Page 40 of A Lady of Means (Roses and Rakes #1)

Chapter Thirty-One

Moria had risen from her bed for the first time in days to fetch a book from the library.

She heard voices.

The Duke. Her betrothed. “That’s too much. Just put it in a trust for her.”

“People have a way of finding these things out. I don’t want anyone claiming that money factors into this union on either side.”

“That’s probably better than what they already think.” Lawrence.

“Why? What are they saying? Have you heard anything untoward?” Jasper.

“They don’t have to say anything in my earshot, I can fill in the blanks myself.”

“They’ll all stop once she becomes a duchess.”

“I think she kind of enjoys it, honestly,” Lawrence added.

“Would you please desist?” There was a note of authority in Jasper’s voice despite using “please.”

“I’m only pointing out that if she was uncomfortable with gossip, she’d behave a little differently,” Lawrence pushed, voice neutral.

Of course, it would be her brother that sparked the first tinge of anger over something other than the great unjust hands of fate. But it felt good to feel something again nonetheless.

The Duke’s voice dropped low and challenging in reply. “Who are you to judge your sister?”

Moria wanted to feel something at the Duke standing up to her brother on her behalf. But he was to be her husband, that’s the least of what he was supposed to do, wasn’t it? Devyn had stood beside her, he’d stood toe to toe with all her darkness.

“That’s a fair fucking point, Your Grace. I can see my error. I’ll leave you two to your discussion.”

Moria kept walking before she could run into her brother. She pulled the brim of her large hat over her face and walked out the door and onto the sidewalk. Up the street and around the corner, past papers announcing her engagement. Past Carina’s house. Past the lending library.

Moria wondered what they would have printed if she’d been announcing her engagement to a different man, a better one but without a showy title.

A gilded sign for a modiste came into view, and Moria realized she was walking to Letitia’s.

Her family hid the papers from her, at least they had tried to, but Letty would be honest.

Letitia opened the door before she could knock, ushering her through a curtain, to a plush divan in her workshop. “Sit, here’s some tea and scones.”

“What do you put in these? They taste like sunshine and summertime.”

Letty handed her a broadsheet, sitting beside her and pouring her a cup of tea.

Moria didn’t read the words so much as she absorbed them.

They rattled around inside of her in great blasts of wind that made her feel like she was going to topple sideways.

But still, none of them knew her secrets.

They were still just hers, hers and Devyn’s.

She felt Letitia’s warm, soft hand on her arm.

“Easy, friend.”

Did she look like she wanted the earth to just stop so she could get off it?

“This wasn’t what I wanted.” The words came out in great heaving gulps. Tears splashed onto her dress, and she tried to swipe at them with the back of her gloved hand. That dratted glove. She began trying to tear the glove off with angry hands as the tears just wouldn’t let go of her.

“I know,” Letitia murmured, closer than she had been a moment ago.

“It wasn’t…he wasn’t…. we were supposed to…I wanted…” Moria couldn’t finish any of the sentences that were clawing their way out of her throat, it felt so painfully dry.

Letitia had her. Scarred hands were smoothing back her hair and making soothing trails on her back and shoulders. Comforting sounds were falling near her ear. Letitia had her, rocking her back and forth.

“My lady, I’m here. I’m here. Let it out. I have you. I have you, Moria.”

Eventually, Moria felt she’d reached the bottom of her tears. Letitia still had an arm wrapped around her. “I wish I had something to say,” Letitia spoke over Moria’s head.

“He’d have known what to say,” Moria said, staring at the two dresses Moria had embroidered on mannequins in Letitia’s shop. She felt a small surge of pride at that, something she’d created, on display, for someone else to wear, to love. “He was so good at words.”

“What would he say?”

“I’ll forever feel the loss of you, but that loss is shared by all humanity, I’m sure,” Moria smiled dimly.

“When did he say that?”

“To the stone marking someone I loved.”

Letitia held up a flask. “To you, Captain Wordsmith with the heavenly thighs.” She took a drink, then handed it to Moria. Despite her pain, Moria let out a little laugh at Letitia’s words.

“To you, the only man I will ever love,” and the whiskey burned, scouring the back of her throat, washing away all of her regrets over the choices she had and had not made.

It was just Moria, her friend and her sewing needle for an afternoon.

The stragglers of her usual self-admonishment that wouldn’t be quiet couldn’t reach her in Madame Blackshear’s Modiste on Princess Street.

* * *

Outside of her close circle, there was nothing for it. For intervening weeks, Moria put on her best face for callers, for dinners; but when the effortlessly elegant man in front of her sitting room mantle turned to face her upon her entry, the mask fell away.

“Peregrine,” she said, more whisper than greeting.

He gave her a ghost of a smile, and before she could protest, he wrapped her in a bracing hug. Although he was nowhere near as tall as his younger brother, she could rest her head on his shoulder.

She could rest her tired facade, and let her grief reveal its true face for a moment in his company. What a silent, lonely luxury to not feel the need to hide not just her secret pain, but her secret love.

For a second time I am the girl mourning in secret. How did I get here so I never wind up here again?

Before words were even exchanged, he was pulling her back to remove a handkerchief from his coat to dab at her eyes.

“Christ, what an injustice. Here I am trying to come up with something to say to comfort you, my lady, and become dumbfounded by how your eyes are even more beautiful when you’re crying.

Usually I’m much better with words, but,” he cleared his throat, scrunched his nose like he too was fighting tears, “I find I’m all out of the right ones, or any of them, at the moment. ”

Moria chuckled through her tears. “He’d have found that some small victory, I’m sure.”

“Rendering me speechless? He made a regular sport of it.” Peregrine’s laugh had the same hint of goodness in his baritone that she’d always loved in Devyn’s.

She nodded in response. It struck her that while she’d tried to understand Devyn, and wondered what his family had been like, the person responsible for the man she loved had been right in front of her.

Peregrine went to stand at the window, looking out onto the street outside.

Moria came to stand beside him, but placed her back to the panes.

Watching the finely dressed and liveried traffic beyond move about like so great a loss was only shared by the two occupants of the sitting room and not something to bring her world to its knees was not something she could do.

She knew by now the ways that grief had to be constrained to a slow trickle rather than a raging torrent.

“I asked him not to go. I offered him my title to stay. At first, I was angry. I called him stubborn and bull-headed,” Moria felt a tightening in her chest upon hearing Peregrine sharing her thoughts. “Eventually, I came to the realization that that was only partly true.”

Moria placed a hand at her chest, toying with the high lace neck of her gown.

“The only thing that Devyn was ever given without any strings attached, was his army commission. He used his winnings at cards, money he made from investments, and an inherited property from our grandmother he rented out, to purchase it. Our father offered to purchase it for him, but he had a history of controlling Devyn and manipulating his appreciation or guilt for his own purposes. Devyn wouldn’t have wanted anything he didn’t earn.

” He gave a sad smile, the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes felt so oppressive, so hideously unjust as they were something Devyn would never grow to have.

“I think he thought one last heroic stand would make him worthy of being a nobleman, and worthy of you.”

Moria shook her head. “He had it all wrong. It was me…who wasn’t worthy of him. And all of his goodness.”

“And now you’re to marry the Duke?”

Moria nodded.

“He asked, and you said yes?”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Devyn was gone. I was left,” Moria didn’t meet Peregrine’s eyes, couldn’t. “So I chose the very last person that I wanted to commit to- myself.”

He took one of her hands in his. “You’re to become a duchess, as we all predicted. Then, be a good one, my dear, find a way to make something good from all of this,” Peregrine said, giving her a firm hug before he departed.