. "I decided if I was going to play, I was going to win. No more pretending to be worse than I was."

Fourteen.

They had reached the landing. Frederick did not set her down immediately. For a moment—three heartbeats, four—he simply held her, and she let him.

"He was my friend," Frederick said. "Before. I have not heard from him either."