He signed them with the methodical, unhurried efficiency that had become, over six years of ducal administration, his primary defense against all manner of things he preferred not to examine.
Correspondence was legible. Drainage schemes were legible. Agricultural committee approvals were legible. The note she had slipped into the Herschel book in his bottom drawer was legible, in the same way that everything she did was legible, in the infuriating sense that her meaning was always clear and always, somehow, exactly the meaning he had the least useful response to.
He folded his last document, sealed it, and sat in the reading room long enough to have another measure of something he did not taste, while a man three chairs down conducted a discussion about the upcoming parliamentary session that Anthony followed with approximately a third of his attention. He was grateful for the mindless chatter as it provided a momentary distraction.
Lewis’s question about Ashby had not been about Ashby.
He had known this the moment Lewis had said it, with the same direct understanding he applied to estate accounts when the figures did not match the expenditure: the problem was elsewhere, and the number on the page was a symptom.
Lewis had been watching him.
He had been watching him for some time, with the particular, careful attention of a man who had noticed something he could not name and was circling the perimeter of it, waiting for the outline to clarify.
Anthony was not afraid of Lewis’s suspicion. He was not afraid of Lewis, generally, which was one of the useful qualities of the friendship; they had found each other on ground that was level in the specific sense of two men who had nothing to prove to each other, and who had maintained that ground through several years of various strains. He was not afraid of the conversation Lewis was building toward.
He was afraid that his answers to that conversation would require him to acknowledge his feelings for…
He did not finish the thought.
He went to his house instead and opened the correspondence that had accumulated since that morning. Anthony worked through it with the methodical, sustained efficiency that had made the Wynford estate what it had become in six years.
At the bottom of the correspondence pile was a note. It was from Lewis, sent that morning, before White’s. He unfolded it.
I am looking at Ashby seriously for Caroline. Would value your thoughts in full before I proceed. — L.
Chapter Nineteen
“You have leaves on your pelisse,” Esther said.
Caroline looked down. A small constellation of elm buds had attached themselves to her left shoulder during the walk, presumably at the moment she had stood too close to the branches by the water’s edge without noticing. She brushed them away with rather more attention than they warranted.
They were in the morning room at Grayston House, having returned from the park. Lady Hayward had retired to her room on the stated grounds of correspondence, which Caroline interpreted as her aunt having assessed the general state of the morning and decided that privacy was the appropriate gift. Lady Hayward had uncanny instincts for when a room required fewer people.
Esther settled on the sofa with the easy, unhurried comfort of a woman in her own house, and Caroline sat across from her, and neither of them spoke for a moment.
“You should know,” Esther said, “that Lewis has invited Ashby to the Talton dinner.”
“I know,” Caroline said. “He mentioned it yesterday.” She paused. “Twice.” She looked at her sister-in-law.
Esther was quiet for a moment in the way she was quiet when she was deciding how much of her husband she could usefully translate for his sister’s benefit. It was a balance she navigated with considerable care, and Caroline respected that she tried.
“He has been more unsettled lately,” Esther said at last. “He has not said what about, specifically, but it has made him…moreurgent, I think, about finding you settled.”
“As though I am a loose corner that needs pinning,” Caroline said.
“Not in that spirit,” Esther said quietly.
Then, inwhatspirit? Caroline was quiet. Outside the morning room window, the garden was damp and still, the rose beds covered against the last of the cold, the paths swept but empty.
“He married you,” Caroline said. “He found you. That was…” She stopped. “He makes it sound as though love is a matter of reliable selection. The right estate, the right temperament, and the right quarterly income are paramount.”
“He did not select me particularly rationally,” Esther said, with the slight, quiet smile she reserved for the parts of her husband that he would have declined to recognize in public. “It was not a smooth process.”
“No, I suppose not,” Caroline said.
“It never is.” Esther looked out of the window. “The smooth ones are the ones where no one is sufficiently invested to create friction.” She paused. “I do not say that to unsettle you. I say it because I think you know the difference, and you are frightened of what you know. And, I think that the matter is not, in fact, as resolved as you have been trying to make it appear.”
The morning room was very quiet.