A Duke in the Night(76)

And then there was Clara.

He hadn’t seen her since that night, which had been hard. Harder than he’d ever thought possible. She’d been fully occupied with her classes during the day, and he’d spent the evenings buried in his own work and the correspondence that Duncan had brought him. There were inventories to be accepted, blueprints to be reviewed, payrolls to be approved. Legal documents to be signed, bank drafts to be transferred. All activities that usually consumed him and brought him satisfaction and pleasure. Except he was struggling to find distraction and reassurance in what was familiar. Because everything that he’d thought he’d known, everything that had seemed so clear to him in London, had become blurry and indistinguishable in Dover.

The dinner that had been missed two nights prior had been rescheduled, and August had been reinvited. Anne had specifically asked him to come, though at that point he would have come anyway, if only for the excuse to see Clara.

He arrived early to find Lady Tabitha in her now-familiar spot, arranging a new profusion of flowers in the center of the hall. Her deep-pink gown matched the roses in the center of the bouquet.

“Good evening, Your Grace,” she said with a smile as she tucked a brilliant purple flower into the side of the arrangement. “You’re early. No one’s down quite yet.”

“I can leave and return,” he replied, bending to pick up a sprig of greenery that had fallen. “Make a grander entrance later.”

“You could.” Tabitha laughed. “But I get the feeling that you’re not one for grand spectacles.” She glanced at him over a cut fern. “We haven’t seen much of you in the last couple of days.”

“I’ve been busy. My man of business has come up from London with a number of matters requiring my attention.”

“Yes, Mr. Down.”

August started. “You’ve met?”

“Of course.” Tabitha adjusted another stem. “Your sister introduced us last evening.”

“What?” August wasn’t sure where to start. “My sister? What was she doing last evening? With Mr. Down?”

“Playing chess in the drawing room. Beat him too. Well, at least the first time. He beat her twice after that.”

“That’s impossible.”

“No, I can assure you that she had his queen—”

“That’s not what I meant.” His fingers tightened on the sprig.

Tabitha was watching him, another purple bloom in her fingers. “Your sister is a remarkable woman.”

“Yes.” He didn’t know what else to say.

Tabitha smiled slightly. “I’ve always maintained that a woman should never trust a man who spends more on his clothes than she.”

A bark of laughter escaped, surprising him.

“It’s hard, isn’t it? To think of Anne as a capable woman and not a child?”

The stem snapped in his fingers.

“I had a daughter once,” Tabitha said suddenly. “I would like to think that, had she had the chance to grow up, she would have become a woman like Anne. Fearless. Strong.” She ran a gnarled finger over the delicate petals of the bloom. “Trust that your sister will live her life not perfectly, but well.”

August looked down at the crushed greenery in his hand and uncurled his fingers. “You sound like Miss Hayward.”

“Mmm. Another strong woman. Though perhaps not as fearless.”

August tossed the crumpled sprig onto the table. “Miss Hayward is the most fearless woman I know,” he scoffed.

“Mmmm.” Lady Tabitha picked up the broken stem and straightened it. “Not in matters of the heart, I think.”

August stared, not knowing what to say.

Lady Tabitha tucked the sprig into the vase and approached August, pressing the last purple bloom into his hand. “Clara deserves a great love, Your Grace. But that is the single thing she cannot accomplish alone.”

*



Dinner was an informal, raucous affair.

Someone had taken the liberty of placing a small, petrified creature, caught for eternity in its prison of rock, at each place setting before everyone arrived. This was not a dinner at which polite conversation was limited to the weather, the inconveniences of traffic around Bridge Street, and the latest and most shocking French fashion. Instead debate raged over the identification of each creature and theories about how and when it had lived. How creatures that didn’t exist now had existed then. And of course there were the inevitable tangents that sprouted when evidence did not match accepted knowledge.

Anne had caught August’s eye as she put forth her own ideas about the small creature she held in her hand. She grinned at him and then proceeded to draw him into the fray by asking for his opinion. He looked across the table and caught Clara watching. She held his eyes with a soft smile before looking away, as though she understood exactly what he was thinking.

For an instant August wished he could live in that moment forever. He wished he could capture it like the creatures that lay on the table encased in stone. Preserve everything just as it was. Because this feeling that was coursing through him, that was twisting all his insides, pressing the very breath from his lungs and making his chest ache, was truly like nothing he’d experienced. And he realized that he was happy, and that it had nothing to do with acquisitions or profits. It just…was.