Page 3 of Duke of Moonstone
“It is a convention, and conventions exist for a reason.”
She looked at him for a long moment with an expression that was equal parts affection and exasperation. Then she let out a small breath and squeezed his hand. “You are very like your father,” she said, “in all the ways that I loved him. And very unlike him in all the ways that I did not.” She paused. “I only want you to be happy.”
“I am content.”
“That is not the same thing.”
I know,he thought, but did not say. Instead, he lifted her hand briefly and set it back against the coverlet then rose to straighten the curtain that had slipped slightly on its rod.
“Rest,” he said. “I will come again this evening.”
“What about the ball?” she reminded him.
“I know you want the ball to be perfect, and so do I, but I shall see you in the evening.” He glanced back at her from the doorway. She was watching him with those quiet eyes, and the expression on her face was one he had never entirely learned to read. He gave her a small nod and pulled the door closed behind him.
In the hallway, he stood for a moment, one hand still on the door handle.
The child is well. Eleanor will come to her senses. The ball will go smoothly. Everything is in order.
He let go of the handle and walked on.
CHAPTER 2
“Mr. Fraser! Good morning. Is the primer for the younger ones still on the shelf by the window, or has someone moved it again?” Lady Frances Pembroke asked the schoolmaster as she stepped over the threshold.
“Good morning, Lady Frances. I moved it to the cupboard last week, I’m afraid. Someone kept knocking it into the ink.”
Frances laughed and crossed the room toward the cupboard in question. The school was already beginning to fill with the morning’s noise, the murmur of children settling into their seats, and the occasional sharp whisper that preceded some minor act of mischief.
She loved this hour. She had loved it since the first morning her sister Lavinia had brought her here, two years ago now, and she had sat beside a little girl who could not read her own name and taught her the letters one by one until the girl could sound them out herself.
She found the primer and tucked it under her arm. “Has Lady Eleanor not arrived yet? I had thought she would be here before me.”
The smile on Malcolm’s face shifted, just slightly. He set down the papers in his hand and looked at her with an expression that was careful in a way it had not been a moment ago.
“No, she... she has not come,” he said. “I received a letter from her this morning.”
Frances stilled. “A letter?”
“She writes that her brother will no longer permit her to leave the house,” he said it quietly, but she could see beneath the surface that he was working very hard to remain composed. “She was inconsolable, and she wrote that she did not know when she would be able to come again.”
Frances stood holding the primer and said nothing for a moment because what she wanted to say was not at all suitable for a charity school on a Tuesday morning. Of course, he had. She had known the moment Eleanor had mentioned her brother’s name and title at their last visit that something like this was coming. Eleanor had been frightened then though she had tried to laugh it off, but Frances had told herself it would come to nothing.
She had been wrong.
“I see,” she said at last because she could not say what she actually though, which was that the Duke of Whitestone was the most cold-blooded, high-handed, insufferable man in all of London.
She had never met him directly; they moved in overlapping circles but had never been formally introduced. He also had never been around when she visited her friend, yet Eleanor’s descriptions over the past year had been thorough enough for Frances to form a very complete picture.
Frances watched him for a moment then turned back to her work.
But she did not stop thinking about it. Someone ought to challenge that duke.
By the time she left the school two hours later, she had made up her mind.
She told herself, as the carriage turned toward Whitestone House, that she was going for Eleanor’s sake—which was entirely true. Eleanor was her dearest friend, and if her brother had shut her inside that house with no explanation beyond his own authority then someone ought to go and find out what had happened. And Frances was as good a person as any.
The butler admitted her almost immediately, took her card, and led her to the drawing room.
