It was the butler, standing in the doorway, slightly flushed. He had been instructed to admit Lord Dowton for his usual morning hour with Lady Daphne, to take coats from the Dowager Lady Pevensey and her two daughters, to send a maid up for the silver tea set, and now, to announce the Duke of Langton, who waswaiting on the front steps and who, the butler’s tone implied, would not be turned away.
Alice rose quicker than she had meant to. “Show him in, please.”
“Very good, My Lady.”
Cassian was shown in.
That morning, he wore a dark gray coat that suited him less than the blue one which Alice noticed at once because she had been thinking about the blue coat at intervals since two in the morning. He was holding his hat in his hand. He had not, the butler informed her in a small undertone afterwards, been at all certain he would be received. He had given his name as though he had expected to be told that nobody was at home.
He bowed. “Lady Alice. Lady Daphne.”
“Your Grace.”
Daphne stood up and bobbed a small curtsy. She looked briefly between Alice and Cassian and then, having clearly decided to make herself useful, said, “I have just remembered I promised Mama I should help her with the menu for tonight. Please do excuse me,” and left.
She closed the door behind her.
She did not, Alice noticed, close it entirely. She left it open by two inches in the small kind way she had of being a chaperone without being asked.
“Lady Alice.”
“Your Grace.”
“I should?—”
“Shall we walk in the orangery, Your Grace? It is somewhat warmer there. The morning room is rather cold.”
Alice did not know why she had said it. She had not planned to say it. In fact, on the way down to the morning room, she had briefly considered that if Cassian came to call, she would have the butler tell him she was not at home.
She had not done it. She had not done it because she had wanted to see him. More than that, she had wanted to be seen by him.
It was Hyde Park all over again but with a worse precedent because in Hyde Park, she had at least been able to plead surprise.
“The orangery,” he repeated, very carefully. “Yes. Yes, that would be agreeable.”
She led him out.
The orangery was a long glass room at the rear of the house, fitted on the south side of the morning room and the conservatory. At this time of morning, it was full of the pale March sunlight and the heavy scent of the orange and lemon trees the Lockwoods had been keeping there for three generations.
The room had been a great favorite since Alice was a child. It had three doors, each one of which had a glass top, and overlooked the kitchen gardens behind the house. It was visible from the windows of every upstairs room on the east side of the house, the back kitchen, the laundry, and the gardener’s potting shed.
In short, it was a room in which a young woman could conduct a fifteen-minute private discussion with a gentleman without being unchaperoned.
Cassian noticed at once. “This is?—”
“It is very well-watched, Your Grace. The cook can see us from the larder. The upstairs maids can see us from the linen room. The gardener, if he is at his potting shed, can also see us. We are perhaps the most chaperoned couple in London in this room.”
“That is very well-arranged of you, Lady Alice.”
“It is a quality I learned from my betrothed, Your Grace. The deliberation.”
“Touché.”
She led him through the trees. The path was narrow, so he had to walk slightly behind her in some places and at her elbow in others, and once or twice, his shoulder brushed against hers among the leaves. Alice felt each of the small touches go down her arm into her wrist and her palm, and she pretended, with a discipline she had been practicing all morning, that she had not felt any of them.
“Your Grace,” she said, after the second time their shoulders brushed.
“Yes.”
