Page 85 of Caught By the Ruthless Duke
She thought about him at seventeen, the dukedom suddenly thrust upon his shoulders, both men he had looked up to gone. She did not say this. She let it sit between them.
“An agricultural almanac sounds considerably worse than what I had,” he said.
“I now know the optimal planting season for winter wheat.”
“A practical education.”
“I have found most of my education practical, in one way or another.”
Neither of them had said anything more of consequence. But Cressida was well aware that something had been said nonetheless.
The Fairmonts’ musical evening occupied three principal rooms of Stanton House and was attended by a particular category of London society: those wealthy enough that display was no longer necessary, and those ambitious enough that it still was. Both groups had come in full complement.
They entered together—a statement in itself.
Cressida was conscious of it the way one was conscious of the tide changing: not a single wave, but the whole room’s attention redirecting. She had attended enough gatherings to read this specific texture of interest—the appetite beneath the pleasantry, the hunger to see whether she would crack under the weight of what everyone knew or believed they knew.
She kept her chin level and her expression neutral. Theodore’s hand rested on the small of her back, light, deliberate, a silent statement to all who cared to look. Andmanycared.
“There is a cluster of ladies near the fireplace,” he said, close enough that it reached only her, “who have been staring since we arrived. The one in yellow has now looked across three times.”
“I noticed,” she said pleasantly. “I have decided she is simply admiring your coat.”
Cressida hadn’t realized how easily jealousy could catch flame in a person’s heart until this evening and a few feminine glances at her husband.
“Naturally.”
“It is a very good coat.”
Elinor Stanton, the Duchess of Fairmont, crossed the room toward her with unhurried purpose. She was younger than Cressida had expected, with dark eyes, a composed face, and a directness in her bearing that had nothing to do with performance.
She drew Cressida slightly apart, and what followed was not social pleasantry.
“I do not require you to pretend you cannot hear them,” Elinor said without preamble. “I stood in nearly this same position, in nearly this same kind of room, not so long ago.”
Cressida blinked at her, a knot loosening in her chest that she had not realized she had been carrying.
“They are not interested in the truth of you,” Elinor added. “They are interested in the story. You cannot argue a room out of its story. What you can do is refuse to perform the ending they have written for you.”
It was not consolation. Consolation would have been considerably less useful. It was the frank intelligence of a woman who had come out the other side intact, and Cressida received it as it was given: squarely and without sentiment.
“Thank you,” she said, and she meant it.
Elinor held her gaze a beat longer. “The second violinist is particularly good tonight,” she said, returning to a register suitable for the room. “The acoustics near the east window are considerably better.”
Then she moved on.
Cressida stood where she was for a moment, then went to find the east window.
Lucien Stanton intercepted Theodore with the measured ease of a man who had no need to establish his standing and therefore spent no energy doing so.
“Ashmere.”
“Fairmont.”
They watched the room in the companionable silence of men who had arrived separately at the conclusion that most of what happened in these gatherings did not require narration.
Lucien did not remark on the whispers because he understood, without being told, that Theodore already knew and required neither commentary nor sympathy.
