“Very well,” she agreed. “Five minutes.”
They resumed walking. The square breathed around them, patient and blind, like a creature that trusted its keeper. Gwen learned the corners by air and the turns by sound. She found that her shoulders had sunk an inch without her permission. She let them stay there.
Eventually, the Duke spoke. “Here is the bench.”
Gwen reached out and found the cold stone with the tips of her gloved fingers. She sat and felt the bench take her weight with the charity of old things.
The Duke did not sit beside her. He sat a little far, at the angle a careful man would choose when he wished not to crowd.
“If you wish to see me,” he urged, “remove the cloth.”
“I know where you are,” she replied. “I do not need my eyes.”
Silence stretched, but it was not tense. It was delicate. She lifted her hands to the knot, but her fingers hovered.
Not yet, she decided silently, surprising herself yet again.Let me keep the world small a little longer.
CHAPTER 8
Victor heard the tiny catch in her breath before she spoke. The silk still covered her eyes, yet he could feel the way tension held her shoulders as soldiers held a line. She sat very straight on the stone bench, her hands folded as if they might keep her doubts properly arranged.
“You are listening rather than looking,” he observed in a tone meant for quiet rooms. “That is an improvement upon most company.”
“I prefer not to be a spectacle,” she answered. “Spectacles invite comments.”
“Let us test whether conversation invites calm.” He stood up and offered his arm, though she could not see it.
He grabbed her hand and tucked it in the crook of his elbow. She didn’t argue or revolt.
Good.
“Walk with me again, Lady Gwendoline. Tell me, do you like figs preserved with lemon, or pears baked with cloves?”
“Neither,” she replied at once, then softened it. “That is, I prefer cherries. The dark ones that stain the tongue.”
“Noted.” He moved at a pace that kept the gravel’s music even beneath their feet. “Have you ever learned to ride?”
He moved slowly, not trusting himself to draw closer. If he startled her, he might lose the fragile trust she had granted him, and that mattered far more than the game he had intended.
“Yes,” she said, surprised into candor. “My father taught me before he died. A bay mare who liked no one but me. Bramble. She pretended to be slow, but was not.”
“Good taste on both sides,” he praised. “I like creatures that refuse to advertise their speed.” He turned them down the inner path to avoid the lamplight at the railings. “Which poets do you count honest? I will grant Petrarch his melancholy perfection, though I will allow Dante his architecture.”
“Architecture is a fair word for Dante,” she said, and he could sense a thin smile forming on her lips. “I like Gray when he minds his melancholy and does not force it on me. I like Shakespeare when actors leave him alone. I despise any verse that tries to bully me.”
“Then you and I read in the same spirit.” He felt her spine relax by a degree. “There is a bridge near my northern farm where the wind writes a kind of poem among the stones. You would approve. It says very little, and says it perfectly.”
“You speak as if even the wind is yours,” she muttered.
“I borrow it,” he replied. “A duke owns less than most suppose. Air will not be managed.”
The tremor in her breath faded.
Victor kept the questions coming in a gentle cadence, as a man throws bread to swans, not for need but to occupy their nervous beauty. He asked about music, and she confessed a liking for the viol when it was played in a small room and not in public triumph.
He asked about the weather, and she admitted that storms over fields gave her comfort, since the world looked honest when rain made it plain. He asked about books, and she gave him a list that would have gratified a librarian.
When he asked about dances, she laughed and said that waltzes suited women who wished to be spun like toys, and that she preferred a country dance where she was permitted to think while she moved.
