“I worked at it for three days,” he said, and sat.
Lucien raised his glass last. He raised it by an inch, toward Annabelle and not toward the room, and held it there a full two counts, his gaze on her face, before he drank.
From the far end of the table, Annabelle saw Dominic look at Lucien. She saw it from the corner of her eye, but her brother’sgaze had already moved elsewhere, and then returned to his plate. He did this three more times across the length of the meal, and each time she noticed. She did not think she was the only one.
Lucien was civil throughout. He answered direct questions with full sentences. He refilled Lady Rosenhall’s wine when the footman was occupied elsewhere. He laughed once, briefly, at something Miles said. He did not, across the full two hours they sat at that table, address Dominic.
James, beside Elinor on the left, had been conducting a census of the centerpiece since they sat down, a cluster of white roses he examined at intervals with the attention of a man whose accounting was not yet finished.
“Sixteen,” he announced, apparently concluding.
Miles, who was nearest to him, looked up. “Sixteen what?”
“Roses.” James pointed. “There are sixteen.”
“Are there?” Miles studied the arrangement with the gravity of a man undertaking a second opinion. Newton had installed himself somewhere under the table near James’s chair, which Miles had been informed of and had elected not to investigate. “And is sixteen the correct number of roses for a wedding, or merely the number present?”
James considered this. “It is the number present,” he said. “I don’t know what the correct number is.”
“Nor do I,” Miles replied, surrendering. “No one has ever told me.”
James accepted this as a reasonable answer and returned to his examination.
Lady Rosenhall leaned toward Annabelle’s ear. “I will own it has ended better than I expected.” She was watching James tally the roses. “We shall say no more about the garden.” She picked up her wine and did not elaborate.
She looked up. Across the table, Dominic was talking to Elinor, his attention on her face, fully present. Then his eyes moved down the table to Lucien again, the same check he’d been running since the meal began, and the line of his shoulders held where they were, and then he returned to Elinor’s conversation.
By four o’clock, the drawing room had thinned, and the afternoon was going gray. Newton had migrated to the window seat where James had gone to observe the street below.
Helena found Annabelle near the mantelpiece and positioned herself close enough that the conversation was private.
“He hasn’t looked at you like you’re a problem he’s solving,” she said. She did not say who, because she really did not need to.
Annabelle turned her cup in its saucer. “We’ve barely spoken since the church.”
“He looked at you when you came up the aisle,” Helena said.
Annabelle did not refrain from rolling her eyes. “Everyone looks at the bride.” She said.
“Not the way he did.” Helena’s cup was at her lips, blinking at her friend over the rim. “I was watching him very specifically.”
Annabelle said nothing.
Lady Rosenhall was the first to reach for her shawl; as that was the signal, and the room arranged itself accordingly.
Lord Keldwick clapped Dominic on the shoulder, said “Felicitations, Silverford!” and turned to leave.
Lady Rosenhall embraced her last, firm and brief, one hand pressing at the back of Annabelle’s head. “Write to me,” she said, and nothing further.
They filed out. The door was down to Lucien.
He had reached the threshold and then turned back, and he came to her in the entrance hall and took both her hands in his, which he did not do in company as a rule, and held them.
“You know how to find me,” he said. “Next door. Any hour. I mean that as a fact and not a comfort.”
“I know,” she said. “I will be all right.”
He looked at her hands in his. Then at her face. “I know you will.” He pressed her hands once, released them, and went.
