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“Pleasant, composed serenity. I am to appear neither anxious nor overly happy, on pain of feeding the gossip in one direction or the other.” Phillipa allowed herself a small, wry smile. “I begin to wonder whether there exists any expression a new bride might wear that would not, in fact, feed the gossip regardless.”

“None whatsoever, in my experience. I have watched London manufacture scandal from a woman’s choice of glove color before now. You could arrive wearing sackcloth and an expression of profound indifference, and by Tuesday it would be reported that the Duchess of Brawnhite had taken a vow of penance for some unspeakable sin.” His eyes were warm with humor. “I find the only sensible response is to stop trying to manage it at all, and simply be whatever you actually are in the moment. It is considerably less exhausting, and the gossip proceeds at exactly the same pace regardless of the effort expended trying to prevent it.”

“That is remarkably freeing advice, coming from a man who has spent his entire adult life being charming at exactly the correct moments for exactly the correct audiences.”

“I did say I had learned it the hard way.” Something flickered across his face, there and gone, some old weariness she recognized but did not yet understand the full shape of. “I spent a great many years managing every room I entered with tremendous care, Phillipa. I am not certain it made me happier for the managing. I am attempting, of late, to manage rather less and simply exist rather more. It is proving a difficult habit to establish.”

The church, when they arrived, was every bit as thoroughly attentive as Lady Creighton had promised. Phillipa felt the weight of a hundred curious eyes the moment she stepped down from the carriage on Gregory’s arm, felt the particular hush that fell over small clusters of the congregation as they passed, the way conversations paused and heads turned and resumed again, a half-beat later, in tones pitched just low enough to seem discreet and just loud enough to be perfectly audible.

“There she is,” she heard, from somewhere to her left, in a voice that made no particular effort at discretion at all. “The one from the library. I still cannot credit it, can you? Engaged within the very hour.”

“I heard she demanded a fortune in settlements before she would even consider the match,” came the reply, delivered with the particular relish of a woman thoroughly enjoying her own speculation. “Practically extorted the poor man, by some accounts.”

Phillipa kept her chin level and her expression composed, as twelve years of training had taught her to do, and felt Gregory’s hand tighten fractionally where it rested over hers on his arm.

“Pay it no mind,” he murmured, for her ears alone, as they continued up the aisle. “They said equally absurd things about Ronan and Augusta’s courtship, and rather worse things about my own father’s second cousin, who I am reliably informed did nothing more scandalous in his entire life than marry an opera singer’s daughter with an unremarkable dowry. London requires a fresh scandal roughly once a fortnight, the way other cities require fresh bread. We have simply had the misfortune of being this fortnight’s loaf.”

Despite herself, Phillipa laughed. It was a small, startled sound, quickly suppressed. Those around exchanged significant glances at the sight of the new Duchess laughing so easily at something her husband had said.

“You have just given them a full week’s worth of fresh material,” she murmured back, “by making me laugh in front of half of Mayfair.”

“Good,” said Gregory, entirely unrepentant, guiding her toward their own pew with the easy, unhurried confidence of a man who had long since stopped caring what any particular collection of curious strangers thought of him. “Let them speculate on that instead. A laughing Duchess is a far more interesting rumor than a mercenary one, and considerably closer to the truth besides.”

They settled into their pew, and the service began, and Phillipa found, sitting beside her husband with the weight of London’s collective curiosity still prickling at the back of her neck, that she minded it rather less than she had expected to. There was something steadying in his easy dismissal of it all, in the quiet solidarity of his hand still resting near hers on the pew’s shared cushion, in the small, private understanding that had passed between them over the whispered gossip. Not a grand declaration of anything, but a shared recognition, two people standing together against the same familiar current, rather than each of them managing it alone.

Afterward, in the churchyard, they were obliged to receive a steady stream of well-wishers and the merely curious both, and Phillipa found herself performing, for a good half hour, the particular delicate art of appearing warmly grateful for congratulations she suspected were only half sincere, while deflecting a dozen increasingly probing questions about the circumstances of the baby’s arrival with the same smooth, practiced non-answers she had spent twelve years perfecting for exactly this purpose.

“You are very good at that,” Gregory observed, once the last of the well-wishers had finally drifted off toward their own carriages, leaving them a moment’s relative peace on the church steps.

“At what?”

“Giving people precisely enough to satisfy their curiosity without actually telling them anything at all. I watched you deflect no fewer than six increasingly inventive questions about the baby’s parentage in the space of twenty minutes, and not one of those women left feeling as though they had been refused an answer.”

“It is a skill my mother spent a great many years drilling into me, whether or not I ever asked to learn it.” Phillipa allowed herself a small, tired smile as they made their way back toward the waiting carriage. “I find, this particular morning, that I am rather glad of the drilling, tiresome as it was to endure at the time.”

“As am I,” said Gregory, handing her up into the carriage with more warmth in the gesture than the simple courtesy strictly required. “Though I hope, in time, you might find you need the skill rather less with me than you do with the rest of London. I should like to think there is at least one room in your life where the managing is not required at all.”

Phillipa looked at him for a long moment as the carriage pulled away from the church, turning the small, unguarded offer over with a care it plainly deserved, and found, somewhat to her own surprise, that she believed him entirely.

“I should like that very much,” she said, quietly, and meant it more than she had meant almost anything else she had said since her wedding day.

CHAPTER 11

“You are very good at this, you know,” said Phillipa, watching Martha coax a spoonful of mashed turnip into the baby’s reluctant mouth with the patient cunning of a general laying siege to a well-defended fortress.

“I have had a great deal of practice, Your Grace. Six younger brothers will do that for a girl.” Martha wiped a dribble of turnip from the baby’s chin with the ease of long habit, not even glancing away from her small opponent. “My mother used to say I was minding babies before I could properly walk myself. I do not know that I ever had much choice in becoming fond of it.”

“Do you mind it? Being asked to do it still, I mean, so far from your own family.”

Martha considered the question with more seriousness than Phillipa had expected, setting down the spoon for a moment while the baby examined his own fingers with an air of profound interest. “I did, at first, if I am honest, Your Grace. I took the position because Mrs. Glenn found me crying in the linen cupboard the very night you were married, and I did not have the heart to refuse a woman who had just been kind enough not to ask why.” A small, rueful smile. “But I have grown rather attached to the both of you since. It is a strange thing to say of one’s employers, I know, but there it is. I like the idea of being someone this little one remembers fondly, when he is grown. My own mother worked in service her whole life, and I do not think anyone ever thanked her properly for the half of what she gave to other people’s children. I should not mind being thanked, in time, for giving the same to this one.”

“You shall be thanked,” said Phillipa, with more feeling than she had quite intended to show. “I promise you that. Whatever else changes in this house, Martha, you will not be forgotten in it.”

Something in the nursemaid’s face softened at that, unguarded for a moment in a way it rarely was. “That is very kind of you to say, Your Grace.”

“It is not kindness. It is only the truth.” Phillipa knelt beside the high chair and let the baby fasten a sticky fist around her finger, the way he always did, as though anchoring himself to whichever adult happened nearest. “I did not have many friends before I came here, if I am honest with you in return. I had Augusta, and I am grateful for her every day, but I spent most of my life being very carefully correct with everyone else, because that was what was expected of a young lady in my position, and I did not always trust that anyone wanted my company beyond what use I might be to them.” She glanced up. “You have never once made me feel that way. I hope you know how much that has meant, these past weeks.”

Martha’s eyes had gone suspiciously bright. She busied herself, with rather more vigor than the task required, wiping down the tray of the high chair. “Well,” she said, a little thickly. “I did not take you for a woman who says things like that to her staff, Your Grace, if I am honest.”