Page 44 of Duke of Moonstone
“Overstepped?” Margaret laughed, a sound like paper rustling. “My dear girl, this house has needed someone to overstep in it for ten years. Alexander keeps everything so tightly ordered that the walls themselves are afraid to crack.”
Frances bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. Behind her, she heard the Duke shift his weight.
“Tell me about this charity school,” Margaret said. “Eleanor has told me quite a bit, but I want to hear more about it fromyou.”
“St. Thomas’?” Frances sat forward slightly. “It is a school for children in the East End. They come from working families—laborers, dock workers, seamstresses. Many of them would have no education at all without it.”
“And you teach there?”
“Not exactly. I help where I can. Reading, mostly. Some arithmetic. The children are extraordinary: determined and bright, far more so than anyone gives them credit for.”
Margaret’s eyes had begun to shine. “I used to do similar work. Years ago, before my health confined me to these rooms. I supported a society for gentlewomen who had fallen on hard times—widows, mostly. We provided education for their daughters.”
“The Whitestone Ladies’ Benevolent Society,” Frances said. “I have heard of it.”
Margaret’s face lit up. “You have?”
“Eleanor spoke of it. She said you founded it.”
“I did. It was my proudest undertaking.” Margaret’s hand tightened on Frances’. “And now here you are, doing the very same sort of work. In a different way, perhaps, but the same impulse. The same heart.”
The same heart.The words settled in Frances’s chest with a weight that surprised her. She looked at this woman—frail, confined, bright-eyed—and thought of the Duke in his study with his ledgers, his discipline, and his rigid, unbreachable walls, and she could not reconcile the two. How had this warm, open, generous woman produced a man who treated emotion as a structural weakness?
“There is a boy,” Frances said. “Timothy. Eight years old. He could not read a single word when he first came. Now, he is working through full sentences. He arrives early every morning to practice.”
“Every morning?”
“Without fail.”
Margaret pressed her free hand to her chest. “Oh, what a child.”
“He is remarkable.”
“And Alexander?” Margaret turned her gaze past Frances to where the Duke stood. “My son accompanied you to the school, I understand?”
Frances turned slightly. The Duke was standing with his hands behind his back and an expression she could not read. She had been trying to read it for the past thirty minutes. It was not the blank composure he wore in public. It was something else—something that looked, if she were being fanciful, like a man watching something he had not expected to see.
Is that surprise? Or something else?
“He did,” Frances said. “He was very good with the children.”
“Was he?” Margaret’s eyebrows rose. She looked at her son as though he had just performed an unexpected trick. “Alexander?”
“A little girl asked him to help her with her letters,” Frances said. “He knelt on the floor beside her and drew them in chalk.”
Margaret pressed both hands to her chest now. “Alexander? On the floor?”
The Duke cleared his throat. “It seemed the most practical position from which to reach the slate.”
“Oh, my days, you on the floor?” Margaret repeated, and her eyes were shining, and Frances caught the barest trace of color rising along the Duke’s jaw. It was, she decided, the most human she had ever looked.
“He was very patient with her,” Frances added because she was enjoying this and saw no reason to stop.
“I shall need a moment to recover from this intelligence,” Margaret said. She looked between them—Frances in herchair, Alexander behind her—and her expression softened into something that was both tender and knowing. “You are good for him.”
The guilt arrived swiftly. Sharp and cold, cutting through the warmth of the conversation like a draught through an open window. Frances felt her smile tighten and forced it to hold.
We are lying to her. This kind, generous woman, and we are lying to her face.
