Page 36 of A Lady of Means (Roses and Rakes #1)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Devyn,

I live my life one envelope at a time. My days, my comings and goings are measured by your words.

Obligations and appearances mean little without your words and the images they conjure of you.

I know little of war, but I picture you doing the same.

Sometimes I try to picture you among your company of men in the far-off places that get to harbor you, and other times I cannot picture you at all for the pain it causes me to think of where you might be that I cannot reach you.

Please come home and make this the last adventure you go on without me.

M

* * *

Goddess of War,

Live your life outside these envelopes. Don’t measure your comings and goings by my words.

I never wanted to limit you. A different man might, but not this one, however much it fills me with hope to hear how much my words mean to you.

There is nowhere, no corner of this earth or the heavens that you cannot reach me.

I will come home, as you wish. I’ll take you anywhere you want, for however long you want.

There are no adventures, not without you.

Not while you’re walking around carrying my heart in your hands. I love you, desperately.

D

* * *

Ink and parchment were a paltry substitute for the flesh and bones of a man, especially one like Devyn. He was the man her heart clung to, even if she hadn’t told anyone outside of her family the truth.

Still, Moria threw herself into her letters when she wrote them, into reading his letters when they arrived. She swapped the Burn Book she usually she carried in her reticule for his letters, so that his words were always close at hand.

At first, she threw herself back into the life she had built for herself.

Without a good-natured, muscled mountain of a man, she still had dancing, sewing dresses secretly with Fitz’s seamstress friend, gardening and arranging flowers for hospitals and orphanages, shooting, archery, taking care of her nieces and nephews, and social calls.

But all of this busy-ness was just a cover, so she didn't have to spend any time alone or with her thoughts while he was out there.

More than all of that, she had her family. Three of them were currently looking at her over the afternoon tea table while Moria gathered her sewing and asked the housekeeper for her cape.

“Where are you going?” Noelle said, moving to grasp her hand.

“It’s Wednesday,” Moria shrugged.

Noelle and Olivia looked to one another, a whole conversation passed but neither stopped Moria from leaving. If she stopped moving, all the things chasing her down would catch up to her. So, she kept running. And she’d become one hell of a runner. It was being still she didn’t have the stamina for.

She found herself, once again, on Bond Street, a footman following close behind with an armful of packages, buying things she couldn’t possibly need. It was Kate Herring who had found her in a milliner’s shop and offered her something she hadn’t been expecting.

“You’ve been…distant…the last month or so.” Kate mused, holding up a green ribbon that Moria grimaced at. It was too putrid.

“I fell in love with the man that would completely obliterate my social situation I’ve extorted and schemed to maintain and now that I have been loved so thoroughly, this whole scene feels hollow in his absence,” is what she wanted to say.

Moria settled on, “I don’t expect you’d understand, Kate.”

Kate took the bolt of bright blue cloth Moria held up. “You could try.”

Moria ran her fingers over a piece of lace, eyeing it next to the blue. “Why is it that you think I’ve been distant the last month or so?”

“You look…lovesick,” Kate touched Moria’s arm. Moria pulled away as if scalded.

“Please, you’ll have to do better than that.” Moria tried to add a touch of laughter to her voice as though the idea were foreign. It wasn’t. She was lovesick, but she wasn’t about to tell this girl.

“Is it His Grace? You wish him to hurry up and propose?”

Moria thought for a girl so adept at mathematics, Kate hadn’t quite come up with the right answer for this particular equation.

“Why? Worried he’ll be taken off the market soon?” Moria said with a playful smile, just to gauge the girl’s reaction.

“I’m sure that the daughter of a reverend and a bluestocking would never aim so very high.”

“If you did, no one would blame you,” Moria said, holding up a swath of green silk against the girl’s face, then giving her a decisive nod. “This one. A little lower cut this time. He seems to like the color green. And stop slouching.”

The other woman stood to her full height; Moria gave her an appreciative nod.

“Another thing, less talking about maths and your trips abroad,” Moria said, adding a pair of gloves to Kate’s stack of wares. “Men love to talk about themselves, His Grace especially. I hope you like politics and shooting. He’s not just looking for a duchess, but a politician’s wife as well.”

Moria pulled an auburn curl free from the girl’s coiffure and placed a necklace from a nearby display about her neck.

Then she turned her to face the mirror,“If you aim high, make sure you arm yourself.”

And with a wink and a sashay of pink skirts, Moria exited the shop.

* * *

Four days later, Moria still didn’t want to be around her well-meaning siblings.

She didn’t want to be around Letitia, who knew her too well, and she didn’t want to answer her correspondence to Llewyn, who would see through every line of half-hearted banter she would pour onto a page.

That’s how she wound up at Gretchen’s house, gift in hand, for a friend she hadn’t seen in weeks.

“I should have left you standing on the stoop longer just to prove a point.”

Moria sat across from her friend, handing her a pink and white hat box bearing a piece of headwear that was overly ostentatious and Gretchen was sure to love.

“Naturally, you saw I was carrying a gift, so you took pity on me.”

Gretchen didn’t laugh, but one corner of her mouth lost the battle against smiling. “I was just in shock that you still remembered my address.”

Moria bit into a scone. “I deserved that.”

“When Miss Herring told me that you’d gone shopping together, and selected a dress for her to wear to entice His Grace-”

“She said what?”

“Open the gift you brought me first,” Gretchen straightened her shoulders and lifted her head proud like a curly-haired queen.

Moria lifted the striped lid off the hat box and held out the confection of millinery for her friend.

“I thought you said my hats were too big.” Gretchen said, pulling her lip between her teeth.

“They are. You have a small head and beautiful hair. But you like them. That’s all that matters.”

Gretchen’s eyes turned a little watery, but she accepted the hat and turned it over gingerly.

“She said that you confided in her. That you thought she was a better friend. That’s why you took her shopping and suggested she try and aim for the Duke.”

Moria scoffed. “And you believed this bit of farce?”

“The dress, Moria. She wore it earlier this morning to a breakfast that you didn’t show up to and everyone was talking about how regal she looked. But it was…so unlike her. It was more like you.”

Moria dusted her hands of the sugar from the sweet treat she’d been eating then reached for Gretchen’s.

“She isn’t a better friend than you. I barely know her.

I was shopping. She was shopping. She was just there.

And then…” Moria blew out a long breath, “She started prying, I didn’t want to tell her about something, so I picked her out a dress and told her she should wear it if she wanted to get His Grace to notice her.

I didn’t give my blessing on their marital union. ”

“That little redheaded—”

“There’s something else, Gretchen.”

Gretchen leaned forward, squeezed Moria’s hand. “On Carina’s dead husband’s grave, I swear I won’t tell a soul.”

Moria scrunched up her nose. “You couldn’t promise on something better?”

“No, because why would I break a promise or tell a lie and risk being haunted by that lecher?”

Moria laughed, truly laughed, for the first time in weeks. “I’ve missed you.”

Gretchen waved for her to keep talking. “Don’t change the subject.”

Moria bit her lip before continuing. “There is a reason I’ve been…keeping to myself.”

Gretchen squealed, stood from her seat, and then ran to close the door. “I’m going to need to close the door for this, I can feel it.”

And when she sat down next to Moria, Moria finally unburdened herself to her friend of all the things she’d kept buried and felt several pounds lighter.

If Devyn could love her enough to promise life and death, enough to give her his mother’s ring and every oath he could make to come back to her, then she could share all of it with her friend.

He would come back, and she would need her friends.