Lying there, in her tumble of goose-down-stuffed pillows staring up at the lilac silk damask draperies festooned around the four posts of the bed, she’d listened to the grandfather clock ticking ponderously in the hallway.
Bess felt her eyes closing and did her best to relax into the mattress while forcefully shoving aside any stray memories of that carriage moment so that she might not dream about it yet again, and wake yet again, sweaty and tangled in the sheets with her night rail up around her thighs.
She’d almost managed it when a heavy tread upon the staircase shocked her fully awake.
Heart pounding, she had debated for all of three seconds before leaping from the bed and padding on bare feet across the soft rug that covered her floor. At the door to her bedroom, she’d held her breath and cracked it open the merest sliver—just enough to see a dark shape loom out of the shadows at the top of the stairs.
Bess shrank back against the wall, every hair on her body standing on end, but curiosity propelled her forward once more. She put her eye to the crack of the door and peered out.
It was the duke. Ashbourn made his solitary way down the hall, massive shoulders hunched and head hanging heavy.
He wore much simpler clothes than usual—plain black trousers tucked into scuffed leather boots, and a dark greatcoat that made him look even bigger than he already did. He walked slowly, with a hitch in his step like a lamed stallion, and almost directly opposite her rooms, he faltered.
Only for a moment. He caught himself against the opposite wall with one large hand and hung there for the space of a heartbeat in silence.
His massive chest heaved once, drawing in a labored breath. Bess almost pushed open her door and went out to see what was the matter.
But then he straightened and walked on, and she realized she was in her nightdress, and he was a duke and didn’t need medical care from some random woman staying in his house. No doubt his personal physician had already been called.
Bess went back to bed and managed to fall asleep once more, and if she dreamed, she didn’t remember it.
Dr. Perry must have attended him, because the next morning she rose early enough to see Ashbourn departing through the front door of the townhouse as she descended the stairs, and he was walking normally. She never did hear where he’d been or what he’d been doing or how he got injured.
But the image of him leaning against the wall, head down and brown hair tousled messily, stayed with her.
He had seemed so alone, was the thing she kept thinking about. As he’d said he preferred—thought she could not fathom it.
Bess wasn’t alone. She had friends and a community she loved and cared for, and who loved and cared for her in return. But she recognized the aloneness in Ashbourn in that moment because she had felt it herself after her family and Davy were taken by the fever. When she’d gone to live on her aunt’s farm, and given up her dreams of a different sort of life.
And perhaps the memory of that inclined her to soften toward Ashbourn, just a bit.
Until now.
A delivery had arrived from Mrs. Lister’s shop, just as Ashbourn had decreed, one week to the minute from that day in her shop. Stacks of white boxes littered Lucy’s bedchamber, containing gown after gown in pale, pastel hues, carefully folded and wrapped in tissue paper.
“What would we call this color?” Lucy asked, holding up a carriage dress of a purple hue so light, Bess couldn’t imagine wearing it anywhere near a horse or carriage without getting a stain upon it that would take days of soaking in a strong vinegar solution to remove.
“It reminds me of the way my toes looked that time Beeswax trod on my foot and I limped for a week, Bess. Do you remember?”
“We are in dire straits when the thought of being stepped on by a draught horse brings a touch of wistful nostalgia to your tone,” Bess commented drily. “And Mrs. Lister called the shade ‘lavender,’ though it’s nothing like what an actual lavender plant looks like.”
“Of course not,” Lucy sighed. “That would be too much like a real color. All these gowns are more like suggestions of colors. I’m starving, is it nearly time for tea?”
“You haven’t gone through all the packages yet,” Bess pointed out. “Look, there’s another pile just here.”
“What are those?” Lucy wondered. “Did we order more than I tried on at the fitting on Wednesday?”
“Open them and see,” Bess suggested, curious.
Lucy tore into the boxes, one after another, and pulled out half a dozen gowns in vibrant, bold hues that made her gasp in delight. “Are these for me?”
“I don’t think they can be,” Bess said apologetically. “The duke was quite firm on the topic of what colors are appropriate for the wardrobe of a debutante. These must have been sent here by mistake.”
“No,” Lucy said, holding one of the boxes and turning it so that the address showed where it was written on the outside. “See? Bess—it’s addressed to you.”
Disbelief and bewilderment knocked Bess back a step. “That’s impossible.”
“Look at this,” Lucy said, shaking out a walking dress with a wine-red bodice and striped skirts. A charming straw bonnet trimmed with a satin bow in the same burgundy color tumbled to the floor.
