Every Lady Tried to Impress the Duke—Only One Asked, “Are You Tired?”

Chapter 5

The following afternoon, Marcus was summoned from the terrace by his secretary, Mr. Talbot, waving a letter from London that had arrived by express—two sheets of bad news about the southern coalfield lease—and as he disappeared through the French doors, he did not see Lady Amara set down her book and cross the lawn toward Miss Linden with the unhurried purpose of a cat approaching a dovecote.

“Miss Linden.”

Eleanor looked up from her book. “Lady Amara.”

“You are very clever.”

“I can never tell,” Eleanor said, after a pause, “whether that is a compliment when it is said in that tone of voice.”

Lady Amara smiled with the gentle condescension of a woman certain of her own position. “You have set yourself apart by pretending not to care.”

“I am not pretending.”

“Of course not.” The smile did not waver. “That is what makes it so effective. You avoid him, you contradict him, you never appear impressed, and you have somehow convinced the most eligible duke in five counties that you are the only woman under this roof without an agenda. It is a beautiful strategy, Miss Linden. I applaud completely.”

The book in Eleanor’s lap stilled. A thin, sharp irritation rose in her chest, the kind that comes when someone watches you for days and, in watching, manages to see the wrong thing.

“It would be a poor strategy indeed,” she said, “given that I arrived expecting nothing and performing nothing. I am precisely as interested in His Grace as I appear to be, Lady Amara. If he prefers women who do not flatter him, then perhaps the problem is not that I am performing. Perhaps it is that everyone else is.”

Lady Amara’s smile disappeared.

It was the smallest of victories, and Eleanor found it tasted mostly like ash. She carried the exchange with her for the rest of the day—through tea, through the meaningless small talk, through every glance that followed her and Marcus with renewed interest. She had told the truth. She hated that it made her feel like a liar.

That evening, the Dowager Duchess arranged a second formal dinner, and announced, with the air of a matron producing a plum pudding, that as the whole purpose of the gathering was pairing, each young lady should say what she believed she would bring to a marriage.

The answers arrived exactly as Marcus expected. Lady Amara offered connections of the first water, social grace, and the management of a grand household. Lady Gwendolyn offered charity, children, and a cultivated understanding of the arts. An heiress from the north offered money. A quiet girl from Kent offered “a well-run home,” which made Marcus think she had memorized the phrase on the carriage ride over.

Then the Dowager’s gaze reached the end of the table, where the candlelight had caught a head of pale hair.

“And you, Miss Linden?”

Eleanor set down her fork. She could feel eight women’s attention on her like the weight of a hand. She thought of her mother’s instructions in the carriage—say you would bring elegance, do not be clever, never be silent—and she did not look at the Dowager. She looked, briefly, at the duke, who was watching her with that patient, tired attention of his, expecting nothing worse than an acceptable answer.

“Peace, I hope,” she said.

The table was very quiet.

“I know that most people underestimate how rare it is. It is not a thing you can display at a dinner, like a turn of phrase or a knowledge of which fork to use. It is the thing that remains when conversation is exhausted and the day has been difficult, when you are tired and enormously cross and no one is entertaining you.” She paused. “I believe his grace is tired. I believe most people in his position are, and I believe they are surrounded by people who are quiet only until they open their mouths.”

Silence. Even the footmen had stilled.

“Peace,” said the Dowager at last, tasting the word. “That is—unusual.”

“It is usually the most expensive thing on the table,” Eleanor said, “and I am offering it for free.”

Marcus did not realize he was smiling until the Dowager cleared her throat pointedly into her soup.

Later, when the guests drifted toward the drawing room for music, he found her on the terrace again, standing in the dark beside the stone railing, the skirts of her pale dress luminous in the moonlight like something risen from the water.

“You really are avoiding everyone again,” he said.

“I gave them a full evening of myself before the port. That is ample.”

He came to stand beside her, and the night air smelled of the sea and the last of the roses. “No one has ever answered my mother’s question like that in twenty years of her asking it.”

“I am certain I will be punished for it at breakfast.”

“It will be worth it.” He paused. “May I walk with you, Miss Linden? Not toward anything. Just—away from the house.”

She looked at him for a long moment. Then: “The real reason you keep finding me, Your Grace.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The other women sit near you and wait to be seen. I walk out of doors and wait to be found.” She turned to face him, and in the moonlight her eyes were impossible to read. “If I have been honest about nothing else tonight, let me be honest about this: I am not certain which of us I am yet.”

He did not answer. They walked in silence down the gravel path toward the dark sea, and the sound of their footsteps and the far-off breathing of the tide was the most comfortable thing he had felt in months.

“Miss Linden,” he said, when they had walked far enough that the house was a small bright ship behind them, “may I ask something of you that veers toward the personal?”

“You may. I reserve the right to point out its impertinence.”

“Were you ever engaged before?”

She went very quiet. He felt her slow, and she looked out at the black water. “Yes,” she said at last. “Once. A long time ago, and a short time ago. It is only since Tuesday that I have stopped thinking of it as recent.”