Page 13 of Duke of Moonstone
Another silence. He watched her face and looked for the distress he had been bracing for, the worry, the alarm, and found instead something that was almost, though not quite, relief.
“She is happy,” his mother said, and it was not entirely a question.
“Shebelievesshe is.”
“Then I am glad.” She turned back to him, and her eyes were very clear and very steady. “She has a good heart, Alexander. She always has. And the man... Is he a good man?”
He thought of Malcolm Fraser at the charity school, sorting papers with a composure that had suggested someone who did not make decisions lightly. “I believe so,” he said which was not something he had expected to be saying and cost him something to admit.
His mother nodded slowly. “I only want her to be happy,” she said. “As I only want you to be happy. That has always been all I wanted for both of you.” She paused. “You know that.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” She was looking at him with that particular expression, the one he had never entirely learned to name, the one that saw more than he had shown. “You have given so much of yourself to doing what is right, my dear. For so many years. The estate, Eleanor, myself, always duty first, always the correct thing, always the expected thing.” She reached out and covered his hand with hers. “I wonder sometimes if you have ever allowed yourself to simply... want something.”
Alexander looked at her hand over his and said nothing.
“I read the papers this morning,” she said.
He looked up.
“I have been confined to this room, not this house,” she said mildly. “My maid reads to me. She is very thorough.”
He said nothing for a moment. “I see.”
“The young woman,” his mother said. “Lady Frances Pembroke. I have met her, you know, briefly, at Evermere, last spring. She is the Duchess of Evermere’s sister.” A pause. “I thought she was a good deal more than she appeared to be.”
“She impersonated my sister at my own ball,” Alexander said.
“Yes.” His mother seemed to consider this. “She did it for Eleanor, I imagine.”
“That does not make it?—”
“No,” she agreed. “It does not. But it tells you something about her, does it not?” She squeezed his hand once and then settled back against her pillows, and her voice when she spoke again was gentle in a way that meant she was reaching her point. “It is time, Alexander. Long past time if I am honest. You need a duchess. The child needs a home. And you need...” she paused. “You need someone who will not simply agree with everything you say because heaven knows that has never done you any good.”
His mother’s hand stilled over his.
He did not look at her face. He looked at the fire and thought about what it was going to take to walk into Evermere Hall and say what needed to be said to a woman who had already told him, in terms that left very little room for interpretation, exactly what she thought of him.
He might have to seek creative ways to convince her to marry him.
CHAPTER 6
“Give me that,” Lavinia said, and took the gossip paper out of her hands with the firmness of someone removing something harmful which Frances supposed it was.
“I have already read it,” Frances pointed out. “Twice.”
“Then you do not need to read it a third time.” Lavinia set it face down on the table beside the sofa and sat close enough that their shoulders touched which was not something she did unless she thought it was necessary.
It was necessary.
Frances looked at the ceiling, pressed the back of her hand briefly to her eyes, and told herself she was not going to cry again because she had cried quite enough last night, and it had not improved anything.
“It will pass,” Lavinia said.
“You said that last night.”
“It was true last night, and it is still true this morning.”
