A small, deep chuckle, then he slipped past her, jumped to the ground, sending the coach rocking. For a moment, he remained bent, his eyes closed, his jaw tight. He straightened slowly, shifting his jaw back and forth as if chewing through discomfort. His hand settled on his thigh, right where he’d told her he’d been wounded.
“Are you well?” she whispered from the confines of the coach. Should she… help in some way? “Does traveling make you stiff?”
“No. Not at all. I’m quite well.” He popped upright, wearing another smile. This one without the cheek dimple. He held out a hand. She took it and made a careful exit, trying her best not toput any weight into his embrace. Trying also to appear as elegant as possible. Who knew who was watching, judging, as she made her descent. He kept telling her she need not worry, but how could she not? She must put on her mask once more, her fine, porcelain manners. Until she discovered otherwise.
“Alfie?” she called and quickly felt a small, warm hand slip into her own.
“Here, Mama.” He leaned in close. “This place is dark. And big.”
Wrapping an arm around his shoulders, she squeezed. “It will seem less so in the morning. With the sun.”
On one side of the house, between the drive and the woods, flames leapt into the sky, sent sparks flying. And everywhere, people milled about, chatting and drinking and singing songs. Several men stopped to slam palms into Atlas’s back, and ladies winked at him as they passed by. At his side, no one seemed to notice her and Alfie. But that invisibility felt easier, more natural, than the frost she’d shivered through when she’d met Everette’s family. The servants had lined up at noon beneath a blazing sun, his father stark in black and white, wearing nothing else but a silver watch chain and a thin-lipped frown. No, this was nothing like her arrival at Coledale. A good omen or?—
A cry wavered through the night, wrapping up the darkness and setting the stars to twinkling. “Atlas! You’re home!” A small body careened into Atlas, a flurry of skirts and falling cap and hair.
Clara bent to retrieve the woman’s cap, its lace worn thin. She could tell just through touch, without the help of light.
“Mother.” Atlas pried the woman from his neck and shoulders and set her before him on her own two feet. He laughed. “It’s been but a week.”
“And still I missed you, as mothers are wont to do.”
“I’ve brought a few guests with me.” He stepped aside, ushering Clara forward. “This is Mrs. Clara Bronwen. Clara, meet my mother, the dowager Marchioness of Waneborough.”
Lady Waneborough turned from whirlwind to statue, her pale face tilted toward Clara. “Mrs. Clara Bronwen. Excellent to meet you.” Her lips spread in a grin that could crack stone.
“And,” Atlas said, “this is her son, Mr. Alfred Simon Bronwen.”
Lady Waneborough knelt with a chuckle and crack of bone and tendon. “Oof. Not so easy as when I was a few years younger. You, Mr. Alfred.”
“Yes?” Alfie replied.
“Do your knees make unsuitable noises?”
Alfie lifted one leg and bent it and straightened it over and over again, his lower leg hinging on that quite mute knee. “No, they do not.”
“Ah. Silent knees are wasted on the young.” She pushed her palms into her thighs to stand. “Welcome, Mr. and Mrs. Bronwen. I am delighted to have guests but shocked it’s Atlas who has brought them.”
The fire crackled in the distance, voices hummed around them. All air seemed to dissolve.
“Clara and I,” Atlas said, “are engaged to be married.” Said during a lull in the festive noise. Surely everyone heard him say he’d brought a stranger here to wed.
Clara steeled her spine, squeezed Alfie’s hand tighter, and lifted her chin. She would act as if she belonged.
Lady Waneborough produced a high, keening sound accompanied by Atlas’s low curse and the furtive crunch of boots against gravel, growing louder.
“What the hell’s wrong now?” a masculine voice said from behind the wailing woman. A few steps of crunching gravel closer, and the man came into view, tall and well-built likeAtlas, but inches shorter. A less brutish version of her betrothed. Behind him appeared a lady with dark hair streaming down her back. She wore a red gown and crown of flowers in her hair, a cream shawl around her shoulders, and a suppressed grin on her lips. She clung to the man’s arm, peering at Lady Waneborough.
“Welcome back, Atlas,” the woman said. “What have you done to Franny?”
“I’ve just told Mother some news.” Atlas shifted from foot to foot.
The woman asked, “What news?”
Atlas seemed to grate a sigh to nothing with a grumble in his throat. “This”—he held a hand out to Clara and Alfie—“is Mrs. Clara Bronwen and her son, Alfred. Clara, may I introduce my eldest brother, Lord Waneborough. And his wife”—he nodded to the woman in red—“Lady Waneborough. Clara and I are?—”
“Engaged to be wed!” The dowager marchioness’s keening shaped itself into words.
Clara leaned over to Atlas, hissed into his ear. “I do not know what to do.”
