“He looked at you,” Alethea said, “when you laughed. Just now. I saw it from across the room.”
“We were talking,” Temperance said again.
“I know,” Alethea said. “That is rather what I mean.”
Temperance opened her mouth to say something that would close the subject, and found, unusually, that she did not have anything ready. She closed it again. She looked at the dark garden beyond the glass, at the small separate lights that did not quite reach each other along the path, and she thought that Charity was right and Alethea was right and they had both been right for longer than she had been prepared to admit.
She was not going to admit it tonight. Tonight she was going to go back into the masquerade and be pleasant to the remaining suitors and dance if asked and come home at a reasonable hour and be sensible.
But being sensible about him was a problem. She was becoming, she thought, slightly less good at it than she used to be, which was either a problem or something else entirely, and she did not yet know which.
She turned back to the room.
“Shall we?” she said, to Alethea, in her ordinary voice.
“Of course,” Alethea said, and took her arm, and they went back into the warm bright noise of the evening, and Temperance did not look back.
She was fairly certain that he watched her go.
CHAPTER 17
The morning was cold and clear, and perfect for horse riding.
Harper had been riding since Joseph was old enough to sit on a horse, which had been earlier than most people considered advisable. It was one of the few things they did together without any of the usual scaffolding of instruction and expectation, and Harper valued it for that reason.
Joseph was good on a horse and they had been out for perhaps forty minutes, moving through the quieter paths of the park at an easy pace, before Joseph spoke.
“Miss Hosmer taught me something yesterday,” he said.
Harper glanced at him.
“What did she teach you?”
“How to whistle properly, with two fingers.” Joseph demonstrated, producing a sound that was considerably louder than the setting strictly required. “She says it is useful for calling dogs and also for getting people’s attention in crowds, though she admitted the second use is not very ladylike.”
“It is not,” Harper agreed, managing a small smile.
“She said she learned it from one of the sisters at the nunnery,” Joseph said, “which she thought was funny because the sister in question was very strict about everything else.” He paused. “You know, she tells good stories about that place.”
He had noticed this about Temperance himself, the way she handled the harder material of her own history, the lightness she wrapped around it that was not dishonest but was a kind of protection. She was only looking out for herself, perhaps but in way that that he could respect.
“I like her,” Joseph said. “They’ve begun to feel like home, honestly. Are we going to stay?”
Harper looked at him, having not expected a question like that.
“At Wilmington Manor,” Joseph said. “Long term. Are we going to stay or are we going back to Sedgewick?”
“We will go back to Sedgewick eventually,” Harper said. “That is our home. We came here to sort out the estate matters and the season and then we will go back.”
Joseph was quiet for a moment. He was looking at the path ahead with the expression he got when he was thinking about something that mattered to him and was deciding how directly to approach it.
“When?” he said.
“When things are settled here,” Harper said.
“What things?”
“The estate, the accounts, and Miss Hosmer’s situation,” he listed. “When those things are in order.”
