Page 86 of Duke of Moonstone
Frances turned. She looked at him, and something moved in her expression. Not quite a smile. The shape of one, waiting.
“He is being modest,” she said. “He has opinions about everything. He simply keeps them locked away where no one can find them.”
“A wise man,” the father said. “My wife says I give mine away too freely.”
“You do,” the wife confirmed, without looking up from settling the baby.
The table laughed. Alexander found himself smiling.
“Have you traveled, sir?” Will asked. He had pulled a chair over to their table uninvited, the way people did in places like this, where chairs were for anyone and conversation was currency. “To the Continent, perhaps?”
“Italy,” Alexander said. “Some years ago.”
“Italy! Were there ruins?”
“A great many.”
“I always wanted to see ruins. Proper ones. Old stones with stories in them.”
“They are... remarkable.” The word was inadequate. He searched for something better, and to his surprise, he found he wanted to try. “There is a temple in Rome—the Pantheon—with a hole in the roof. Open to the sky. When it rains, the water falls straight through to the marble floor, and a drain built into the stone carries it away. It was built two thousand years ago, and it still functions perfectly.”
Will leaned forward. “Two thousand years! And the drain still works?”
“Without fail.”
“Now that,” Will said, slapping his knee, “is engineering.”
“Do they have the pyramids in Italy?” the boy asked from the floor.
“The pyramids are in Egypt,” Alexander said. “But there is one in Rome. Smaller. It was built as a tomb.”
“A tomb!” The boy’s eyes went wide. “Is there a body inside?”
“I believe so.”
“Have you seen it?”
“Only from the outside.”
“I should like to see the inside,” the boy said with the absolute certainty of a child who saw no obstacle between himself and Egypt.
Frances caught Alexander’s eye. Her mouth was curved. Her eyes were warm, and the look she gave him was not the guarded gaze of the carriage. It was something else. Something that said:You see? This is not so difficult.
He held her gaze for a moment then he turned back to the sailor.
“Tell me about the storms,” he said. “At sea. Were they very fierce?”
Will launched into a tale about a typhoon off the coast of Ceylon that nearly capsized his ship. The father interrupted with corrections. The mother contradicted both of them. The eldest daughter asked practical questions about navigation. The boy on the floor asked if there were sharks.
Alexander sat in the middle of it and let the noise wash over him. The food arrived, and he ate without paying attention to what was on his plate, because the conversation kept pulling him back. Frances was asking about the spice trade. Will was explaining the difference between cinnamon and cassia. The father was telling a story about his brother’s first day home, when he had tried to cook a curry and nearly set the kitchen on fire.
The room was loud. The ale was middling. The bench was uncomfortable. And Alexander was... He searched for the word and was startled by what he found.
Happy.
Not the satisfaction of a ledger balanced or an estate well-managed. Not the grim pleasure of duty fulfilled. Something lighter than that. Something that asked nothing of him, required no performance, and simply existed because he was here in this room with these people, listening to a story about a curry that caught fire.
Frances was laughing at something the mother had said, and her face was flushed, and her eyes were bright, and she looked, in this moment, exactly as she had looked in the garden with Emily. Open. Unguarded. Present.
