Page 58 of Duke of Moonstone
Emily did not speak with ease. Not in his presence. Not at meals, where her answers were brief and monosyllabic. Not in the hallways, where she pressed herself against the wall when he passed, as if trying to take up as little space as possible. She spoke to him the way one speaks to a magistrate—quietly and with clear relief when the exchange was over.
This voice was different.
“I told you to call me Frances, my dear.” The Duchess’ words followed, drifting up through the window like something carried on a summer current. “And that sparrow is rather enchanting, is it not?”
Alexander’s hand stilled on the desk.
He ought to call her Frances, too.
The thought arrived with considerable discomfort. They had been married for weeks. He had called her “Duchess” and in the privacy of his own mind, nothing at all. And she had offered her name to an eight-year-old girl over a sparrow, and he had never once used it.
Emily’s giggle floated up next. A real giggle—girlish and unguarded, the sound of a child who had forgotten, for a moment, to be careful.
“Where does it live?” Emily asked. “Does it have a nest?”
“I should think so. Up in that tree, perhaps. Do you see? Where the branches are thickest.”
“I see it! I see where it went!”
“Clever girl. You have sharp eyes.”
Alexander set down his quill entirely and pushed back his chair. The letter to his steward—something about fencing on the north pasture or drainage or one of the dozen practical matters that filled his days and kept his mind where it belonged—could wait.
He rose and crossed to the window.
Below, the garden spread in its orderly green expanse, and there, on the gravel path beside the old elm, stood his wife and his ward.
Frances wore what he thought was a pale peach muslin dress though he admitted he was not an expert on fabrics. The color seemed to affect her skin in a way he preferred not to dwell on. Her face was angled upward toward the branches, her neck a graceful, elongated line, and her hair shimmered in the afternoon light, giving it a golden hue instead of brown. Emily stood nearby, almost shoulder to shoulder with her.
Not quite touching, but near enough that the child had chosen to stand there. Had chosen proximity. Had placed herself within the orbit of this woman without being directed to do so.
Alexander watched them peer up into the branches together, speaking over each other in the particular manner of two people who had forgotten that anyone else existed.
“Do you think it has babies?” Emily asked.
“It might. It is the right time of year for it.”
“How many babies do sparrows have?”
“I am not certain. Several, I think. We could look it up in the library later if you like.”
“Yes! Can we look it up now?”
Frances laughed. “Let us watch a little longer first. Perhaps the mother will come back.”
Emily’s hand reached out and found the fabric of Frances’ skirt. Not clutching. Just resting there, her small fingers curled loosely around the muslin as though she needed the contact but did not want to ask for it.
Alexander’s chest did something he refused to name.
She is at ease.
Emily. The child who curtsied to him like a soldier reporting for inspection. The child who had not laughed in his presence until three nights ago and then only once, briefly. The child who kept her hands folded, maintained her rigid posture, and limited her words whenever he entered a room.
That child was standing in his garden with her fingers curled in his wife’s dress, pointing at sparrows, asking about babies, giggling.
This is what she looks like when she is not afraid.
He turned from the window.
