The carriage pitched to a halt. A footman yanked open the door. Cold rushed in, hard and clean, smelling of smoke from the Abbey’s hundreds of grates. Susie was the first to descend, her movements careful. Alice stumbled a little, righted herself, and squared her shoulders in imitation of her sister. Pearl followed, one gloved hand gathering her skirts. She felt the eyes of the staff on her and in that moment, she was again the vicar’s daughter, an impostor wearing her beauty and her borrowed name as armor against the world.
The Duchess of Rettendon waited at the threshold, her formidable girth draped in velvet and furs. The years had been kind to her, not diminishing her in the least. If anything, the old lioness had grown only more splendid with age, the white of her hair an explicit challenge to any would-be rival matron.
“My dear,” the duchess intoned, her voice a contralto that seemed to vibrate the very air, “how very good of you to come. I know it must have been a trial, with the girls, and in such weather.”
Pearl bent her head in something between a curtsy and a bow. “It is an honor to be received, Your Grace. The journey wasperfectly tolerable. My daughters have been looking forward to your hospitality with the keenest anticipation.”
“Have they?” The duchess’s eyes flicked to Susie and Alice, weighing them as she might a brace of pheasants on market day. “And which is which?”
Susie stepped forward, performing a curtsy, her gaze never dropping. “I am Susie, Your Grace. And this is my sister, Alice.”
The duchess’s smile was thin but not unkind. “Good bone in the older one,” she murmured, as if Pearl could not hear. “And the younger will break hearts by the dozen. I hope you have the fortitude for it, my dear.”
Pearl almost said, “I have little choice these days,” but instead, she replied, “They are my greatest consolation, Your Grace.”
The girls looked at her, Alice with open delight, Susie with a more wary skepticism. Pearl felt a flick of old guilt. It was easier to play the role of the serene widow than to confess the chaos that sometimes swallowed her whole, particularly at night, when even the most perfunctory company was gone and she could not escape her thoughts.
A throat cleared from inside the hall.
Victor stood at the far end of the marble vestibule, half in shadow, his posture so rigid he might have been carved there to guard the family crest over the fireplace. In the dimmer light, his hair seemed almost black, though she remembered it as dark brown with an occasional glint of copper. His eyes, even from a distance, found hers and held. The force of it was almost physical.
He inclined his head in greeting. Not a smile, not even a hint of one, but a silent recognition. Her own lips parted as if to answer, but nothing emerged. The last time she had seen him—really seen him, not glimpsed across a ballroom or read about in some gossip column—had been nearly twenty years ago. Theafternoon he came to tell her of Percy’s death was another matter entirely. Grief had made them strangers in their own skins.
Pearl forced her attention back to the duchess, who was already marshaling the staff into a flurry of purposeful movement. Cloaks were whisked away, trunks taken upstairs, and Alice’s bonnet, perpetually askew, was gently but firmly righted by her governess with a motherly touch. The air inside the Abbey was thick with the mingled scents of pine boughs and lemon wax.
Pearl surveyed the entryway as she entered. The hall was alive with Christmastide splendor. Evergreen garlands draped the stair rails, red ribbons knotted with near-military precision. Between the two windows, a stag’s head looked down, majestic and unblinking.
Alice tugged at her mother’s sleeve, whispering, “Will we see the peacocks, do you think?”
Pearl brushed her cheek with a gloved hand. “If the snow permits, darling. But first we must greet our hosts properly.”
The duchess drew Pearl aside for a private word. Her eyes softened, just for a moment, as she surveyed her old friend’s face. “How are you, truly?”
Pearl let the question settle. “I manage. The girls give me purpose. They force me to go on.”
The duchess nodded, lips pursing. “You have done well, Pearl. Percy would have been proud. Victor is much changed, as you will see. The years have not made him softer. If he is brusque, forgive it. The house weighs on him.”
Pearl nodded. She didn’t say that it was the very quality that once drew her to him, before life made such things impossible. She kept her daughters close as they followed the duchess.
The duchess settled into a chair as if she might never need to rise again in her life. She gestured for them to sit. “Do beat ease,” she said, though her tone made clear that ease was an aspirational quality, not an immediate state.
Alice was quickest to comply, flinging herself onto a spindly chair and setting it to creaking as she swung her legs. Susie sat on the settee, composed as ever, hands folded and eyes flicking between the adults. Pearl herself perched at the settee’s edge, back impossibly straight, as if the least deviation would precipitate a slide into disgrace.
Victor entered with that peculiar grace men acquire when every room is a potential battlefield. His glance paused on Pearl before settling on the fire, where he stood, one hand braced on the mantel, as though he might need to steady himself for whatever came next.
After the usual polite small talk, Her Grace asked, “Pearl, have you considered what you will do, now that your mourning year is nearly up?”
Pearl’s hands gripped her saucer. “We are to remain at the dower house. The trustees are… generous, and there is no need to disrupt the girls’ routines.”
The duchess’s mouth pursed. “You could always do better. There are connections yet to be made in Town. And you must think of your daughters. Two beauties in one household—why, it will be open season for fortune-hunters.”
“I am well aware,” Pearl said. She tried to smile, but it felt like something she had borrowed from someone else. She didn’t know whether Victor was listening, or if he had simply learned to exist in rooms where his name was a chess piece, moved by other hands.
Alice fidgeted. Susie, bored with the adult back-and-forth, studied the spines of the books lining the shelves behind the duchess. Pearl suppressed the urge to scold her for inattention, but then Her Grace said, “Why not take the girls upstairs? The nursery has been prepared—there’s even a new doll’s house.”
Alice’s eyes widened. “May we, Mama?”
Susie was already half-standing.
