“You’ve given them Latin names.”
“Accurate Latin names. Thistle can now identify most common bird species by their proper classification. She is particularly proud of her knowledge of amphibian nomenclature, given Brutus’s presence in the household.”
Bufo bufo, Rhys thought, and had to suppress a smile.
He turned to the opposite wall, where a small gallery of drawings had been pinned to a board. Viola’s work, he recognised immediately. Her style had developed remarkably inthe months since he had last seen her art; the lines were surer, the proportions more accurate, the subjects more varied.
There were flowers, rendered with botanical precision. There was Brutus, captured in characteristic grumpiness and there was Mr. Whiskers, depicted looking particularly offended about hiding under a stove.
And there, at the centre of the collection, was a drawing of three figures walking through a garden. Three small girls, their features suggested rather than detailed, and a taller figure in grey holding the hand of the smallest.
The depiction was clearly Miss Grace and his daughters.
Rhys’s hands tightened at his sides.
She had been here for a period of two weeks and already Viola was drawing her as part of the family, as a fixed presence in their lives rather than another temporary figure passing through.
“Mr. Langford?”
He realised he had been staring at the drawing in silence. When he turned, Miss Grace was watching him with that same steady, assessing gaze, and he had the uncomfortable sensation that she could see more of his reaction than he wished to reveal.
“You’ve done well, Miss Grace.”
“The children have done well.” Her voice was even, neither proud nor falsely humble.
“I merely provided the structure.”
“You’re too modest.”
“I’m accurate.” She tilted her head slightly, as though considering how to explain something that should have been self-evident.
“Modesty is a performance. Accuracy is useful.”
Modesty is a performance.
The words struck him with unexpected force. He had spent fifteen years surrounded by performances, giving and receiving them, navigating a world where nothing was quite what it seemed and everyone was playing some role or another. The rake, the wit, the scandal, the charmer. He performed constantly, automatically, without thinking about what lay beneath.
And here was this woman, in her grey dress and her practical hairstyle, looking at him with eyes that held no performance whatsoever. She was not trying to impress him. She was not flirting with him. She was not even particularly interested in his approval, as far as he could tell.
She was simply telling him the truth, as she saw it, without embellishment or apology.
He looked at her more carefully, for the first time since she had entered the study.
She met his look with an unwavering steadiness. She betrayed none of that conscious vanity or maidenly confusion which his Grace was so accustomed to eliciting from the ladies of the ton.
But of course, she did not know he was the Duke of Trevane. She thought him merely Mr. Langford, a gentleman of means but no particular consequence, a man the ton would overlook entirely.
She was looking at him as though he were simply a person.
The realisation was unexpectedly unsettling. When had anyone last looked at him as simply a person? His friends saw the rake, the companion, the man who could always be counted on for wit and scandal. His enemies saw the duke, the title; the women who pursued him saw the conquest, the prize, the story they would tell their friends.
But Miss Grace saw none of these things. She saw a man who paid her salary and occasionally visited the children whose welfare he funded.
“Mr. Langford?” She raised an eyebrow slightly.
“Are you quite well?”
“Perfectly.” He shook off the strange sensation that had gripped him.
