Trying to act as if she didn’t particularly care, she asked, “Where was Ashbourn off to?”
“Who knows. Off to rub his miserly hands together while oppressing the poor, I imagine.”
Tea sloshed over the rim of the delicate porcelain cup as Bess put it down with too much force. “That’s quite enough, Lucy.”
Lucy startled at the sharpness of Bess’s tone. “Bess! What? It was only a joke!”
“I’m sorry,” Bess said, taking a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have snapped. But truly, you do your brother and yourself no good by hanging onto these prejudices against him.”
And I can’t bear to hear you speak about him like that. As though he’s someone cold and grasping and uncaring. When in fact, he is just the opposite.
“Maybe I’m not being fair to Ashbourn,” Lucy admitted, though her teacup rattled in its saucer as she set it down. “Even if he’s been kind to me, in his way, it’s hard to forget how he treated us. But at least I’m trying to do what he wants. What you all want. I don’t know how much more I could be doing.”
Bess closed her eyes briefly. “I know.”
“No, you don’t know.” Lucy sat up, her blue eyes burning. “I am at home to every dull, insipid, smirking visitor. I go to every stupid ball and endless soirée anyone asks me to. I am polite and nice and proper and everything I must be to reflect well on Mama, and Gemma, and, and Father, and you, and Ashbourn! And it’s all so ridiculous and pointless and exhausting.”
“Oh, Lucy.” Bess reached across the tea table and took her friend’s hand. She was glad they were in the smallest, least formal of the sitting rooms at Ashbourn House, and not somewhere more public. There weren’t even any servants about. “My sweet girl. Do you truly hate it so much? I thought you were beginning to enjoy London now that we have seen so much more of it than the insides of ballrooms.”
“Some of the lectures have been interesting,” Lucy allowed. “But it’s not as if one can bring them up over supper after a Scotch reel. Anytime I’ve tried, I can see the gentleman’s eyes glazing over with boredom until I’m genuinely worried he’ll slip into a coma and drown in his soup.”
Bess suppressed a smile, not wishing Lucy to suppose she wasn’t taking the conversation seriously. “They can’t all be so uninteresting.”
“Maybe not, but I’ve yet to encounter one who was interested in hearing a woman talk about anything more complex than the weather.”
It was hard not to think of the way Nathaniel had listened when Bess spoke, in their little hideaway under the eaves. As if every word that fell from her lips was precious to him. As if he couldn’t wait to hear what she would say next.
Swallowing a knot of longing that felt horribly similar to grief, Bess cleared her throat. “The Season won’t last forever, it’s already June. We always intended to go home at the beginning of July. Can you not try to make the best of the weeks that are left?”
“Yes. Of course.” Lucy attempted a smile. “I had a letter from Gemma yesterday. She and Hal are so happy I’m here.”
“They want the best for you.”
“Yes. I saw the Duke of Thornecliff the other day,” Lucy said, jumping sideways to a new topic in a way that startled Bess.
“What? That absolute rotter, what did he say to you? What did he do? Where was I?”
“You were right next to me, at that mathematical demonstration and lecture, given by the Hungarian fellow with the receding hairline. Remember?”
Bess remembered doing her absolute utmost to follow the complicated rigmarole about a new kind of geometry and what it meant about the nature of all knowledge.
She’d been quite struck by the idea that someone could discover an entirely new field of mathematics that challenged what had been accepted as immutable fact for more than a millennium.
If that was possible, what other accepted facts and structures might be challenged now, and in the years ahead?
Somehow, Bess could almost imagine the conversation she might have with Nathaniel about it, if she were still meeting him at The Nemesis. In that big, canopied bed, sharing a pillow and the quiet, intimate space between them that came after their passions had been momentarily sated.
But she hadn’t seen Nathaniel in three days, because it was the wisest course and the only way to protect her foolish heart, and Lucy was still talking.
“Thornecliff didn’t do anything. I don’t think he even saw me there.” Lucy took a crumpet from the tea tray but didn’t butter it or take a bite, just stared down at it in her hand. Her fingers fiddled with the crispy edges, flaking crumbs off onto her plate. “Why is a man like that interested in the new mathematics?”
“He probably wandered into the Mathematical Society by mistake.”
Lucy left off shredding her crumpet and stood up from the table in a burst of energy. She paced restlessly over to the window and stared down into the back garden of Ashbourn House. “I wanted to march right up to him and ask him. Of course, I didn’t. I know better than to make a scene. You should be proud of me, Bess, I have finally learned a bit of wisdom.”
“I am proud of you, Lucy.” Bess watched her, concerned. “I always was.”
“I didn’t even kick up a fuss when Lord Finch trod on my dress hem at the ball last night, and ripped it enough to see a bit of my chemise. Not even when he leered and made a remark about how much I was starting to resemble my mother in her heyday.”
