Page 82 of A Virgin to Tempt the Duke

“You didn’t time me.”

“Very nearly.” Frederick set down his own cup. “Thomas. What is the matter? You’re beginning to worry me.”

Thomas stood again and moved to the window. He looked out at the street below with his hands clasped behind his back. Frederick watched bewilderedly as his oldest friend’s usually easy shoulders did something they almost never did. They were high, tight, and rigid, with something that looked very much like fear.

“I am in love with Rachel,” Thomas said abruptly.

Frederick did not say anything. A pin could have dropped in the room.

“And I wish to marry her.”

Thomas turned from the window to face him, and the expression on his face was entirely naked. He had made himself vulnerable in a way Frederick could not remember seeing from him since they were children, if ever.

“I see,” Frederick said.

“That is… all you have to say?”

“I am considering what else to say. Give me a moment.”

Frederick really looked at him. Thomas’s jaw was set. His hands, still clasped behind his back, had likely tightened to the point of white at the knuckles. His jaw was as hard as a stone, his teeth clenched. He was, Frederick realized, genuinely frightened. The same boy who had sprinted into a burning stable at twenty to pull out a groom’s horse and didn’t bat an eye.

“Tell me how it happened.”

Thomas let out a breath, slow and unsteady. He marched back to his chair and sat heavily in it.

“I don’t know that I can identify the precise moment.” He looked at the carpet, then at Frederick. “I have known her for years. You know that. I thought I knew exactly what she was to me. Your sister, a pleasant girl, someone to make conversation with at Christmas, or in passing at the opera. And then…”

He paused.

“And then?”

“Last year I rode out to Rathbourne and was informed you were in London on business. It must have been late winter. She was in the garden, all bundled up against the harsh cold with a book… and she said something. I cannot recall what, but she made some keen observation that struck me. The sunlight curled around her face and she laughed, and…”

“What?” Frederick said.

“I thought,this is a person I could talk to for the rest of my life.I didn’t act on it. I thought it was a passing thing, a momentary confusion, and I went back to London and waited for it to pass.” He looked up at Frederick. “It did not pass. It has been eight months, and if anything, it has…” He cut himself off, and shook his head once as he looked back down at the carpet. “I came twice more to Rathbourne that winter, when you were away again on business. We talked. For hours, some days. About everything. About nothing. She is… Oh, Frederick, she is extraordinary, and I do not believe I am telling you anything you don’t know about your own sister. But I need you to understand that I know it too, and I am not speaking lightly.”

The room was quiet. Frederick looked at his oldest friend, at the eight months of held breath sitting in his posture, and thought about Rachel laughing at his jokes at the dinner table. Rachel in the park with a book, pretending to read but occupied elsewhere. Rachel’s voice going careful and bright the way it did when she was trying not to show she was moved by something. He should have seen it.

“You have been afraid to tell me,” Frederick said finally.

“You are my closest friend, and she is your sister.” Thomas met his eyes squarely. “Of course I was afraid to tell you. I have felt the dishonor of it every day. Wanting something from you without your knowledge, something of consequence, something…” He stopped. “I would not have acted without speaking to you first. I want that to be clear. Whatever else I am, I would not have done that to you.”

Frederick was quiet for a long moment.

“I know,” he said at last, and the two words carried considerably more than they appeared to. He looked at Thomas, the white knuckles, the unguarded face, the months of love conducted at a careful distance out of deference to a friendship, and felt something in himself ease, slow and certain, like a tension released at last. “I know you wouldn’t.”

“Thank you,” Thomas said with a sigh.

“She is not a simple woman,” Frederick said. “You will not find her simple, and I will not pretend otherwise to be kind about it.”

“I know.”

“She has strong opinions, and she expresses them without much concern for whether the timing is convenient.”

“I know that too.”

“She reads at the table when she thinks no one is watching.” Frederick paused. “She will always read at the table. I have never once successfully discouraged it.”