Page 28

Leonora sat with her back mostly to the door, her attention entirely on the keys, a loose curl escaping its pin and falling against her cheek as she played. She did not hear him come in, or if she did, she gave no sign of it. Anthony stood in the doorway with his hand still on the frame and found, to his considerable inconvenience, that he had entirely forgotten what he had come to say.

There was something about watching a person do a thing they were good at, unguarded and unaware of being observed, that struck him as rather more affecting than he would have predicted. She played with none of the stiff formality he associated with drawing room performances, none of the careful showing off young ladies were trained into from the schoolroom onward. She simply played, her whole attention given over to it, and the sight of it settled into his chest and warmed it.

He realized, somewhat belatedly, that he was smiling. He looked away at once, as though the door frame itself might have witnessed it and thought less of him for it, and told himself firmly that he had absolutely no intention of interrupting her.

It was only when he glanced back toward the room that he found his grandmother watching him.

Marian sat in her usual chair near the window, a cat asleep in her lap, and she was not looking at Leonora at all. She was looking at him, with an expression he recognized immediately and disliked intensely, a knowing look she had worn since he was a boy caught doing something he shouldn’t be. He closed his eyes briefly, as though that might undo whatever she had already seen, and when he opened them again she was smiling in a manner that promised he would hear about this for the rest of the afternoon.

“Oh,” Marian said, rising from her chair with more energy than he had seen from her in days. “You are entirely in love. Look at your face this instant.”

Anthony tried to scoff, but it came out as a cough instead. “I am doing no such thing.”

“You are standing in my doorway with an expression I have not seen on you since you were a teenager and mooning over that opera singer your father forbade you from seeing.”

“Grandmother!” Anthony cautioned her through clenched teeth.

“You know I am right.”

“I like the song,” Anthony tried to counter. “Nothing more than that.” He raised his voice slightly, enough to carry across the room without quite shouting. “Miss Ashcroft.”

Leonora’s hands stilled on the keys, and she turned on the bench, plainly startled to find she had an audience at all. “Your Grace. I did not hear you come in.”

“Clearly not.” He kept his tone light, unbothered, like he was unaffected. “I am not, generally speaking, a man given to being moved by music. You may tease me all you like, Grandmother, but I assure you I am considerably too sensible for that particular affliction.”

“Sensible,” Marian repeated, in a tone that suggested she believed the opposite. “It is odd, is it not, how sensible the two of you are with each other. Miss Ashcroft. Your Grace. One would think you had only just been introduced across a ballroom rather than engaged to be married.”

Anthony glanced at Leonora, and something in her expression told him she had caught the same thought he had. They could hardly afford to be caught out over so small a thing as formality, not after all the trouble it had taken to convince Marian the engagement was real. He crossed the room, keeping his voice easy.

“It is nothing so serious, Grandmother,” he said. “It is something we do between us. We choose each other’s names when the mood strikes us. It is... my way of teasing her. Leonora finds it amusing.”

Leonora’s mouth curved. “I did not realize formality had become a crime, Anthony.”

“It has, as of this afternoon,” he said to her, holding her gaze.

She nodded. “Then I shall try to remember it.”

Marian settled back into her chair. “Look at you two. Oh, I cannot wait for the wedding. It is going to be a grand event.”

Anthony avoided Leonora’s gaze then, because he was fairly certain she was glaring at him.

“Oh, which reminds me!” Marian gasped. “The Camden ball. I almost forgot about it. We have a ball to attend. I have every intention of going, and I would rather not go alone.”

Anthony turned to her. “The Camden ball?”

“You had not forgotten, surely.”

“I had, in fact, forgotten entirely.” He massaged his nape. Deep down, he had though Marian would forget about it.

“Lady Camden sent the invitation herself, more than a fortnight ago. It is sitting on the entrance hall table this very moment, where it has been sitting, unanswered, for a fortnight, while you have buried yourself in shipping correspondence and forgotten that other people exist.” Marian folded her hands. “I have not been to a proper ball in a long time, Anthony, and I intend to go to this one.”

“I have a great deal of work at present,” Anthony said, which was true, and which he suspected would not carry the slightest weight with her.

It did not.

“Nonsense. You have a butler, a steward, and a man of business, all of whom are paid handsomely to worry about your business so that you need not worry about them every waking hour. You can spare one evening for a ball.”

“Grandmother—”