"Mother is furious. " Tilda said. "I know. " "Clarissa is crying. " "Not sad crying, angry crying. There is a difference and it is important. " "I know that, too. " "Delia has not cried, but she has gone very quiet, which is worse. Tilda paused. I am not angry at you.
I want you to know that. Nora looked at her cousin. Tilda was the youngest and in some ways the most honest of the three. She was also the one who had, on more than one occasion over the past three years, told Nora quietly and without cruelty that she deserved more than she was getting. Thank you.
Nora said. Do you like him? Tilda asked. Nora thought about the Duke's face when he had looked at the corner. The way he had said it brought her forward.
The particular quality of his voice when he said fair. Oh, I don't know him, she said. That is not what I asked. Nora turned back to the window. I don't know, she said.
Which was honest. Which was the only thing she had at this exact moment to offer. The East Garden was quiet in the pale light below. She would decide in the morning whether to go. The East Garden was cold at that hour.
Frost still clung to the stone wall when Nora arrived, her breath forming small clouds in the morning air. She had woken before her cousins, dressed quickly in her warmest day dress, a deep green wool that had belonged to her mother, and had been altered twice to fit her changing shape over the years. She had told herself on the way down the stairs that she was simply going for a walk, that she happened to be walking in the direction of the East Garden, that this was not a decision so much as a direction. Well, she was not very convincing, even to herself. He was already there.
The Duke stood near the low stone wall with a cup of something steaming in his hand, looking out at the bare rose stems with the expression of a man who had been awake for some time and was comfortable with that. He had dressed simply, no formal coat, just dark trousers and a charcoal waistcoat over a white shirt. And he looked more like a person than he had the day before in the receiving room. Less like a title. He turned when he heard her footsteps on the gravel path.
"You came," he said. "I told myself I was just taking a walk," she said. "And? " "And I am clearly a poor liar. " She stopped a few feet away from him and looked at the garden. It was not beautiful in winter. It was bare and still and a little stark.