Page 27 of A Virgin to Tempt the Duke

The carriage was brought round at half past three.

“Write to me,” Lady Oldbarrow said. “When it is resolved. I would like to know.”

“I will,” Anna said to her. “Thank you. For all of it. For not?—”

“Oh, don’t thank me.” Lady Oldbarrow dismissed this with a small wave. “I have known far too many women told to be grateful for basic decency. You don’t owe me anything.” She paused. “Except the letter. That, I will collect on.”

Frederick watched Anna smile at her. “You’ll have it.”

Lady Oldbarrow held her gaze for a moment, then looked up the stairs to see him at the top, listening. “I’ll say goodbye to Frederick.”

He retreated to his study quickly and left the door open for when she reached it. He was standing by the window, which was also his way. He thought better on his feet.

“You’re going,” he said.

“I am, just as I promised.” She came in and sat without being asked. “The house will survive without me.”

“It was surviving before you arrived.”

“Surviving is not the same as thriving, Frederick, though I know you sometimes struggle to tell the difference.” She folded her hands in her lap and looked at him pleasantly. “How are you doing?”

“Fine.” He turned from the window. “My attorney is moving forward. It should be resolved within the month, as planned. After that…” He paused. “We’ll make proper arrangements for Anna’s situation.”

“Anna,” Lady Oldbarrow said, in the tone of someone noting a word choice.

“Miss Cartwell.”

“Yes, you said Anna.”

“She is Rachel’s friend. The name is not?—”

“I noticed you watching her last night,” Lady Oldbarrow said. She said it comfortably, as if noting the weather. “At dinner. When she laughed.”

The pause was brief. “I was not?—”

“You went very still,” Lady Oldbarrow said. “It is the way you go still when something has surprised you. Which is not often, might I say.” She tilted her head. “You hid it well. You always do. But I have known you a very long time.”

“She is under my roof,” Frederick said. His voice had settled into the flat, certain register that meant the door was closing. “She is here for a month while her situation is resolved. She is—” He stopped. “She is Rachel’s friend, and she is in a difficult circumstance, and she will leave when it is safe for her to do so. That is the entirety of it.”

Lady Oldbarrow looked at him for a long moment.

“All right,” she said.

“I mean it, Godmother.”

“I know you mean it.” She rose, smoothed her skirts, and crossed to him.

She put her hand briefly against his jaw the way she had done when he was seventeen, and she had been the only person in thehouse who had understood that he was holding up a heaviness that few boys his age did.

“I know you mean everything you say. You always have.” She patted his cheek once, lightly. “Walk me out.”

And so, he walked her out himself, waving off the footman as he always did when Lady Oldbarrow departed. He handed her up gently into the carriage with his hand under hers.

Her fingers were cool through the thin kid of her glove, and she held onto him a beat. Then she drew her hand back into her lap, folded it over the other as though tucking the moment away, and settled against the velvet cushions. “Until next time, Godmother,” he said.

“Farewell, Frederick. Be good.”

“I always am,” he replied, a small smile forming at the corners of his mouth.