Penelope was quiet for a moment. “And you believe that is worth the same consideration as a ledger.”
“I believe it is worth considerably more,” he said, without heat but with conviction. “A ledger tells you what a man has. Art tells you what he is. And if the families who set the tone for society cared even a fraction as much about what a person feels as about what they own, I rather think the cruelties of class would be a good deal less entrenched than they are.”
The quartet began. Penelope let the music settle over her for a moment before she said, quietly enough not to disturb the performance, “That is a rather radical position for a viscount to hold.”
Matthias smiled, keeping his own voice low. “Perhaps. My mother always said I was born asking the wrong questions.”
“Or the right ones,” Penelope said, before she could think better of it.
He looked at her then – a long, considering look – and she felt the familiar discomfort of not quite knowing what to do with someone's undivided admiration. It was not unpleasant. It was simply not a sensation she had allowed herself for a very long time.
She looked away first, smoothing an imaginary crease from her gloves.
“Can I ask you something personal?” Matthias said, after a respectable interval.
“You may try.”
He smiled. “What was the thing you loved most, as a child? Not what you were good at. What you loved.”
She blinked. She had not expected that. “That is an odd question.”
“I find the odd questions tell me the most about a person.”
Penelope thought for a moment, trying to recall moments in childhood when she had felt she adored something besides her brother or her parents, before they passed. And then – she was not entirely sure why, whether it was the music or the afternoonlight or simply the disarming straightforwardness of him – she found herself answering honestly.
“A dog,” she said. “I found a stray puppy once, when I was sixteen. I know that it hardly counts as a time during my childhood but I think that experience was the most childish I’d felt in a while. It was a small, ridiculous creature – its ears larger than its body. I believe it was quite convinced it had the voice of something much larger than it actually was.” She felt herself smile. “I was determined to keep it. I did not ask Lionel, because I was quite certain he would say no, so I hid it in my room instead. Under the bed, mostly, during the day. At night, it would whine.”
“How long before he found out?”
“Four days. He became convinced the house was haunted. He set about interviewing the servants with absolute seriousness – and they believed he had taken leave of his senses. He eventually cornered me about it, because apparently I had been eating twice as much at dinner and feeding the rest to something beneath the table.”
Matthias laughed openly. “What happened to the dog?”
“Given away. To a farmer's family outside town, which I was assured was a very good outcome.” She paused. “I never forgot it, though. I do not know why. It was only a puppy and I only had it for four days. But I can still remember the way it smelled – like rain and warm bread – and the way it would look up at me as though I had personally arranged the stars.”
She stopped, slightly self-conscious that she had revealed so much of herself and her past so easily.
Matthias was watching her with a softness she did not know what to do with.
“I can quite imagine,” he said with a grin, “That you were a lovely handful as a child.”
Penelope did not know how to respond to that. The words were kind. She knew they were kind. But they sat oddly in her chest, like something that did not belong to her, and she could not manage anything more than a slightly stilted smile before she turned her attention back to the music.
She was relieved when the break finally arrived.
Penelope excused herself from Matthias's company with a murmured statement about needing some water and moved toward the perimeter of the room, grateful for the small moment of solitude. She helped herself to a glass from the table near the windows and stood looking out at the gardens, where the late afternoon sun had turned everything a dusty, hazy gold.
It was only when she turned back that she saw them.
Cecil and Jane standing together.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Cecil was standing near the far side of the room, speaking with Jane, the two of them close in a way she never thought she’d see again.
Jane was smiling – the careful, polite smile she offered most people, though it was softer around the edges. She looked at ease, if not a tad cautious, as she said something to Cecil.
The duke’s posture showed no signs of discomfort. If anything, he looked too casually poised, one of his hands placed easily in the pocket of his coat as she said something to Jane with that charming grin of his.
