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“Do you not reside there? I would have known—I would have paid a call. Had I known.”
“I have been under my uncle’s care since the death of my parents. Once it was decided that I would debut, I spent more time in Town than I did at home.” She allowed the footman to replenish her wine but chose not to drink. “I find it difficult to fathom a duke calling upon a baron.”
“I do not stand upon ceremony. In certain cases.” The duke lifted his wine glass and touched the rim to his lips but did not drink.
“How enlightening. And what is the criteria for relaxing your standards?” She could feel the gazes of the servants following the conversation.
“When it suits me and all those under my aegis.”
“How wonderful for those under you.” What was so amusing about that, she’d like to know. She’d swear the duke came close to laughter.
“How did your parents die?” he asked. O’Mara coughed, and Bates winced.
“My mother was an avid horsewoman and fell in the hunt,” Felicity said. “And my father later perished from the lack of her.”
“They were a love match.” The duke looked satisfied, and the room sighed as one.
“They were.” Perhaps one more sip of wine would not go amiss.
“To be loved like that,” said the duke, his voice hitting new depths of resonance. “It is a powerful thing, rare in any stratum of society. To be unable to bear being left behind.”
Felicity carefully set down her wine glass. “Never mind that there was a daughter left to mourn them both, alone.”
A ringing silence resounded, except for the audible breath that O’Mara took. Felicity thought the rush of grief and rage that coursed through her, even after all this time, would explode out of her like a ball from a cannon and decimate the gathering. She breathed in tandem with the chamberlain and calmed.
“The support of community is without price,” the duke said.
Thinking of her herd, she agreed. “One cannot take for granted the benefits and joys of such.”
“Nor the challenges,” the duke supplied, and she smiled fully; the atmosphere lightened as though every window had been opened and a warm, spring breeze flowed in.
“Oh, the challenges,” she agreed. “Your Grace, as regards community, Mary Mossett mentioned a feast, or a fete? A country fete? Something with a Latin name.” A squeak sounded in the corner.
His Grace waved a hand. “It is like to Saint Valentine’s Day, which is growing in popularity.”
“Ah.” Felicity blushed. “The fourteenth of February is in fact my birthday.” A communal gasp resounded through the air; Bates looked at her in surprise, and O’Mara—of all things, the taciturn chamberlain threw her head back and laughed. “Miss O’Mara?”
“Many, many happy returns, Your Grace, in advance.” She raised her wine glass in a toast.
“I don’t understand the fuss that has sprung up around this single day,” Bates grumbled, and the females in the room exchanged rueful, arch glances.
“It is a scheme on the parts of the confectioners and the printing industry,” the duke groused. “I pay no mind to it.”
Despite the roaring fires, the temperature in the room plummeted to freezing.
“In the past,” O’Mara said, in her palliative voice, “our Alph—Alf, Alfred, Duke of Lowell, had no reason to honor the day, but the present is altogether changed.”
The room seemed to hang on Felicity’s next utterance. She waved away the wine footman and allowed the serving footman to take her plate and leave another course, which ought to have been fish but appeared to be venison; this was not the only curious thing she’d noticed about the meal. She sliced a portion, raised it to her lips, chewed, and swallowed. Only then did she respond. “One must often make allowances for the wishes of others, is that not so, Your Grace?”
“Possibly,” he growled.
“It is often when one is at his most stubborn that it is necessary to compromise.”
“Compromise.” The duke made it sound like the foulest of epithets.
“I would argue that it is at such a juncture it is most necessary to do so.”
“Is it.”
