“Do try,” Maria murmured, “to live with mine as well.”
He considered that as if it were a rule he might enjoy keeping.
On the last strokes, good manners failed to prevent mischief. Charity tried to knock Prudence’s ball advantageously and accidentally helped Temperance instead. Alethea, drunk on her earlier triumph, gambled and lost and apologized. At last, it was Maria’s game to finish. She set herself. The lawn had gone quiet. Her hands were right. She drew the mallet back.
“Maria,” Stephen said softly, from just behind her shoulder.
“Yes?”
“You are never shy with me,” he murmured, low enough for her alone. “So I confess I do not understand what you had trouble with before.”
Heat rose under her skin, and a flicker of annoyance that he would choose this moment to speak into her ear. It sharpened her.
“I had trouble with the world,” she whispered back, eyes on the ball. “Not with you.”
“Very good,” he said, more gently than teasing now. “Then finish it.”
She struck. The green ball took the exact line it ought to have taken all along and slipped through the final hoop with the modest assurance of a thing done correctly without applause.
Prudence tried to act disapproving but ended up smiling. Temperance said, “Yes,” in a calm, approving voice.
Stephen bowed to his wife as if she had just said something brilliant in a room that needed it. “Duchess.”
“Your Grace,” she returned, trying for composure and failing by looking happy.
“We are satisfied,” Prudence announced. “We have tested the morning and found it strong.”
“You make us sound like a new bridge,” Stephen said, amused.
“A bridge bears weight,” Temperance replied respectfully. “So does a marriage.”
He inclined his head. “Noted.”
But Maria was left blushing wildly. Charity pressed Maria’s arm. “We must leave His Grace to his papers or he will begin to miss them.”
“I begin to miss nothing,” Stephen said. “But I will not keep you from your plans.”
Alethea gathered her book, then set it down again on the bench and looked bewildered at herself. “I am not ready to stop beingpleased for you,” she told Maria, apologizing for her own feeling as if it were a social lapse.
“Then do not stop,” Maria said quietly.
They walked back toward the house together, the five women and the duke. Conversation went light again—ribbons, the scandal of the grocer’s new prices, whether it was vulgar or wise to plant a kitchen garden at a ducal seat, and if so, who would inspect the peas.
At the door, Prudence turned to Stephen with the respect of a woman who is not yet intimate and intends to keep her standards even when she is. “Your Grace, thank you for the quarter hour that became two.”
“It was amiably spent,” he said.
The ladies made their farewell, brief, well-judged, the better for having seen and done exactly what they came for. As they moved along the corridor, Charity could not help it; she whispered, “Did you see…”
“Hush,” Prudence said, but she was smiling. “We saw.”
Temperance, who never giggled, allowed a very small one to escape and then looked around as if to retrieve it and put it away again. “He stares,” she admitted, almost content.
“And she answers,” Alethea breathed, practically walking into a pedestal because she was watching the pair behind them. “Oh, she answers without thinking.”
Maria overheard them as they left, but pretended not to. It would be far too dangerous to acknowledge that right now.
When they had finally left, Stephen and Maria stood for a moment in the emptied drawing room.