Page 60 of One Day for a Valet

Oliver shook his head. “Time will not change my cheekbones Sofia, nor will it change the shade of my eyes and the slope of my nose. And Christopher, for one, is bound to notice. The longer I stay, the more I risk your future happiness here. I’ve bungled up enough, little flea. Let me at least do this one thing right.”

“No.”

“I love you, Sofia. And I will miss you every day, but I will be all right. I will find work in some other aristocrat’s gardens. Maybe that position in Cornwall. I won’t drink.” He lowered his voice, leaning close to Sofia’s ear. “I will make you proud, little sister.”

“A week. Give me one week to think this through.”

Oliver shook his head and there was such sadness in the motion.

All at once, there was too much around her. Too much disorganised noise and colour. Too much chaos. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t stand to be trapped in the rhythm and precise steps of a measured waltz while her emotions reeled in every direction.

“Three days. Please, Oli! Just three days.” Her whole body was trembling and she fought to keep her feet following the rhythmic count. Three days. One-two-three. One-two-three.

Oliver tightened his hold. “Three days, but it won’t change anything. And I will be a nervous wreck for every minute of it.”

Sofia felt her fight drain away, and with it, all her energy. Christopher watched them from beside a cluster of dowagers, his expression grim. The moment the song ended, he approached, taking her hand with a quick glance at Oliver, then leading her out the door to the terrace.

“What is it, Sofi?”

Sofia shook her head, unable to tell the truth and unwilling to lie. “I’m all right now.”

“You are not all right. If ‘all right’ is London, you are in the untamed Americas staring down a pack of those shifty creatures with the black face masks.”

“I believe they are called racoons, and they’re not aggressive. Nora wants one as a pet.” The jest felt hollow on her tongue, but she forced it out anyway, desperate to reclaim some sense of control.

“The name is wholly immaterial in this metaphor, Sofia. Will you tell me what’s troubling you?” When she still didn’t answer, he shook his head and shoved both hands through his hair, disrupting what must have been a fair amount of pomade and leaving him looking rather like a hedgehog.

She smiled despite the state of her heart. “The moment I saw the control you had enacted over your hair, I wanted to liberate it in exactly the same manner.” She reached up and mussed it further.

“Sofia …” His brow was furrowed, lips pressed into a rigid line.

She could see the frustration on his face, the certainty that he was being intentionally led away from the answers he sought. For a moment, she thought he might dig in his heels, but then he reached for her hand, raising the inside of her wrist to his mouth and grimacing as his lips met satin gloves instead of skin. “I’ve never in my life met such a stubborn creature. Is there anything I can do?” The softness in his voice soothed her prickling anxiety in a way nothing in her life ever had.

“You can entertain my brother, help to make the evening easier for him. You can dance with me. And at midnight, you can meet me in the billiards room and kiss me until I can think of nothing else.”

He nipped at the delicate glove. “I can manage that.”

They re-entered the ballroom and parted ways, Christopher to search the corners for Oliver, Sofia to find Violet, who was finishing a quadrille. Despite the duchess’s enthusiasm, she looked as if she was being propelled forward more by the music and the chattering guests than she was by her own energy.

“Are you well, Violet? Can I get you some refreshments?”

Violet shook her head. “Gabriel has been drowning me in lemonade between every dance. I think he knows, Sofia.”

“Of course he knows. Anyone who makes an occupation of watching his wife as closely as Gabriel does couldn’t possibly miss the changes in you. I am fairly certain even the boot boy suspects something at this point.” The duchess appeared very much like she might come apart completely, so Sofia took her arm and began leading her around the room.

“Slow breaths. Everything will be all right.” Sofia looked up to find Christopher and Oliver speaking near the door to the retiring room. Both looked significantly more at ease, and Sofia felt more of her own anxiety trickle away. Everything would be all right. She would find a way to make it so.

Violet’s attention shifted towards the main entrance and the grand staircase that lay beyond. “I hope Zach is managing. I checked on him an hour ago and he had barricaded the door of his art studio with heavy furniture. I could only open it a crack, but he spoke to me … if single syllables and grunts can be considered a form of communication.”

“Nora will see to him,” Sofia reassured.

“I worry that the ball and picnic so close to one another will be too much at once.” She sighed, tearing her attention away from the doorway and back to Sofia. “Parenting is exhausting, but not in any way I could have anticipated before my children arrived. When Zach came to us, I felt like a carrot that had been freshly peeled of its skin. Soft and sensitive, raw and defenceless. The environment felt shockingly unfamiliar, but the only element that had changed was me.”

Violet shook her head, then twined a loose tendril of hair around her finger. “I kept waiting for my heart to settle again in its place, but it never happened. The world doesn’t feel as simple or safe as it once did, and the number of easy solutions to their problems only seems to shrink as the children grow.”

Violet’s restless hand dropped to her side, as if it felt too heavy with the weight of her worries. “And that was all before Nora. The most ridiculous things keep me awake at night. Nightmares where Nora shows up to make her curtsy to the queen dressed in a pair of trousers or runs away sobbing from her first ball because she’s being mocked for thanking a footman for refilling her ratafia. I am proud of the person I am, but what if all my deficiencies reflect back in Nora's mirror?”

“You are a remarkable mama, Violet. I know because mine was anything but. Whatever Nora sees in the mirror when she is grown will fill her with pride because you, Emma, and Gabriel have given her the freedom to choose for herself what that person will look like.”