He cocked his head, listening, as he pulled down a cup and saucer from a shelf. “Perhaps the silly things finally tired themselves out.”
“Hopefully.”
He arranged a tray with the teapot, cup and saucer, a spoon, and a little jar of honey. “It may taste bitter at first.”
“Thank you.” I reached out to take it from him but he kept the tray on the counter, held firmly in place with his hands.
“Verity…I…I didn’t get the chance to truly speak with you in all of the excitement earlier, but I’m very pleased you’ll be joining our family. Alexander is quite…quite special and I’ve always known that whoever he chose to welcome into his heart would be as well.” He licked his lips. “I think he made an excellent choice.”
“Thank you, Lord Laurent. Gerard,” I amended.
“Father,” he offered. “Though, perhaps…that might be…” He sounded flustered. “Marriage can be a difficult undertaking, even in the best of circumstances, and I’m glad you have a working understanding of what our lives here are like. As a daughter of a duke—sister to a duchess—you understand that…families like ours have specific duties, obligations… I assume you were given lessons as a girl…？”
I thought back to my school days, listening to our governess drone on and on about taxes and tenants, storerooms and stewardship. I nodded.
“Good. Good. Excellent. Then you know how things are passed along from parents to children, within estates such as ours.”
I felt my face instantly redden and prayed to Pontus that he was talking about landholdings and not genetics. Camille’s words burned as hotly in my mind now as the night she’d hissed them at me.
No one is going to want a mad little fiancée, for a mad little wife, issuing out mad little children.
As much as it pained me to admit it, she was right. No one would.
Becoming engaged to Alex was a step toward securing my future but it still could so easily be snatched out from under me with one wrong word, one careless moment.
I’d been so close to telling Gerard the terrible things I’d seen in the poison garden. I did not doubt that if I had, Alex’s ring would not be sparkling upon my finger now.
I needed to be more vigilant. I needed to make sure Annaleigh’s candles were kept burning.
“Of course,” I murmured when it became clear he was waiting for an audible response.
“What sorts of things do you think you’ll pass on to yours?”
I froze, my heart thudding painfully in my chest and shooting its pulse to the end of my fingertips. They throbbed with the pressure.
He knew.
He knew something.
But how?
“You mean my dowry?” I asked, finding my voice. “I…I don’t know all the particulars of it. Camille does, of course.”
“Of course.” Gerard paused, as if struggling for the right words to continue. “You’ll become a fine duchess one day.” He opened his mouth, as if to say more, but I slid the tray away from him.
“I’m glad to hear you say how special Alexander is,” I started, fighting the urge to flee. “Perhaps you ought to tell him so more often. I think it would mean a great deal to him, hearing you say that.”
He blinked at me and I did my best not to look away first. “Perhaps you’re right.”
“I know I am…I think my tea is getting cold.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, of course.” He ran his fingers through his silver waves. Beet juice had made its way into his hairline, splattered in a fine mist of droplets. “I hope you have pleasant dreams, Verity, and that sleep finds you fast.”
I wished him a good night and took the tray upstairs, making sure to keep my footsteps regulated and unhurried, unbothered. I was not a girl running from a situation grown perilous. Everything was fine.
The tea was bitter, even sweetened with the largest dollop of honey I could stomach, but I did not hear the peacocks again.
I woke the next day confused, my bed damp and sour. The sun came through the windows at a strange angle, far too high in the sky, and it wasn’t until I glanced at the mantel clock that I realized I’d slept past noon.
There was a tapping at my door, persistent and small.
“Come…come in,” I said, my voice strange and raspy. It was horribly dry, as if I’d spent the entire night with my mouth open, slack and gaping. Whatever flower had been in Gerard’s tea, it had certainly done the trick.
Dauphine entered, carrying a giant ledger, and with a pair of footmen following her. One pushed a cart laden with silver domes and flatware. I prayed it contained a kettle full of coffee. The other footman held an intimidatingly tall stack of books.
Dauphine directed them to set everything in the sitting room and they were off.
“Just as I guessed,” she said, peeking into the bedroom with a knowing smile. I pulled the bedsheets up to my chin. “I wanted to let you sleep in longer, but there simply is so much to do, I fear we’ll never accomplish it all. Are you ready to start?”
“Start?”
“Wedding preparations, of course!”
“Oh.” I pushed back strands of wild hair, feeling slightly queasy. Last night Dauphine had drank even more champagne than me. How did she look so radiantly fresh? “Shouldn’t Alex be here for that as well?”
“My, someone is bleary when she wakes up,” she said with a smile, bustling about the room, pushing open curtains and tying their sashes back. “We really will need to find you an attendant now, I suppose.”
“Oh, that’s not necessary. I can just—”
“Of course it is,” Dauphine said, turning to study me. “You’re a part of this family now, Verity. We want for you to feel at home, and to be at home. You’re not simply a guest here anymore. Chauntilalie is your home too. We’ll see that you get all you need.”
I considered this carefully. “In that case…do you think it would be possible to switch out the candles used in my room?”
“Candles?” she echoed, blinking curiously about the suite.
I gestured to the crate of Annaleigh’s sage and salt tapers. “My sister sent me these. They remind me of Highmoor. I’d prefer if they were kept in my rooms. The staff keeps refreshing my candlesticks with these pink ones. They’re terribly pretty—but there’s such a distinct scent, even when they’re not lit.”
She picked up the taper I’d used the night before and gave it an experimental whiff. “I’m not even sure where these came from,” she admitted, wincing at the smell. “I’ll see that they’re all removed. In fact,” she said, jotting down the note, “I’ll make sure that’s the first thing your new valet does.”
“Bringing in another servant seems so wasteful. I could just borrow yours, as I need her.”
“Her? I don’t know who you mean.”
“Your maid. I never caught her name.”
She blinked at me curiously.
“She’s blond…with very dark eyes?”
“I don’t have a maid… Bastian is my valet. His hands are far more nimble than any scullery maid’s.” Her grin deepened, as if remembering exactly how dexterous those fingers were, and then she laughed. “My dresses always have the most impossibly tiny buttons.”