Page 24

“You cannot mean to tell me,” said Arthur Pembroke, laughing as he reached for his wine, “that you have forgotten the goose.”

Eleanor, already smiling, shook her head. “No, but I had hoped you might.”

“I? Forget? That creature chased us half the length of Lichfield before the vicar’s wife caught it by the neck and declared us both to be little heathens. I had nightmares of feathers for a month.”

Even the duchess laughed. It was a delicate, measured laugh, but unmistakably pleased. Her Grace, the Duchess of Wycombe, had not laughed with Eleanor once in all this time.

“That must have been quite a sight,” the duchess said, directing her gaze entirely at Arthur.

Arthur offered a graceful bow from his seat. “If only it had not come at the cost of my dignity, Your Grace. That goose’s revenge was thorough and immediate.”

The Duke of Wycombe, seated at the head of the table, gave a quiet snort. “Dignity is too often surrendered in youth. One hopes it is later recovered with interest.”

“Just so, Your Grace,” Arthur replied, sounding completely unruffled. “Though I confess, I have occasionally invested my dignity in questionable ventures even in adulthood.”

The duchess laughed again.

Eleanor watched it all unfold with a kind of private astonishment.

The table was set with more finery than she had seen since her wedding supper: polished silver, the good porcelain, and even the rare Claret served, as though royalty were among them.

That Arthur should be so well received by the household’s formidable matriarch, when Eleanor herself had spent so much time and effort navigating her grace’s cool civility, struck her as strange. Puzzling, even.

But then again, Arthur had always possessed the peculiar gift of being exactly what one wished him to be. He was not insincere.

No, that would be too simple. But he was adaptable. He could speak to the duchess of classical sculpture and then make the scullery maid laugh five minutes later. He disarmed people. Eleanor had always envied that.

And perhaps, she thought as she glanced towards the opposite end of the table, he might even disarm Nathaniel.

Her husband sat upright in his chair, composed as ever, a dark figure cut in crisp lines and precise movements. He had spoken little, only when addressed, and even then with the clipped civility he reserved for guests who had not yet proven themselves.

Eleanor wished he would say something more. Not to her, necessarily, but to Arthur. She wanted them to like one another.

Arthur turned slightly towards Nathaniel, as though drawn by her thought.

“You know,” he said with a grin, “Eleanor once tried to teach me Latin by bribing me with blackberries. I believe I learned three words in exchange for a month of stolen fruit.”

“Four words,” Eleanor corrected, laughing. “And it was your idea to charge me a blackberry tax for every noun.”

“A clever system,” said the duchess approvingly.

“Indeed,” Nathaniel said, his voice mild but dry. “A pity our tutors lacked the same incentive structure.”

Arthur chuckled and raised his glass in salute. “A fair point. I suspect I might have stayed at Cambridge had Eleanor remained my tutor.”

The Duke of Wycombe did not look up from his plate. “Had you remained at Cambridge at all, you might have been more use to your country than as a tourist of foreign curiosities.”

Eleanor stilled for a breath, but Arthur did not falter.

“Your Grace, I assure you … I made every effort to collect stories of poor governance and badly run republics in hopes of returning better educated in what not to do.”

Even the duke allowed the smallest flicker of amusement in the tilt of his head.

Nathaniel, watching the exchange, gave nothing away.

Eleanor looked at her husband then, not coldly, but with quiet hope. Arthur had managed what she could not: he had made the duchess smile and the duke acknowledge wit with civility. If only he might soften Nathaniel, too.

She turned to Arthur again, smiling and eager to make this evening last as long as possible.

“Tell them about the old fortune-teller in Naples,” she pleaded. “The one who swore you were descended from kings.”

Arthur placed a hand on his heart. “I still believe her. After all, who else could command such an audience as I have tonight?”

The duchess laughed again, and even one of the footmen near the sideboard stifled a grin.

Eleanor laughed, too, but her eyes, drawn again to Nathaniel, searched his face not for a smile—oh no, she would not be so bold—but for a glimmer of warmth. Of interest. Of anything that might bridge the space between a guarded man and a table full of merriment.

But Nathaniel only inclined his head slightly and said, with perfect politeness, “Do tell us more about Italy, Mr Pembroke.”

***

And of course, Eleanor’s friend Arthur was more than happy to oblige.

And all the while, Nathaniel had not touched his wine. He sat at the far end of the table, his gaze fixed not on the guest of honour, but on the precise pattern his thumb traced along the carved rim of his water glass.

Arthur Pembroke spoke with a fluency that required no effort. He could charm without calculation, which somehow made the charm all the more disarming.

The man laughed easily, without vulgarity, and listened as deftly as he spoke. He addressed the table as a whole, not only Eleanor. He conversed with His Grace the Duke with an admirable mixture of respect and irreverence, a balance most men never dared attempt.

He won over Nathaniel’s mother with a story about the backward etiquette of a Sienese noblewoman and even elicited a bark of laughter from the footman when he mistook the claret for a Sicilian vintage.

He was, by all appearances, faultless.

And that, precisely, was what troubled Nathaniel.

There was nothing to mark in the man’s manner that could be called improper. No lingering glance at Eleanor. No excess of attention.

No self-conscious performance meant only for her benefit. He had come not as a suitor or a rival but as a guest, who was by all means polished, poised, and perfectly agreeable.

So why could Nathaniel not unclench his jaw?

He watched Eleanor from beneath his lashes. She was seated diagonally across from him, her posture elegant but relaxed, her face bright with the uncomplicated joy of familiarity. It was rare to see her so at ease. With him, she was never so free, never so … unguarded.

She laughed at something Arthur said, something about a Neapolitan gondolier who had mistaken him for a poet, and Nathaniel felt something cold uncurl in his chest.

He looked back to his glass.

This is foolishness, he told himself. Pettiness. You are a grown man, not a boy denied a dance.

And yet, he had seen how Eleanor’s eyes lit when she spoke Arthur’s name. Heard the quiet hope in her voice when she had said You’ll like him, I think.

It was not jealousy that needled him, not in the schoolboy sense. It was something older. Deeper. The knowledge that there were parts of Eleanor he had not yet reached. That perhaps another had reached them first.

He had no proof, of course. Only the shadow of something like a figure glimpsed through fog. Suggestive, but uncertain. And that uncertainty was intolerable.

He forced himself to return to the present moment and listen as Arthur recounted some absurd encounter with a Sicilian cardinal who insisted Englishmen were born without the capacity for art.

Nathaniel’s mouth curved, just barely. “He was not far wrong,” he murmured, drawing a laugh from his mother.

Arthur inclined his head. “You may rest easy, Your Grace. I defended our national character with all the wit I could muster. Though I admit, my Italian was rather poor by the time I reached Palermo. The dialect there is war in itself.”

More laughter. Even Nathaniel’s father offered a murmur of assent.

It was ridiculous, Nathaniel thought, to resent him. Arthur had done nothing to provoke such sentiment. He was, in fact, doing everything right. He made Eleanor smile. He made her mother-in-law laugh. He eased the tension of a house too often stiff with restraint.

Still, Nathaniel could not let it go.

Because he did not know the measure of Arthur Pembroke. Because Eleanor had stories of him, but Nathaniel had none. Because there was history between them, which was both untouchable and unchangeable, and Nathaniel had no part in it.

Because, in truth, he did not yet know how to reach his wife, and this man had walked in and spoken to her in a language she understood at once.

He studied Arthur again, careful not to let the glance linger. The man’s features were not remarkable. Well-formed, perhaps, but not arresting. His manner was open, but not flamboyant. There was nothing threatening in him. Nothing to fear.

And yet, Nathaniel feared something all the same. Not Arthur himself. But the possibility, however remote, absurd, and persistent it might have seemed now, that Eleanor might, one day, prefer him.

He took up his wine then, drank it in one long, measured sip, and said aloud, “Mr Pembroke, tell us … did you ever reach Constantinople, or were you diverted by yet another goose?”

That drew a fresh round of laughter. Even Eleanor looked at him in pleased surprise.

Arthur smiled broadly. “A fair jest, Your Grace. But no, no geese. Only a sea storm and a mutiny. I shall tell you all.”

And as Arthur launched into another tale, Nathaniel folded his hands, leaned back, and listened.

Sometime later, as the servants withdrew the final dishes and the chairs scraped back from the long table, Nathaniel’s father stood with mechanical precision and placed his napkin beside his untouched dessert plate.

“That will be all for me,” he said, not quite to anyone, and bowed slightly towards the room before leaving them with the grace of a general retiring from campaign. His footsteps echoed crisply as he departed.

Nathaniel watched him go with a flicker of amusement. I thought he'd expire at the soup course.

It was no small feat for the duke to tolerate company beyond political usefulness, and it was nothing short of miraculous that he had endured a full meal of stories and laughter without so much as a scowl.

Either the years had softened him, which was highly unlikely, or Mr Pembroke had achieved something that Nathaniel himself never had: his father’s indulgence.

His mother, however, remained. And in spirits that could only be described as uncharacteristically animated.

She actually laughed as she rose from the table, dabbing her mouth with her napkin. “Oh, Mr Pembroke, you must recount that tale again for Lady Statham next week. She adores anything to do with parrots and disastrous engagements.”

Nathaniel arched a brow. His mother, in such humour? It was almost uncanny. But then, he had seen her take a second glass of wine, which was an indulgence rare enough to explain the warmth in her voice and the softness in her usually imperious smile.

Still, it unsettled him.

He turned towards Eleanor, who had just stood and offered his arm with the ease of long practice. “Shall we?”

Her smile bloomed easily, and she placed her gloved hand on his sleeve. “We shall.”

There was something in her expression. A lightness, perhaps, or contentment, and that struck him. She was pleased. Truly pleased. And somehow that pleased him, though it twisted, too, faintly, somewhere beneath the surface.

They walked together towards the drawing room, the quiet press of her hand on his arm both familiar and, strangely, not. Eleanor rarely leaned into him. Rarer still did she smile at him in this manner, so openly, as though she trusted him with the feeling.

Behind them, voices murmured. A low, lingering exchange.

Nathaniel glanced subtly over his shoulder. Arthur and the duchess had not followed. They remained by the table, speaking in hushed tones. His mother’s head was inclined with interest, and she gave a small, knowing nod before brushing her hand lightly against Arthur’s sleeve.

Nathaniel frowned.

A continuation of one of his stories, no doubt. Arthur was adept at making women feel singular, listened to, and understood. His mother had fallen under the spell like all the rest.

And yet, Nathaniel could not shake the image: her smile, and Arthur’s slight bow in reply. It was too … something.

They joined the others in the drawing room moments later, and whatever was said remained cloaked in the silence between them.