He bowed and left her. Only after he had turned away did she allow her cheeks to heat.
Sydney hardly even tasted the unprecedentedly edible meal the cook had sent up as a condition of her truce with Lex. He was quite beyond making conversation with his dinner companions. He sat in between the vicar’s wife and Georgiana Russell, both of whom seemed determined not to let him get a word in edgewise, so there was no need for his contributions anyway. He was able to sit silently and regard Amelia Allenby across the table. He could barely detect a trace of the woman he had known on their walks—she was composed, silent except for the occasional platitude or commonplace, and bland. Throughout the meal, it was as if she had donned an impenetrable mask, through which he couldn’t see her.
When she walked into Pelham Hall for the first time the previous week, she had been equally distant, equally cold. That was what had tipped him off that she was putting on some kind of show; he knew the real Amelia Allenby, and she was light and fun and slightly silly. He had assumed these were the airs and graces of a woman who didn’t wish to be bothered in acknowledging their connection. But what if this was just how she was in company? She had told him outright that she had difficulty around people—what if that coldness were the result? She had become angry when she saw him that first time on what she regarded as her path. She asked him to shield her from the vicar’s wife, who was present at this very dinner party.
What if what he was seeing was plain self-defense? What if she developed this impassive mask as a sort of camouflage, so she would blend in with her surroundings the way a moth resembled tree bark?
What if, when she had walked into Pelham Hall that first time, he had greeted her as a friend, a person he cared for, a person he respected and admired? He tried to imagine telling his mother—he was conscious that perhaps at his age he ought to have a moral arbiter other than his mother, but there were few people whose opinion he regarded more than he did hers—what had happened. He had made a friend, and then at the first sign of trouble, abandoned her. His face heated with shame.
This, come to think, was exactly what he had done with Lex. He knew Lex was injured in the fire, but when Lex failed to respond personally to his letters, Sydney assumed Lex wanted nothing further to do with him.
His food—which, as the cook had promised, was not only edible but delicious—turned to ashes in his mouth.
With such a small party and no proper hostess, there was no sense in having the women withdraw first, so they all proceeded from the dining room to the hall together. He hung back so he could walk next to Amelia.
“Are you all right?” he asked, pitching his voice low enough that he would not be overheard. “Can I be of any assistance?”
“I beg your pardon?” Amelia’s voice was icy.
“I don’t want to presume, but—” He realized he had not planned what to say, and doubted whether there even was a delicate way to ask a person whether they were about to be overcome by a fit of nerves, if that was even what was happening. “You once said you wished to be a recluse, and I . . .” He cleared his throat. “I remember how distressed you were the first time we met, and all of that leads me to suppose—well, I suppose this is not easy for you.” He wasn’t sure what this constituted. Dinner parties? Dukes? And he had no standing to ask. All he could do was offer his aid.
“Do I seem troubled?” she asked, her chin tipped up.
“Not at all,” he said honestly. “You’re the picture of elegance and composure. If I hadn’t known you otherwise, I’d think this was your natural state. But now I do know otherwise, and I ought to have figured it out before. I’m desperately sorry that I hurt you, Amelia. That isn’t why I pulled you aside, though. I thought you might want an excuse to leave early. Would you like to have a sudden sickness?” he offered.
That got him a faint smile, and he smiled in return until he realized he was smiling daftly upon her in a dark corner of the dining room, which surely she did not want. He mustered up some self-control.
“No thank you,” she said. “I’m well accustomed to enduring these gatherings.”
He watched her progress coolly out of the dining room, conscious that this conversation had been the best part of his day.
Chapter Fourteen
“I really could get used to meals that consist of actual food,” Lex said as he ate the shirred eggs and kippers the cook sent up for breakfast.
Sydney noticed that the eggs and the kippers were in silver dishes that hadn’t been on the table yesterday morning. Come to think, he wasn’t entirely certain where all the serving dishes from last night’s dinner had come from either. He was trying not to dwell on how much Lex was spending on this house, its restoration, and its servants. First, Sydney in general considered paying laborers, craftsmen, and tradesmen to be a fine use of money. Second, Sydney was all too glad to think of this house as Leontine’s rather than his own and if Lex wanted to spend money on the child’s property, then that was fine. Still, he couldn’t let this continue on without saying something.
“What’s going to happen to all this”—he sought for a polite way to say ostentation, but couldn’t come up with anything—“all these items you’ve purchased when we all leave?” he asked.
Lex’s answer consisted of a triangle of toast, launched in Sydney’s direction.
“All I meant was that she’s not your niece and you’re not under any duty to provide for her,” Sydney said, catching the toast in midair and laying it on his plate.
“You and your duty,” Lex said, his mouth full, “can both kiss my arse. I’m perfectly aware I have no duty to look after her, but we both know that if Andrew and Penny were alive, they would raise the child as a daughter. I have no other nieces or nephews, I like the brat, and she likes me. I realize that I have no legal claim to her so if you mean to take me to court for guardianship—”
“I intend nothing of the sort,” Sydney said. “But I do need to get back to work. We can’t stay here indefinitely.”
“Maybe you can’t,” Lex said. “The rest of us can. Hedgehogs and French urchins and dukes don’t have jobs waiting for them in Birmingham.”
“Manchester,” Sydney corrected. “My point is that if you intend to requisition this house to raise our niece, we ought to at least discuss it.”
“Requisition, indeed. You make it sound desperately boring. I’ve stolen your house out from under your feet, which is a very dashing thing to do and you ought to give me credit.”
Sydney laughed despite himself. “Good God, you’re welcome to it. You know how I feel about this place.”
Lex put down his fork. “No, Sydney, I do not.”
“I inherited it because my brother died.”
“People do tend to inherit things after the death of a loved one. I’m intimately familiar with the process,” Lex said dryly.
“And Andrew only owned the place because of antiquated property laws. It ought to have remained in your sister’s possession after the marriage, for her to dispose of as she wished.”
“Everything I own is mine due to antiquated property laws and the death of loved ones. I’m not seeing your objection to Pelham Hall. This is more of your guilt, isn’t it?”
“You make it sound irrelevant.”
“It’s not irrelevant, but irrational. It was never your fault that your brother accidentally blew up the stables and killed himself in the process.”
“I know that,” Sydney snapped. “I don’t blame myself for his death. I blame myself for being alive.”
The room fell silent. “Very grim,” Lex finally said. “Typical of you, frankly.”
“I’m well aware,” Sydney said dryly. It was true, though, even though it was a truth he hadn’t let himself realize until Amelia had mentioned feeling much the same thing after her father’s death. “What I mean is that he was a better man than I.”
“I beg your pardon,” Lex said in tones of outrage. “If we were sentencing people to death based on merit I would have been on t
he chopping block decades ago. How revolutionary. Disgusting of you. Also, it’s very absurd of you to think Andrew was better than you. He was more fun. Infinitely more sympathetic. Better looking, too.”
“You have such a soothing way,” Sydney said.
“My point is that you have your own qualities. You’re dependable. I have total confidence that whatever bridge or canals you’re building—”
“Railways, damn it.”
“I have total confidence they won’t plunge people to a watery death or flood a town of innocent peasants or what have you. That may not be a quality one values overmuch at the dinner table or a house party but it’s very boring of you to make me explain how building things that don’t kill people is an admirable quality. Please never make me pay you compliments again. Can we go back to talking about Leontine?”
“I did miss you, Lex.”
“You disgust me. Now, I’m here to solve your problems. You have a house you don’t want and a penniless ward. You give the house to the ward and raise the ward in the house.”
“Except for how my work is in Manchester,” Sydney said.
“Do they not have work in Derbyshire? Do they not build things here?”
“I cannot walk away from my career.”
“So don’t. Let me raise Leontine. Well, me and my army of servants. You’ve said yourself that you work long days. Here, she’d at least have me.”
Sydney pinched the bridge of his nose, realizing that there was going to be no arguing with Lex at the moment, and also suspecting that there was more than a germ of truth in what Lex had said. “Please tell me that you don’t expect this Russell woman to raise Leontine.”
“God no. She’s one of the Somerset Russells,” Lex said. “A cadet branch of the family, and very poor, but with a pedigree that would satisfy anyone. She and I talked about it last night. Her father was a few years ahead of me at Eton. Incidentally, as for the Allenby girl, she’s one of the Marquess of Pembroke’s daughters,” Lex said. “All you have to do is look at her and you’ll see the resemblance. Red hair, freckles, general tendency to en bon point.”
“Now, how can you know that?” Sydney asked, exasperated. “You can’t tell me you got that from her voice.”
“Don’t need to see. I have my sources. Besides, it turns out you don’t need to see to know what people look like. I wish you’d worn something a bit less demoralizing, for example. A pair of trousers from five years ago and a coat of unspeakable origin. Quite depressing. Did you shave?”
“No,” Sydney said. He rubbed a thumb over his chin.
“Ugh. Next time you’re to appear at my table, try to make an effort,” Lex said genially.
“Your table,” Sydney began, then broke off. “Wait. A marquess’s daughter uses a title, doesn’t she?”
“Not when she’s born on the wrong side of the blanket, as our Miss Allenby was. Her mother was a woman of some notoriety about twenty-five years ago. She appeared from nowhere, then not only wound up in Pembroke’s bed, but got the old rascal to buy her a house in Mayfair. She must have been especially quick on her feet to get her brood accepted as something more than Pembroke’s other by-blows. I don’t think anybody’s ever tried counting how many children he had. In any event, Miss Allenby vanished from society about a year ago after leaving a ball right in the middle of a dance. She simply picked up her skirts and left her dancing partner standing stupidly in the middle of the floor, according to my informants. It caused a slight ruckus, as the man she was dancing with was the Russian ambassador.”
He had known abstractly that Amelia was a part of this world of balls and ambassadors. He had known as much from the first time she opened her mouth. But more distressing was that he could see it—he could see her freezing in the middle of a ballroom and deciding that she was done with it. And, what was worse, he could imagine how returning to a similar situation—a duke, a drawing room—might engender the same response. It was no wonder she hadn’t managed to treat him cordially. He could have spared them both a good deal of turmoil if he had simply gone to her instead of assuming the worst. But at the time it had seemed impossible that she could want him, let alone need him.
When he rose from the table, he nearly tripped over Leontine’s pup. “You again,” he said accusingly as he scooped her up. “You don’t belong here.” She swiped her tongue over his cheek. “You’re supposed to be with Leontine,” he said, as if that could mean anything to this wriggling ball of fur. In fact, he was unsure why he was bothering to talk to her in the first place. “You are not a Francine,” he told her. She thumped her tail. By the time he stepped outdoors, the animal was already asleep.
That dinner party had not been the most unpleasant Amelia had endured. There was the usual skin-crawling horror of sitting in a drawing room, combined with the fervent wish to be safe at home. But the crumbling, fairy-story charm of Pelham Hall was nothing like a London drawing room, and the Duke of Hereford was as far removed as London society as one could get while still being a duke. Amelia was familiar with, if not precisely comfortable with, the vicar and Mrs. Trevelyan. Everyone seemed content to ignore her, and she spent the hour after dinner with a gangly terrier puppy asleep in her lap. She strongly suspected that Sydney had said something to the duke to make him focus his attention on Georgiana, and meanwhile Sydney seemed intent on occupying Mr. and Mrs. Trevelyan.
She was trying not to consider what role her conversation with Sydney played in her assessment of the evening. She was trying not to think about Sydney at all, because that look of abject regret on his face had been so much like something she might have expected from her Sydney, not the cruel stranger she had met the previous week.
When, the next day, Georgiana announced that she meant to call at Pelham Hall, Amelia automatically reached for her boots and shawl.
“You don’t need to come along,” Georgiana said. “I only mean to bring Hereford some of our strawberries and let him amuse me with his bad opinions.”
Amelia narrowed her eyes. “You two were as thick as thieves last night.” She glanced at the basket of strawberries that was looped over Georgiana’s arm. “Georgiana Russell, are you throwing your cap at the duke?” She meant it as a joke, and was stunned to see Georgiana blush.
“Not in the way you mean,” Georgiana said. “You know I have no interest in men, not in that way. But I like him. So you needn’t accompany me unless you have a longing to see Pelham Hall in the daylight.”
Amelia had wanted a chance to properly see the grounds of Pelham Hall, but that was before things went so wrong with Sydney. “I could walk around the garden,” she said, surprised to find that the idea didn’t distress her. “It would just be a walk.”
“And if you hate it, you can turn on your heel and return home,” Georgiana said.
As they approached Pelham Hall, they were greeted by a small child wearing nothing but a shift, running helter-skelter down the lane, followed by a woman in a pinafore and cap.
“Stop, you wretched child. Arrêt!” the woman said. “Oh, heaven help me, please don’t run into the brook, you imp!”
The child ran into the brook. Before Amelia could quite make sense of what she had seen, Georgiana stepped out of her boots and waded into the water. The water was low, so the child was merrily splashing rather than actively drowning, but Georgiana had her out in half a minute.
“What could you have been thinking?” Georgiana asked in a tone Amelia knew quite well from when her younger sisters had gotten into mischief. “Do you think your mama wants to ruin her boots chasing after you?”
“Maman est morte,” the child said. “Mes tantes sont mortes. Mon oncle monsieur le duc n’est pas morte mais il est fou.”
“C’est toi qui es folle,” Georgiana said, slipping into brisk French. “Et c’est toi qui doit te sécher et t’excuser auprès de”—she glanced at the woman in the cap—“de ta bonne.”
Heavy footsteps pounded down the lane, and Amelia whipped around to see Mr. Goddard run
ning towards them.
“Is she—”
“She’s quite all right,” Amelia reassured him. “No, really, there’s no need to run after her. She doesn’t need two adults ruining their clothes.”
Georgiana led the child out of the water. She clapped her hands together and gestured for the child to go to the maid. “Vas-y!” she said.
The child flashed a sullen glance at Georgiana but proceeded to the maid. “Je suis désolée, Marie,” she said dutifully. Then she caught sight of Mr. Goddard and all but flung herself into his arms, babbling in broken English. He responded in halting French.
There was an obvious family resemblance between Mr. Goddard and the little girl. She was fair where he was dark, but the likeness was there nonetheless. Was she a niece? His own daughter? Whatever the case, he was fond of the child, and she returned the sentiment. It was yet another unwanted reminder that Mr. Goddard was capable of warmth, that he was more than stern disapproval and furrowed dark eyebrows. In fact, if she disregarded that one terrible day at Pelham Hall and their subsequent encounter in the lane, Sydney had been unfailingly kind to her from the beginning. She rather wished she had not come to that realization, because now she felt the pull of whatever they had been to one another. If she were another person, she might be able to let herself be pulled, to let her heart go unguarded. But that was so laughably far from what she felt herself capable of that she felt alone, mere inches from him.
Chapter Fifteen
“Thank you,” Sydney said to Georgiana Russell. “I can’t begin to thank you. Leontine recently lost her mother and I’m afraid we’ve been spoiling her terribly.”
“Children are all very naughty at that age,” Georgiana said. “Miss Allenby’s youngest sister used to climb out on the roof. She gave the entire household nightmares.”
“Miss Russell was my governess,” Amelia explained.
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