He looked delighted by that. “Told you. Told Lady Caldwell, didn’t I? Ashford’s cook does something with the sauce. Some French business.”
“It’s shallots,” Lady Caldwell explained from Cecily’s other side with crisp authority, as if she had been waiting to contribute this information and was relieved to finally have the opportunity.“Lady Ashford brought the recipe from Paris. She mentions it every year.”
“Doesshe mention it every year?” Lord Reeves asked, surprised.
“Every year,” Lady Caldwell confirmed.
“I had no idea.”
“You are seated at this table every year,” Lady Caldwell reminded him pleasantly, “and every year, you say the pheasant is remarkable, and every year Lady Ashford mentions the French recipe.”
“Remarkable,” Lord Reeves said.
“Yes.” Lady Caldwell nodded. “That’s what you say.”
Cecily looked across the table and found Mr. Fenwick looking back at her with the serene expression of a man who had been attending this dinner for several years and had made his peace with all of it. She felt a sudden, genuine warmth toward him.
The soup course was cleared. The lamb arrived.
At the far end of the table, Lady Ashford was doing what she had been doing all evening—presiding, managing, distributing her attention with the precision of a woman who considered a dinner table her primary instrument.
She had a gift for it, Cecily could see that. Every conversation within her orbit had been started or redirected or quietly concluded at exactly the moment she chose, with exactly the effect she intended.
It was impressive, in the way that a very fine clock was impressive—the mechanism entirely visible, the result entirely predictable.
“I must say,” Lady Ashford said, during a lull she had almost certainly engineered, just after the lamb was served, “what a remarkable Season this has been. One hardly knows what to open the papers to anymore.” She smiled around the table with the satisfied air of someone lighting a fuse.
Cecily set down her fork.
“One opens them to the usual things,” Lord Ashford chimed in mildly. “Politics. Horses.”
“And announcements,” Lady Ashford added, as though he hadn’t spoken. Her eyes moved to Cecily with the bright attention of arrival. “Though some announcements do take one rather by surprise.”
“Indeed,” Lady Caldwell agreed, from Cecily’s left
Cecily reached for her wine.
“More romantic, I’d say,” Mr. Fenwick offered, with the good-natured obliviousness of a man who enjoyed dinner parties and had never once considered that they might be used as blunt instruments.
“Romantic,” Lady Ashford repeated, in a tone that wrapped the word in something else entirely. She gave Cecily a pointed look. “Though I imagine the Duchess of Blackmoor found it rather more fortunate than romantic. A fortunate morning all round, one might say, despite its beginnings.” A slight pause, precisely calibrated. “By the sea.”
Cecily set down her wineglass.
She was aware, in the two seconds that followed, of several things happening simultaneously. The table going quiet. Faces turning toward her—some sympathetic, some simply curious, one or two with the avid attention of people who enjoyed a scene and were hoping for one. The careful neutrality of Lady Caldwell beside her. The excessive warmth of the room, the candles doing their work with aggressive thoroughness.
And William.
She did not look at him. She was aware of him the way she had become aware of him in every room. She had learned, over the past weeks, that looking at him directly in public cost her composure in ways she had not budgeted for. But she could not afford to lose her composure here, not in this room, not in front of these people, not with Lady Ashford watching her with those bright, expectant eyes.
She had an answer ready. She had one ready since they had arrived, because she was not naive, and she had met Lady Ashford in the first ten minutes and had understood what the evening was likely to hold. The answer was composed and measured, and would close the subject cleanly.
She drew a deep breath–
“Lady Ashford.”
William.
He wasn’t loud. His voice was entirely level. The whole table turned toward him.
