Angelique snorted. “We are a delightful, cozy, genteel, exclusive boardinghouse by the docks. I’m comfortable that Mrs. Cuthbert is a stick-in-the-mud, but she’sourstick while she’s staying with us, and we will do our best to cherish her while she’s here. And I’m fairly confident she, at least, will never surprise us.”
“I wasn’t certain what to wear for the unveiling of a statue.” Alexandra smoothed the skirts of her butter-gold silk day dress.
Magnus regarded her in silence so eloquent he might as well have been a speech before the House of Lords.
“You look like the very opposite of something made of stone,” he said finally. Quietly.
Last night, after he’d stunned her with a compliment, they hadn’t exchanged another word during their waltz. Nor had they danced again.The ride back to the boardinghouse had been quiet and civil.
But every polite word they’d exchanged after that seemed to echo with nuance. It was now clear that a new tension was gradually building alongside the old rancor. Like the warmth of his hand hovering lightly at her waist, like the feel of his fingers delicately folded around hers, she called up the words again and again for the pleasure of stealing her own breath. For the mildly delicious torment of wondering what those words might mean to her or to him, if anything.
For another hour they had circulated through guests, so that as many people as possible who wished to say a few words to Magnus would have an opportunity to do it. He was, as usual, grave, gracious, and succinct, sometimes a bit brisk; alongside him, Alexandra did her best to sparkle and charm and make the people to whom they were introduced feel, momentarily, like the center of their universe. Together, they enchanted. At least this was the surprised consensus murmured among guests.
With people he’d long known and liked, Magnus’s demeanor eased and his dry wit would flash, and she’d found it as exhilarating to witness as a shooting star.
Once she’d found herself reflexively, gently touching his elbow when he was a littletoobrisk with someone, a bit like an orchestra conductor telling the violins to ease back on the volume. He’d softened his tone immediately.It was as though they’d done this a thousand times before.
If another man had said to herButmostly it reminds me of how lucky I am to survive the war long enough to dance with you while you’re wearing that pink dress, she would have ascribed it to flirting. But he wasn’t a flirt. He’d said it with the same definitive gravity with which he’d told her she was a kind person at that house party five years ago. In the same tone with which he’d told her he’d fought that war so that Mr. Perriman could natter on about pigeons, and so that he could stand in the shrubbery, helping to untangle her ribbon. He was not a frivolous person.
His silence after he’d said that during the waltz merely felt like a punctuation mark.
To her, the words seemed to reverberate in the room even now.
“Then again, you’ll doubtless look a bit blurry to Mrs. Scofield,” he said somewhat dryly.
Twenty minutes later they stood in his former housekeeper’s comfortable rooms in a respectable, working-class neighborhood a few minutes’ carriage ride from the park. Mr. Lawler had sent word to Mrs. Scofield ahead of time that Magnus would be paying her a visit.
“This is your wife, Magnus?” Mrs. Scofield squinted up at her when they were introduced. “Me eyes are not the same as they once was but you looks to be a pretty one.” She sounded skeptical.
“Oh, you guessed correctly, Mrs. Scofield. I am pretty.” Alexandra said it mischievously.
The corner of Magnus’s mouth twitched.
Mrs. Scofield’s face was mapped with fine wrinkles and her soft, round body spilled over the seat of her rocking chair. Her pewter-gray hair was scraped up into a tight knot on the top of her capless head. Her brown wool dress and her visible furniture—a settee, a table and chairs, a rocking chair, in which she currently sat—she was unable to stand for very long now, due to rheumatism—were serviceable and clean.
“Hmmph. You nivver thought a pretty girl would even look at ye, isn’t that so, Magnus? D’yer remember what Molly use ter do when she saw ye?”
Alexandra wondered immediately who Molly was.
But Magnus appeared not to be listening. He turned abruptly and paced to the window, apparently inspecting its frame. “Are you comfortable, Mrs. Scofield? Are the flues kept clean? Does the housekeeper visit regularly?”
Perhaps her hearing wasn’t what it was, either, because she didn’t reply to Magnus’s questions. “Must be the money,” Mrs. Scofield decided. “’e’s got money now, and the blokes with the money always get the pretty wives, am I right, Mrs. Brightwall, no matter what them blokes look like?” She cackled.
This was when Alexandra went warily still.
She hadn’t known what to expect—one ofthose cuddly, heart-of-gold, salt-of-the-earth family retainers? Perhaps Mrs. Scofield and Magnus shared a sort of jesting relationship?
“Indeed, it’s better when a bloke has money than when he doesn’t,” Alexandra agreed somberly, somewhat wickedly.
Magnus’s back was to her, but she could almost feel sardonic amusement raying from him.
“Oh, but ye oughter ’ave seen ’im in those days, Mrs. Brightwall.” Mrs. Scofield shook her head. “Nivver would have guessed such a homely, skinny baby would grow into such a great lout, all hands and feet. We found ’im girning in a potato sack next to a delivery of turnips. ’e was lucky we kept ’im and didna throw ’im to the workhouse or for the rats to nibble on. Ha ha ha! ’e wouldna be standin’ ’ere today.”
Alexandra tensed. Her heart began to race, as though someone had come at her with fists.
“All of England is lucky you brought him in,” Alexandra managed evenly, carefully. “Which means you are lucky you brought him in.”
“Oh, I suppose, certainly.” Mrs. Scofield was airily dismissive. “We didna feel that way at the time, ye see. Such a burden ’e was at first! Ye’d nivver think ’e’d marry anyone. What was the name of the lady’s maid who would cross herself when she saw ye in the ’all, Magnus? You would have thought she was aprincess, way ’e looked at her. She was no better than she should be, that girl. Anddidshe laugh at him! Said ’e looked like a—what was that word, Magnus? Fancy word.”
