Page 36 of A Delicate Deception
“The Wolf and the Huntress,” the duke said. “I’m about halfway through. I didn’t know I even liked Isabella of France.”
“Wait,” she said, remembering that the duke could not see. “Who is reading it aloud to you, Your Grace?”
A smile spread across the duke’s face. “Sydney, and I fully intend to make him stay up tonight until we finish it.”
“I’m becoming quite the expert in arcane murder rituals,” Sydney said, coming up behind the duke.
Amelia let herself smile, a polite, discreet curve of her lips. “And are you enjoying it?”
“I am.” His voice was low. Intimate. Just for Amelia. “Especially when I can hear the author’s voice in my own head.”
Amelia tried her best to keep her guarded smile from spreading into something real and broad and dangerous, but in the end she decided not to bother.
When they arrived at Pelham Hall the next day, a mist had settled over the valley. It muffled the sound of the horses’ feet and carriage wheels crunching over the newly graveled drive and gave the house the appearance of having been cut off from the outside world. Inside the hall, a fire had been lit.
“Damn those hedgehogs, my leg hurts enough without daring the universe to give me rheumatism,” the duke said from where he sat on the sofa, “so I intend to spend the afternoon indoors getting lied to about the Plantagenets. Miss Allenby, if you prefer to take your chances in the garden and risk being rained upon, we’ll have tea waiting for you by the terrace.”
Amelia supposed this meant that either Sydney or Georgiana had explained her predicament to the duke, and she did not know whether to be grateful or annoyed. She couldn’t even imagine what words they might have used to describe her requirements, because she could hardly do so herself. “That’s very kind,” she said.
“Nothing of the sort,” he said, scowling. “Be off with you, so I can corrupt Miss Russell in peace.” Amelia glanced at Georgiana, who made a shooing motion with her hand. “If you see Goddard, let him know that he too can feel free to get rained upon. The brat has a cold, so he’s reading to her. A tract against popery or the moral righteousness of sad-looking coats, no doubt.”
“I beg your pardon?” Amelia asked.
“Mother Goddard’s Moral Tales for Young People,” the duke said. “His mother wrote it. As it seems to be the only book to have survived the fire, Leontine has the entire thing by heart.”
Amelia supposed that if Sydney had been raised by the sort of woman who wrote improving tales for children, that might explain why he was so rigid and unsmiling, why it took so much work to coax a laugh out of him. Most children weren’t so fortunate as to be raised by a parent as pragmatic as Amelia’s mother, and she felt vaguely resentful of this Mother Goddard. Amelia had read her share of stories that were meant to instill virtues in recalcitrant children, and they all seemed to work on the principle that a child who was deeply ashamed of herself would behave better—and better usually meant in a manner more convenient to adults. It might very well be a sound idea: Amelia had been both ashamed and extremely well-behaved. But she also had lost years of her life to that shame.
She had been about to take the duke up on his offer to explore the gardens, but now she found that she wanted to take the book and throw it out the window before it could rob Leontine of her happiness.
“If I wanted to hear these improving tales, where would I find Mr. Goddard and Leontine?” she asked.
“Take my advice and don’t let curiosity get the better of you,” the duke advised.
“Don’t mind him. He’s being a giant baby because he doesn’t like having to listen to stories about girls getting their monthlies,” Georgiana said. “We all know that’s why you’re cross, so save it, Your Grace. Now, let’s discuss murder and treachery.”
Before Amelia could ask what on earth Georgiana was talking about, the duke spoke. “Top of the stairs, second door on your left,” he said, then turned his attention back to Georgiana.
This was the first time she had ventured beyond the great hall and dining room of Pelham Hall. The rest of the house seemed much of a piece: old woodwork marred by centuries of nicks and dents but brightly polished nonetheless, mullioned windows still darkened by ivy, the lingering smell of sawdust and paint speaking to the recent spate of improvements and repairs. It had to be inescapably drafty in the winter and damp in the spring, and probably ought to be knocked down and replaced with something newer, a red-brick manor with evenly placed windows and a sensible arrangement of corridors and chimneys. But she also guessed that the duke was attached to this place and that he wasn’t going to let it go easily, even if it didn’t belong to him anymore. She wondered what Sydney planned to do about it.
At the top of the stairs, she heard Sydney’s voice. She would have liked to linger outside the door and listen to what he was reading, but every floorboard in this house seemed to creak, so there was no hope her approach had gone unnoticed. Standing in the open doorway, she raised her hand in an awkward wave.
Sydney sat in a hard-backed chair beside the bed, a book open in his lap. Upon seeing Amelia, he shut the book and smiled. It was such an unguarded, instinctive reaction that Amelia was momentarily robbed of speech. Despite everything, when he saw her, he smiled.
“Don’t stop on my account,” she whispered.
“She’s asleep,” Sydney whispered back. Sure enough, Leontine—her nose red and her bed littered with handkerchiefs—slept, curled on her side. He gestured at the empty chair beside his own. “I don’t want to leave her. I know it’s only a summer cold, but I—”
“You don’t need to explain.” Amelia remembered her mother sitting up with her during childhood illnesses, and she also remembered the times her mother couldn’t do so because her father required her or because she had an engagement she couldn’t avoid. Amelia sat in the empty chair, and even though it was more than six inches away from Sydney’s, he felt even nearer in the silence of this little room.
She reached over and took the book off his lap. “‘Moral Tales for Young People,’” she read aloud. That did sound dire. “I had a book very much like this one, in which children who didn’t wash their hands or kiss their mothers met with terrible fates.”
“We had one like that too,” Sydney said, his voice so low it was hardly more than a rumble. “Which is why my mother wrote her own version.”
She opened the book. The flyleaf looked typical enough—there was a woodcut of a plainly dressed child sitting primly on a bench. The table of contents listed stories with such titles as “Little Susan Eats a Scone” and “Brother William Goes to Market.”
Amelia drew in her breath. She was glad that she and Sydney were on a decent footing now, that they weren’t enemies, even if they would never return to their previous closeness. And she knew she was going to jeopardize that by what she said, but she had to speak up. “Leontine has been through a lot in the past few months,” she said, thinking of what the child had said to Georgiana outdoors. “Perhaps this isn’t the time to read her stories about how she ought to deport herself.” Amelia thought it was never the right time for that, but she was trying to appeal to Sydney’s sense of decency.
To her surprise, Sydney smiled again. “This isn’t a book about deportment. It’ll have any child deporting themselves right out of polite society,” he said. “And right into prison, if my mother’s any example.”
