Page 54 of Duke of Moonstone
Another nod.
Frances took her own seat and was arranging her napkin when the Duke walked in.
He moved to his chair with the brisk efficiency of a man who had been interrupted from something and intended to return to it as soon as possible. His jaw was set. His gaze swept the table—the smaller arrangement, the three place settings, the child sitting very straight in her cushioned chair—and something passed across his face that Frances could not read before it was gone.
He sat.
“Good evening,” Frances said.
“Good evening.”
Emily said nothing. Her hands were in her lap, her eyes on her plate.
The first course arrived. A consommé, clear and fragrant, served in delicate bowls that Emily regarded with the wariness of someone who had been taught that fine china was for looking at, not eating from.
Frances picked up her spoon. Emily watched her then picked up her own and copied the motion with painstaking care.
“Emily,” Frances said, after the child had managed three careful spoonfuls, “what was the countryside like where you were staying? Was it very green?”
A pause. “Yes, Your Grace.”
“Frances,” she corrected gently. “You may call me Frances if you like. At least at dinner. I think ‘Your Grace’ is rather a lot of syllables between courses.”
The smallest shift in Emily’s posture. Not quite a loosening but not a tightening, either. “It was very green,” she said. “There were sheep.”
“Sheep! How many?”
“I did not count them. Miss Bennet said there were too many to count.”
“That is a great many sheep,” Frances agreed. “Did they make a terrible racket?”
“Only in the mornings.” Emily’s spoon paused above her bowl. “They were loudest when it rained.”
“Sheep generally are. They have strong opinions about the weather.”
Something moved at the corner of Emily’s mouth. Frances pressed on.
“And what about watercolors? Miss Bennet tells me you are a great painter.”
“I like drawing and painting flowers.” The words came out quietly, but they came. “Miss Bennet taught me how to sketch a rose.”
“Roses are quite lovely.”
“I like painting the stories I read, too.” Emily set down her spoon and looked at Frances with an expression that held, beneath its caution, a flicker of real feeling. “There was one about a girl who sailed across the sea in a boat she built herself.”
“That sounds wonderful.”
“She had a dog.” Emily’s voice grew fractionally stronger. “The dog was the navigator.”
Frances smiled. “As all the best dogs are.”
“His name was Captain.”
“Of course, it was.”
“I have the drawing. Would you like to see it after dinner?”
“I would love nothing more, my dear.
