But he held onto it for a moment. “You ought to take better care of your possessions,” he told her. “This almost ended up in that puddle of mud over there.”
She frowned. “The wind took it. I wasn’t being careless. And who are you to criticize when you know nothing about me?”
“Eleanor!” Marina hurried up to her and put a hand on her arm. “Thank you, Your Grace,” she said to the gentleman. “We’ll be more careful.”
The gentleman handed the hat back. Eleanor forced herself not to stare.Your Grace, Marina had said—so this must be the Duke of Nightingale. She had never met him face to face before.
She had to admit that he was handsome, with his dark eyes and dark hair. He towered over her in a way that she found most appealing. But even so—what did he mean by telling her what she ought to do with herself? With her possessions? That was certainly very audacious of him, even if he was a duke. She took her hat back from her sister and turned away.
Marina hurried her along, back toward the flower shop. “I can’t believe you spoke to the duke like that,” she hissed.
“I didn’t know he was the duke.” Eleanor felt a little embarrassed, but not very. “Did you hear the way he spoke tome?”
“He can speak to you however he likes! He’s a duke! You ought to show proper respect. You’re lucky Mother and Father don’t know about what happened there.”
Eleanor said nothing. But as she followed her sister into the flower shop, she found that thoughts of the handsome but audacious duke followed her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Eleanor snuck out of her room late that night, as she often did, and took to the grounds, walking around to calm her mind.
It was so peaceful outside at night. It was possible to forget about everything that troubled her during the day. When she was on her own in the darkness, she could simply think, and her thoughts came more slowly, less frantically, so that everything felt much less dire than it did when the sun was up.
As she returned to her room after her walk, though, she was taken by surprise at the sight of a figure in the shadows standing outside her door.
She stopped short with a gasp.
The figure came forward into the light of one of the hallway candles.
“Oh my goodness,” Eleanor breathed. “Marina—it’s you.”
“Did you think I was an intruder?” her sister asked.
“No, but I thought you might be Mother!”
“It would serve you right if I had been,” Marina said sternly. “Sneaking out in the middle of the night, when you know perfectly well how unsafe it is to do that.”
“I don’t think it’s unsafe,” Eleanor objected. “I’ve gone out at night countless times, and nothing has ever happened to me, after all. I don’t think there’s anything to fear. I understand why it worries you, Marina, but I wish you could find a way to be at peace with it.”
“And I wish you would stop doing it,” Marina said. “So I suppose we both wish for things we can’t have.”
“Oh, Marina,” Eleanor sighed. “You always make things seem so catastrophic. I wasn’t doing anything horrible, you know. I was walking around the grounds of our family’s estate.”
“But in the dead of night.” Marina shook her head. “You have no idea who might be out there at such a time, Eleanor.”
“Come into my room if you’re going to insist on talking about this,” Eleanor said. “I don’t want to discuss it where we might be overheard.”
“You don’t want Mother and Father to find out what you’ve been doing.”
“Of course I don’t.”
“That doesn’t indicate to you that you’re doing something wrong?”
“Oh, please, Marina. They scold me when I’m late to breakfast. How do you think they would react to this? It doesn’t matter to them if I’m doing anything wrong or not—they will always find fault with me. What that tells me is that it’s safest if they simply don’t know what I’m doing at all. It’s best if they don’t find out where I’ve been, no matter where that might be.”
The sisters went into the bedroom and Eleanor shut the door behind them. She took off her boots and placed them in the wardrobe.
“That’s another thing,” Marina said, watching her. “Strolling around outside in your nightclothes?”
