Charlotte nearly choked on air. “Arabella.”
Her cousin smirked. “Ah, there she is. That blush tells me everything.”
Charlotte accepted the cordial just to have something to occupy her hands. “He has merely been… quieter than usual.”
“Perhaps because he is married now,” Arabella said. “Most husbands become quieter after marriage. Gerald certainly did.”
Across the room, Gerald overheard and called, “That is slander, my dear.”
“It is truth,” Arabella answered cheerfully.
Laughter filled the room again while Charlotte stole another glance toward Victor. He was listening to Oswald discuss trade routes with the intensity of a man negotiating peace betweennations rather than discussing wool shipments. Yet even from across the room, she noticed the tension in his jaw. His fingers tapped once against the side of his glass before stilling entirely.
Elizabeth sat comfortably upon the sofa, observing everyone with delight sparkling in her eyes. “This is exactly how a household ought to feel,” she declared. “Loud, cheerful, and entirely impossible to control.”
“That describes the Browns perfectly,” Victor said dryly.
Charlotte startled slightly at the sound of his voice behind her. She had not noticed him approach, and now his nearness instantly warmed her skin. His fingers brushed hers for the briefest moment, yet the touch felt intimate enough to steal her breath.
Before she could say anything, Joan appeared between them like an eager storm. “Your Grace, I demand you settle a dispute.”
Victor blinked slowly. “I fear those words rarely end well for me.”
Joan ignored that. “If a gentleman says a lady has enchanting eyes, but then later tells another lady she has the finest smile in England, is he courting both?”
Victor considered with maddening seriousness. “How wealthy is the gentleman?”
Penelope burst into laughter while Joan gasped. “That matters not.”
“It matters greatly,” Victor replied. “A rich man is merely foolish. A poor one is strategic.”
Even Charlotte laughed at that. Victor’s mouth curved slightly at the sound, and something in his gaze softened as he looked at her.
“See?” Elizabeth called from the sofa triumphantly. “Marriage suits him already. He smiles more.”
Victor groaned quietly. “Grandmother, must you announce every expression I make?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth answered without hesitation. “Otherwise no one would notice them.”
The room erupted into amusement once more while Victor shook his head. Yet Charlotte saw it then, the faintest hint of genuine ease crossing his features.
For all his distance lately, he looks more relaxed surrounded by my chaotic family than he ever has among the ton.
Bridget began another tune upon the pianoforte, lighter this time, and Irene immediately seized Penelope’s hands. “Dance with me.”
“I absolutely shall not.”
“You absolutely shall.”
Soon, the sisters were laughing while turning clumsily through the middle of the drawing room. Harriet protested loudly about furniture being endangered while Oswald encouraged them simply to spite her. Arabella leaned against Gerald, smiling fondly at the spectacle.
Charlotte felt warmth bloom inside her chest.
This. This was what I’ve always wanted for them. Security, laughter, full stomachs, instead of worry.
And Victor had given it to them.
The noise around them seemed to dim for one strange suspended moment as she looked up at him. He looked distant still, but there was something else there too, something almost vulnerable beneath all that arrogance and restraint.
