She Danced Alone In The Rain — Unaware The Duke Had Been Watching From The Window

The rain had been falling for three days. It came down soft and steady—the kind of rain that did not roar, but whispered; the kind that turned the stone paths of Ashbourne Manor dark and slick, and made the gardens smell of wet earth and crushed roses.

Inside the great house, the air was heavy with beeswax and wood smoke. The candles in the long gallery guttered each time a servant passed too quickly through the hall. 



Vivienne Ashcombe stood at the edge of the drawing room near the tall window that looked out toward the south garden, and she watched the rain. She had been watching it for nearly an hour. No one had spoken to her in that time; no one had needed to. She was a guest of the house, but the kind of guest a host forgets to introduce—the kind whose name slips from the tongue before it reaches the air. She was the second cousin of the Marchioness, brought along to fill a seat at dinner, brought along because someone had to be brought along. 

She had learned long ago that the trick to surviving such evenings was to stand very still and to look as though she were thinking deeply about something important. She was not thinking deeply about anything; she was counting the panes of glass in the window. There were 48. She had counted them twice. 

The drawing room behind her was loud with laughter and the clink of porcelain. Lady Marwick's daughters were at the pianoforte, taking turns at a duet they had not quite practiced enough. The older gentlemen were gathered near the fire, speaking of horses and roads and the price of wheat. The candles on the mantelpiece smelled of honey and old smoke, and somewhere in the room, a girl was laughing too loudly at something that was not very funny.

Vivienne adjusted her gloves. This was her routine. When she felt herself disappearing—when she felt the edges of herself begin to soften and blur into the wallpaper—she would smooth one finger down the seam of her left glove, slowly, from wrist to knuckle, and then do the same to the right. It was a small thing. No one ever noticed, but it reminded her that she was still there, still inside her own skin, still a person with a name even if no one in the room remembered to use it.

She was 23 years old. She had been to seven seasons. She had danced perhaps thirty times in her life, and she remembered each one because there had been so few. She was not ugly; she knew this because she had a small mirror in her trunk upstairs, and she looked at her own face every morning and saw a perfectly ordinary face with dark hair and gray eyes and a small mouth that turned down at the corners when she was tired. She was not ugly. She was simply the sort of person whose face the eye slid past—the sort of person who, in a crowded room, became part of the furniture.

Her mother had died when she was twelve. Her father had remarried within the year. Her stepmother, Lady Pelham, was a woman of strong opinions and stronger ambitions, and her ambitions had three daughters of her own to attend to. And so Vivienne had been folded into the household as something between a poor relation and a piece of useful luggage. She was clever, she was quiet, she did not complain, and she did not require expense. These were her virtues. She had heard them spoken aloud once by her stepmother to a friend in a voice that meant to be praising and was instead a kind of small, cold knife.

The pianoforte stopped. There was scattered applause. The youngest Marwick daughter stood and curtsied, her cheeks pink, and Vivienne smiled at her from across the room. The girl did not see her. 

The rain tapped at the window. The fire crackled. A footman moved past with a tray of small glasses, and the smell of sherry rose into the air, sharp and sweet, and was gone.

It was then that the room shifted.

Vivienne did not turn at first. She felt it before she saw it—a sort of small drawing inward of breath all around her, a stillness that traveled from the door into the room like a ripple across a pond. The conversations did not stop, exactly; they simply lowered. The laughter softened. The footman who had been pouring sherry straightened his back without being told.

She turned her head slowly, and she saw him.

The Duke of Westmere had entered the room.

She had heard of him; everyone had heard of him. He owned half the county and a portion of the next, and he had inherited the title three years ago from an uncle, and he had not been to a London season in those three years. The gossip about him was the kind of gossip that grew large in his absence. Some said he had been crossed in love. Some said he was cold. Some said he had a temper. Lady Pelham had said, only last week at breakfast, that he was the finest match in all of England, and that any woman who caught his eye would be made for life. Her three daughters had nodded over their tea as though this were a piece of practical advice and not a fairy tale.

He did not look like a fairy tale. He was a tall man, but not unusually so. His shoulders were heavy, and his hands were heavy, and he stood as if his weight belonged exactly where it was, as if the floor had been built to receive him. His hair was dark and slightly damp from the rain. His face was not handsome in the way the Marwick daughters meant when they spoke of handsome men; it was a face that had been used. The mouth was firm and a little tired. The eyes were dark, and they moved across the room the way a man's eyes move when he is looking for something he has not yet decided he wants.

Every servant in the room shifted very slightly when he stepped in. Not from fear—from habit. They knew him; they had known him as a boy, perhaps, in another house. The way they adjusted to his presence was the way trees adjust to a wind that has come through them many times before.

Lady Marwick was at his side at once, her hand on her own throat, her voice high with the pleasure of an honored guest. "Your Grace, what an unexpected delight. We had not hoped... we had not dared to hope." 

He inclined his head to her and said something polite. Vivienne could not hear the words from where she stood.

The Marwick daughters had risen from the pianoforte. They were arranging themselves now, not obviously, but with the careful efficiency of women who had been trained for exactly this moment. The eldest, Miss Honoria Marwick, was placed near the fire where the light would fall on her hair. The second, Miss Cressida, had drifted to the small table where the sherry was, holding a glass at a graceful angle. The youngest had returned to the pianoforte and was sitting at it as though she had only just thought of playing, her fingers resting lightly on the keys.

Vivienne turned back to the window. She did not have a role in this; she had never had a role in this. She smoothed her left glove down from her wrist to her knuckle, and then she smoothed her right glove down from her wrist to her knuckle. And she watched the rain.

A drop of water slid down the outside of the glass. It moved slowly, then quickly, then slowly again, and it joined another drop near the wooden sill, and the two became one and slid out of sight.

Behind her, the room was a low hum of arrangement. Names were being offered; daughters were being presented. Lady Marwick's voice rose and fell with the practiced music of a hostess who knew her business. Vivienne could feel, without looking, the gentle pressure of the room organizing itself around the Duke, the way iron filings organize themselves around a magnet.

She thought about the rain. She thought about the south garden. She had walked in it the first morning of her visit before anyone else was awake, and she had found a low stone bench beneath a hawthorn tree, and there had been a path of round, flat stones leading from the bench down through the rose garden to the small pond at the far end. The stones had been wet then with dew. She had taken her shoes off just for a moment, just for the feel of the wet stones against her bare feet, and she had been very glad that no one had seen her do it.

She thought about how the rain would feel on her face. It was not a plan, exactly. It was more a small thought, the kind of thought that lives quietly in the back of the mind for a while before the body decides to act on it.

She watched the rain for another long moment. The drawing room behind her hummed with introductions and laughter and the smell of sherry and the faint perfume of the Marwick daughters, who had each chosen a different scent and stood close enough together that the scents had become a single, confused cloud.

No one would notice if she left the room; they had not noticed her standing in it.

She turned smoothly, without hurry. She walked along the edge of the room behind the line of older ladies seated on the chairs, and she slipped through the open doorway into the long gallery.

---

The gallery was cooler. The candles here were fewer and the light was honey-colored, and the floor was a polished oak that creaked very faintly under her slippers. She walked to the end of the gallery. There was a door there that led to a small terrace, and from the terrace, three shallow steps went down to the south garden. She had used the door once before, on her first morning, when she had gone out to find the bench beneath the hawthorn.

She set her hand on the brass latch. The brass was cold. She pressed it down, and the door eased open without a sound, and the smell of the wet garden came in to meet her—the smell of soaked earth and bruised leaves, and the green, sweet smell of rain on rose stems. She stepped through and shut the door behind her.

The rain was not heavy. It was the kind of rain that falls in long, thin threads—the kind that hangs in the air more than it falls, the kind that catches on the eyelashes and the wrists and the hair without ever soaking through to the skin all at once.

She lifted her face to it. The cold of it ran along her temples and into her hair, and she let out a small breath she had not known she was holding.

She walked down the three shallow steps. The stone was slick beneath her slippers, and she put one hand briefly on the iron rail to steady herself. At the bottom of the steps, the gravel path crunched under her feet, and beyond the gravel, the round, flat stones began. They led her down between the rose beds toward the small pond at the far end of the garden.

The roses were not in bloom yet; it was too early in the season. But the bushes were heavy with new green, and the rain had bent them slightly, and they smelled, even without flowers, of something living and clean.

Vivienne moved between them with her arms held lightly at her sides. The rain fell on her hair, which she had pinned that morning in the simple twist she always wore. The pins were beginning to slip; she could feel one of them slide loose at the back of her neck, and she did not put it back. 

At the end of the rose path, she stopped. She was standing on a small circle of flat stones that had been laid into the lawn—a kind of paved island in the center of the garden where four paths met. The pond was just beyond it. The hawthorn tree was behind her, and beyond the hawthorn was the dark mass of the manor. Somewhere in that mass was a tall window full of yellow light, and that yellow light was the drawing room she had just left.

She thought of the drawing room as if from very far away. She thought of the Marwick daughters arranged like flowers, and the smell of sherry, and the duet that had not quite been practiced enough.

She did something she had not done since she was eight years old. She lifted her arms. She was not certain, even as she did it, where the movement came from. It was the rain, perhaps. It was the green smell. It was the fact that no one could see her and no one could hear her, and the garden was hers, and the rain was hers, and her body, for once, in this small, wet circle of stones, belonged to no one in any room.

She lifted her arms, and she turned. Slowly at first, she tilted her face to the gray sky. Her skirts, which were a plain dark green muslin she had owned for two seasons, lifted slightly with the turn, and the rain ran down her cheeks and down her throat, and into the open collar of her gown, and she did not mind it.

She turned again, faster this time, and then again, and then she was dancing.

It was not a real dance; she did not know any real dance well enough to perform it alone. It was something simpler than a dance—the memory of a dance, the kind of dance a child does when she is happy and no one is watching, the kind of dance that has no name and no steps and no music. Her feet moved across the wet stones, and her arms moved with her, and her hair came loose entirely, the long dark fall of it heavy with rain. She laughed once—a small, startled sound—because it had been so long since she had laughed, and she had forgotten what her own laugh sounded like.

She danced. She did not know for how long. The rain came down on her shoulders and her face and her hands, and the world smelled of wet roses and wet earth and wet stone, and her slippers were ruined and she did not care.

She did not see the window. She did not see, three stories up in the dark mass of the manor, a tall, narrow window on the east face of the second floor, where the Duke of Westmere had stepped to look at the sky.

---

He had come into the drawing room, accepted the hostess's greetings, met the daughters, and exchanged the small, careful sentences that the situation required. He had refused sherry. He had refused a seat. Within five minutes of his arrival, he had noted that the room contained nothing he had come for and several things he had not. He had asked Lady Marwick if he might be shown to the room where he was to dress for dinner, and she had been delighted to send him there with a footman and the promise of hot water and a fire.

The room he was given was on the second floor at the east end of the gallery. It had a tall, narrow window. He had dismissed the footman and he had stood at the window for a moment simply to be alone. And he had looked down into the south garden, and he had seen her.

He had not known who she was. He had not seen her in the drawing room; he had registered in the way one registers a piece of furniture that the room had been full of people, but he had not registered her. 

He saw her now. She was standing in the middle of a small, paved circle in the center of the garden. The rain was on her. Her hair was down. Her arms were raised. She was turning. 

He stood very still at the window. He was the Duke of Westmere. He was 31 years old. He had been a soldier for four years and a peer for three, and in his life, he had seen a great many things and a great many women. He had been pursued by daughters and by mothers and by aunts and by widows, and he had stood in a great many rooms and watched a great many performances arranged for his benefit. He had never in his life watched a woman dance alone in the rain.

It was not a graceful thing she was doing. It was not the dance of a ballroom. Her arms were not lifted in the careful position a dancing master would have taught her. Her feet were not in any pattern. Her hair was loose. Her skirts were heavy with water, and they slapped against her ankles when she turned. She was not dancing for anyone. She was dancing because the rain was falling and because she was alone and because something in her had told her, evidently, that this was a thing she could do here, in this garden, and that no one would see.

He should have looked away. He knew this. A gentleman did not stand at a window and watch a woman in an unguarded moment. He knew this as he knew the rules of any other game he had played in his life. He did not look away.

He watched her turn. The rain caught on his window in fine, thin lines. The garden below was dim with the gray light of late afternoon. He could not see her face well; he could see only the shape of her, the lift of her arms, the slow turn, the loose hair, the way her head fell back when she tilted her face to the sky.

She was laughing. He could not hear her, but he could see her shoulders move with it and the small, sudden tilt of her chin. He could not remember the last time he had seen a woman laugh because she was happy and not because she was performing.

He stood at the window for a long time. When she finally stopped turning, she stood for a moment with her arms still raised, her face still tilted to the rain, as if she did not want to put her arms down because putting them down would mean it was over. Then, she lowered her arms slowly. She pushed her wet hair back from her face. She looked at her hands, which were wet, and she looked at the stones at her feet, which were wet, and she let out a long breath he could not hear.

She turned, and she walked back along the path of round stones toward the manor, and she disappeared from his view beneath the eaves of the terrace.

The Duke remained at the window. He had been told downstairs the names of the women in the drawing room, but he had not retained them. He retained them now. He went over them again in his mind, and he counted them, and he subtracted the daughters of the house, and he subtracted the older ladies seated on the chaise, and he subtracted the two married women he had been introduced to by name.

What remained was a count that did not match. There had been a woman in that room he had not been introduced to.

He thought back. He tried to picture the room. He could not picture her. He could picture the daughters at the pianoforte and the older ladies, and the gentlemen at the fire, and the footman with the sherry tray. He could not picture the woman who must have been standing somewhere in the room, who must have slipped out through the gallery door, who must have walked down the three shallow steps and onto the stones. He had not seen her. She had been in the room, and he had not seen her.

He turned away from the window and rang the bell.

The footman who answered was the same one who had brought him up. The Duke asked him, in a level voice, who else was staying in the house this week, beyond the family and the two married couples he had been introduced to.

The footman, who was young and eager, listed them. There was the Reverend Hartley and his wife. There was Mr. Coltrane, who had come for the shooting. There was Lady Pelham and her three daughters, who were friends of Lady Marwick from London. And there was Lady Pelham's stepdaughter, who had come with them.

"What is her name?" the Duke asked.

The footman thought for a moment. "Miss Ashcombe, Your Grace. Miss Vivienne Ashcombe."

The Duke nodded once. The footman waited, but the Duke did not give him anything else, and the footman bowed and went away.

The Duke stood for a long time in the middle of the room. The fire had been lit, and the wood smelled of pine, the smoke rising in a clean line. He listened to the sound of the rain on the window—the same rain that had been on her hair and her shoulders.

And he thought: he was a man who had been lied to. He was a man who had spent three seasons watching young women practice the lift of a fan, and the slow turn of a head, and the careful sad smile, and the careful bright laugh. He was a man who had begun to believe that nothing he saw in a drawing room was real.

He had not come to Ashbourne to find a wife. He had come because Lord Marwick had been his father's oldest friend, and because he had owed this visit for two years, and because he had finally run out of excuses. He had not expected, at this house, in this rain, to see a woman who did not know she was being watched doing something true.

He did not yet know what to do with what he had seen. He only knew that he had seen it. And he knew, with the slow certainty of a man who had learned to trust his own instincts after long mistrust, that whatever else happened in this house that week, he would not leave it without speaking to Miss Vivienne Ashcombe.

He went to dress for dinner.

---

Dinner was at 7:00.

Vivienne came down in a gown of pale gray silk that had been her mother's, and that she had altered badly, twice, but that fit her well enough by candlelight. Her hair was dry now, pinned again in the simple twist, and only she knew that beneath the twist the pins were not in their usual places because her hair was still slightly damp at the roots and would not hold.

She entered the dining room behind Lady Pelham—two steps behind, as was her habit. The room was long and the table was longer, and the candelabra threw a warm yellow light on the silver and the glass and the white linen. The smell was of roasted meat and wine and the faint, sharp smell of horseradish. The footmen stood very straight against the walls.

Lady Marwick was already at the head of the table. The other guests were finding their places. The Duke of Westmere stood near the chair on Lady Marwick's right. He was looking at the door.

He saw her come in.

She did not see him at once. She was looking for her place card. Lady Pelham was already seated, and her three daughters were arranging themselves in the chairs nearest the Duke with a sort of careful casualness that fooled no one and embarrassed no one, because everyone in the room understood the rules of the game.

Vivienne found her card. It was at the far end of the table beside the Reverend Hartley, who was a kind, deaf old man who liked to eat in silence. She moved toward it.

She felt the Duke's gaze before she identified its source. It was the same feeling she had felt earlier in the drawing room when he had entered—the small drawing inward of the air—except that this time it was directed entirely at her.

She lifted her eyes. She found him across the table. He was looking at her steadily.

She did not blush; she was too surprised to blush. She held his gaze for one full breath because she could not think what else to do, and then she inclined her head very slightly, the way a person does when they are acknowledging a stranger they will not pretend not to have seen. She sat down beside the Reverend Hartley.

Lady Marwick began the seating. There was a small confusion. The Duke remained standing.

"Lady Marwick," he said. His voice was low and easy and carried perfectly down the table. "Forgive me. I find I have been seated in the wrong place."

Lady Marwick blinked. "Your Grace, I—"

"It is my fault entirely," he said. "I should have looked at the cards. I see now that mine is at the other end."

He picked up his place card, which was where it had been placed, beside Miss Honoria Marwick. And he walked the length of the long table—past the candelabra, past the row of footmen, past the soup tureen—and he set his place card down beside Vivienne's.

The room went still. It was not the same stillness as when he had entered the drawing room. That had been the stillness of arrival. This was the stillness of disbelief.

Lady Pelham's mouth opened very slightly. Miss Honoria Marwick had gone the particular color of a woman who has just understood that she will not in this lifetime have what she had been told she might have. Lady Marwick herself stared at the Duke as though he had begun speaking a foreign language.

The Duke sat down. He picked up his napkin and laid it across his lap.

"Miss Ashcombe," he said. He said her name the way a man says the name of a place he has been before. "I do not believe we have been introduced. I am Westmere."

Vivienne stared at him. She had not been spoken to in this manner in seven seasons. She had not been spoken to at all in any manner by a man of his rank in her entire life. She had a sudden, vivid memory of the rain on her face and her hair coming loose and the laugh that had startled out of her in the south garden. And she felt, for one terrible, bright moment, that he knew. She did not know how he could know, but she felt it.

She lifted her chin. "Your Grace," she said, her voice perfectly steady. "How do you do?"

"I do well," he said. "And you?"

"I am well."

He said nothing for a moment. The Reverend Hartley, on her other side, was eating his soup with both hands on his spoon and was not aware that anything unusual had happened. At the other end of the table, Lady Marwick recovered herself enough to begin a brave conversation with her husband about the weather.

The Duke said, in a quieter voice, "I am told you came with Lady Pelham."

"I am her husband's daughter," Vivienne said, "from his first marriage."

"I see."

"I am not certain that you do, Your Grace."

She had not meant to say it. She heard it leave her mouth and she could not call it back. She kept her face composed.

He looked at her. There was something in his expression she could not read. He was not offended; he was not amused, either. He seemed, rather, to be considering her with a careful attention she had not been the subject of in a very long time.

"Tell me, then," he said, "what it is I do not see."

Vivienne set down her spoon. The soup smelled of leek and cream and a small, sharp note of pepper. She breathed in once, slowly, and out again.

"You have come to sit beside me," she said. "And you have done it in front of the whole table. You do not know me. I have been in this house for four days, and you have been here for three hours. Whatever you imagine you have seen, Your Grace, I assure you I am quite ordinary."

He did not answer at once. When he did, his voice was very low. "I do not imagine you are ordinary, Miss Ashcombe."

She held his gaze. She could feel her pulse in the soft place beneath her jaw. The candles were close to her face and the wax smelled of honey, and the silver of her spoon was warm where her hand had rested on it.

"Then you are mistaken," she said. "Which is perhaps the more interesting possibility."

He smiled. It was the first time she had seen him smile. It was not a wide smile, and it was not directed at the room; it was a small movement of his mouth, contained and surprised—the smile of a man who had not expected to be answered in this particular way, and who was, against his own intention, pleased.

"Perhaps," he said. He picked up his spoon. "Tell me about your soup."

"My soup, Your Grace?"

"The Reverend Hartley does not seem inclined to discuss it."

She looked, in spite of herself, at the Reverend Hartley, who was eating his soup with the patient gravity of an old man who has eaten many soups. She felt, suddenly and absurdly, the urge to laugh. She did not laugh. She picked up her spoon again.

"It is leek," she said. "And there is a great deal of cream in it."

"Is that all you have to say of it?"

"It would not be improved by my saying more."

He did laugh then. It was a quiet sound, almost private, and it did not carry beyond the two of them. Down the table, Miss Honoria Marwick stabbed a piece of bread with her butter knife.

They did not speak again for the rest of the soup course. He turned his attention to the woman on his other side, a Mrs. Coltrane, who was happy to have it. Vivienne ate her soup. She was aware, in the small, precise way one is aware of a candle in a dark room, of his presence beside her. She was aware of the line of his sleeve where it lay near hers on the white cloth. She was aware that he did not turn back to her, and yet that he was not, in any meaningful sense, looking away.

She did not understand it. She did not try to. She thought instead about the rain. She thought about it because thinking about the rain was easier than thinking about why a duke had moved his place card.

---

That night, in the small chamber she had been given at the end of the east corridor, she sat at the edge of the bed with her hair down and her gown laid across a chair, and she stared at the candle on the table until the flame doubled in her eyes.

She did not think it meant anything. She told herself this firmly. Men of his rank moved about a table as it pleased them and were forgiven for it. Tomorrow he would forget she existed, as everyone forgot she existed, and she would go back to counting panes of glass.

She blew the candle out. She lay down.

The rain had stopped. The house creaked around her—the small settling sounds of old wood—and she could hear, somewhere far below, the closing of a heavy door. She slept.

---

The next morning, the rain had returned, lighter now, and the breakfast room smelled of coffee and warm bread and the faint, sweet smell of orange marmalade.

Vivienne came in early. She had always come in early. The room was nearly empty.

The Duke was there. He was at the long sideboard, helping himself to a slice of cold ham. He looked up when she entered. "Miss Ashcombe."

"Your Grace."

She went to the sideboard. She took a piece of toast and a small spoonful of marmalade. She poured herself a cup of coffee. She sat down at the far end of the table where she always sat. He sat down opposite her.

She looked at him. "You will give the household ideas," she said.

"I am aware."

"And yet?"

"And yet?" He took a piece of ham on the end of his knife.

She buttered her toast. The butter was cold and it tore the bread in places. She did not mind. "Why?" she asked.

She had not meant to ask. It came out as she had been thinking it, plain like a thing said in one's own kitchen.

He looked at her chimneys across the courtyard through the glass, then directly at her. "I should like to know you," he said, "if you will permit it."

She set down her knife. "That is not an answer to the question I asked."

"No," he said, "it is not."

She waited. He did not look away. The morning light was thin and gray, and it fell on the side of his face and on his hands, which were broad and not soft. He had the look of a man who had been outdoors a great deal in his life. He turned his coffee cup once in its saucer.

"I will give you an answer," he said, "but not today. May I have the rest of the week?"

"I am not certain you require my permission for anything, Your Grace."

"I require it for this."

She studied him. There was no flattery in his face. There was no smoothness; he was not performing. She had spent her life watching people perform, and she knew the difference between a man who was offering a polished thing and a man who was offering a plain one.

"Very well," she said, "until the end of the week."

He inclined his head. He did not press her. He spoke of other things. He spoke of his estate briefly, and of a problem he had with a section of fence that had been knocked down by a storm. He asked her if she had ridden much in her life, and she said she had ridden a little when she was young and that she had not had occasion since. He nodded as though this was useful information and did not press her on it.

When Lady Pelham came in with two of her daughters in tow, the Duke rose, bowed to them civilly, and excused himself. He did not look at Vivienne as he went.

Lady Pelham sat down across from her stepdaughter and stared at her for a long moment. "What," she said in a low voice, "did you say to him?"

"Nothing of consequence."

"Vivienne, do not be a fool. What did you say?"

"I said that I was quite ordinary."

Her stepmother's mouth tightened. "That was clever. That was very clever. I had not thought you capable of cleverness of that kind."

"It was not cleverness," Vivienne said. "It was the truth."

Her stepmother stared at her, and then she laughed—a small, dry laugh that had no warmth in it—and she helped herself to coffee.

---

Two days passed in this manner. The Duke did not seek Vivienne out in any obvious way. He did not sit beside her at dinner again, having made his point. He did not single her out at the drawing room evenings. But every morning, he was in the breakfast room when she arrived, and they spoke for twenty minutes about nothing and about everything. He asked her questions she had not been asked before, and he listened to her answers as if her answers mattered to him. He did not flatter her, he did not touch her, he did not even smile at her often, but he did not look at anyone else when she was speaking.

She found that, against her own intentions, she had begun to look forward to the breakfast room.

On the third morning, after he had gone out, Lady Pelham was waiting for her in the corridor. "Walk with me," her stepmother said.

They walked the length of the gallery in silence. The portraits of the Marwick ancestors watched them with painted indifference. At the far end of the gallery, where a window looked down into the garden Vivienne had danced in, Lady Pelham stopped.

"You will end this," her stepmother said.

Vivienne looked at her. "End what?"

"Do not be slow with me. It does not suit you. You will end whatever it is you are doing with the Duke."

"I am not doing anything with the Duke."

"You are doing something. He is sitting at breakfast with you. Honoria has not slept in two nights. Cressida was crying behind the curtain last evening. I will not have it, Vivienne. I will not have my daughters watch their season collapse because you have decided at twenty-three to amuse yourself with a man who is twenty thousand pounds above you."

"I am not amusing myself."

"Then what are you doing?"

Vivienne did not answer at once. She looked out of the window at the south garden. The bench beneath the hawthorn was wet and dark. "He has asked," she said carefully, "for permission to speak with me until the end of the week. I have given it."

Lady Pelham laughed. The laugh was not a kind sound. "You poor, plain creature," she said, "do you imagine he means anything by it?"

Vivienne went very still.

"You have not looked in a glass lately, have you, Vivienne? Let me describe what is in the glass: a woman with no beauty, no fortune, no name to speak of, and a way of standing in a corner that makes other people forget she is there. You have been in seven seasons. Seven. And you have not been asked. Why do you imagine the Duke of Westmere, who has half the heiresses of England held up to him like cakes on a tray, would choose to look at you? Why?"

The corridor was quiet. Somewhere, a clock ticked.

"He is amusing himself, Vivienne, that is all. He is bored in this house and you are a curiosity. When the week ends, he will go back to London and you will go back to my drawing room and we will continue as before, except that my daughters will have suffered. And that, my dear, I will not forget."

Vivienne looked at her stepmother. She did not cry; she had stopped crying at twelve and she had not started again. She felt her own breath in her throat, very even, very slow. "I see," she said.

"Do you?"

"I see what you mean me to see."

"Yes, good. Then we are agreed. You will not be in the breakfast room tomorrow. You will be unwell. You will be unwell for the rest of the week."

Vivienne did not answer.

"Vivienne! You will be unwell."

"I will think on it."

Lady Pelham's hand closed on her wrist. The grip was not gentle; the lace of Vivienne's cuff dug into her skin. "You will be unwell," her stepmother said, each word clean and precise. "You are not the sort of woman who can afford to imagine. Imagining is for women with dowries. You have none. Do not forget what you are."

She released Vivienne's wrist and walked away down the gallery. The sound of her steps faded.

Vivienne stood at the window for a long time. The wet garden below was empty. The bench beneath the hawthorn was wet and dark, and the round, flat stones were dark with rain.

She did not cry. She did, however, do one small, precise thing. She walked back along the gallery to her chamber. She rang the bell. When the maid came, she said, very calmly, that she would not be coming down to dinner that evening and that she would be glad of a tray in her room. She did not say she was unwell; she said only that she would not be coming down.

The maid, who liked Vivienne and who had not enjoyed serving Lady Pelham, nodded and went away.

Vivienne sat at her small writing desk by the window. She took out a sheet of paper. She wrote, in her clear, small hand, three lines. She folded the paper and sealed it. She wrote on the front in the same clear hand: *His Grace the Duke of Westmere.*

She rang the bell again. When the maid returned, she handed her the note. "Will you give this to His Grace's man?" she said. "Before dinner."

The maid took it. She did not ask any questions. She went.

Vivienne sat at the writing desk for a long time afterward. The light outside the window grayed and grayed, and at last became the blue of evening, and the rain began again softly, and she watched it on the glass.

She had written in the note only this:

> Your Grace,
> I will not be at dinner this evening. If you should find yourself by some chance in the south garden tomorrow morning at 7:00, I should be glad to give you the answer to a question you have not yet asked. 
> — V. A.

She did not know, as she sat there, whether he would come. She knew only that she would be in the south garden at 7:00, and that she would say what she had to say, and that she would be done with imagining one way or the other.

The dinner bell rang somewhere in the house. She did not move. 

The maid brought her a tray. There was a piece of cold chicken on it, a small bowl of pudding, and a glass of watered wine. She ate slowly. She ate all of it. She told herself that whatever happened tomorrow, she would not face it on an empty stomach.

Outside, the rain fell softly on the south garden, on the bench beneath the hawthorn, on the round, flat stones where she had danced.

---

Below in the dining room, at the long table under the candelabra, the Duke of Westmere noticed at once that her place was empty. He did not ask after her; he waited.

It was the second course before Lady Pelham found a way, with a small, sad smile, to mention to him that her dear stepdaughter was feeling somewhat unwell and had begged to be excused. He inclined his head. He said he was sorry to hear it. He said he hoped she would be better very soon.

He ate his dinner. He spoke to Mrs. Coltrane on his right and to Miss Cressida Marwick on his left. He was civil, he was attentive, he was—to anyone watching—the model of a guest.

He had, however, two hours earlier received from his valet a folded sheet of paper with three lines in a clear, small hand, and he had read those three lines twice. He had then sat down at his own writing desk and burned the note in the candle flame, because it was the kind of note one did not leave in a house full of curious eyes.

After dinner, in the drawing room, he stayed half an hour longer than he wished to. He played a single hand of whist. He took a cup of tea. He spoke kindly to Lady Marwick. At 10:00, he excused himself.

In his room, he stood for a long time at the tall, narrow window. The rain had stopped. The garden below was very dark. He could just see, faintly, the pale lines of the round, flat stones in the center of the lawn. He stood there until the candle on his table had burned down by half.

---

At 7:00 the next morning, in a fine, cold mist that was not quite rain and not quite fog, Vivienne stood on the round, flat stones in the south garden in a plain dark cloak and waited.

He came. She heard his step on the gravel before she saw him. He came around the curve of the rose path, his hat in his hand, his coat damp at the shoulders, and he stopped at the edge of the small paved circle where she stood.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. The mist was on his eyelashes; it was on her hair. The smell of the garden was clean and green and a little bitter from the new leaves.

"You came," she said.

"I would have come at any hour."

She let out a small breath. It was almost a laugh and almost not. "I have something to say to you," she said.

"I am listening."

She had thought all night about how she would begin. She had practiced sentences; she had abandoned them. Now, standing here in front of him in the cold morning, with the wet stones under her shoes and the mist beading on her face, she found she had only the plain truth.

"My stepmother," she said, "told me yesterday that you are amusing yourself with me. She said that you cannot mean anything by what you have been doing. She said that I am too plain and too poor and too small to be looked at by you, and that when the week ends, you will leave this house and forget me."

She said this in a manner that made it clear she meant it as a statement of fact, not an accusation. She paused, watching his face. His expression had not changed.

"I am here," she said, "because I would rather know the truth this morning than at the end of the week. If she is right, Your Grace, I shall not blame you. I shall not weep. I shall simply ask that you spend the rest of the week with your hostess's daughters where it was intended that you should, and that you let me go quietly back to the corner where I belong. I will not make a scene. I am very good at not making scenes; I have practiced it."

She stopped. The mist was cold on her throat. 

He did not speak at once. When he did, his voice was very low. "Miss Ashcombe, I owe you an answer. I asked for until the end of the week. I do not require until the end of the week. I will give it to you now."

She held herself very still.

"Three days ago," he said, "I stood at the window of my room and looked down into this garden. It was raining. I had been in this house less than an hour. I had been in the drawing room with twenty people in it. I had spoken with the hostess and her daughters. I had refused sherry. I had asked to be shown to my room because I could not bear another quarter of an hour in that drawing room, and because I had decided already that I would do my duty to my host for one evening and leave in the morning."

He stopped, looking at her directly.

"I stood at the window," he said, "because I did not yet wish to ring for my man. I looked down into this garden. I saw a woman alone on these stones. She was dancing in the rain. Her arms were lifted and her hair was loose and she was laughing. She did not know she was being watched. She was not dancing for anyone; she was dancing because the rain was falling and because she was, for a few minutes, free of every room she had ever been required to stand in."

Vivienne could not breathe.

"I watched her," he said. "I should not have; I knew it. I watched her anyway. I watched her for a long time. And when she walked back into the house, I stood at that window and I tried to remember her face from the drawing room. I could not. I had not seen her. She had been in the room, and I had not seen her. And I am not a man who is easily made ashamed, Miss Ashcombe, but I was ashamed."

He paused, letting the words settle between them.

"I asked the footman who had been in the house that week. He gave me five names. Yours was the only one I had not registered. I went down to dinner. I saw you come in. I knew you at once. I moved my place card because I did not intend to sit at the wrong end of the table from the only person in the room I had come to find."

The wet stones glistened. A bird called once somewhere beyond the wall and was answered by another farther off.

"You asked me in the breakfast room why," he said. "I told you I should like the week. I did not want to give you that answer in the breakfast room. I will give it to you now: I have spent three years refusing to attend the season because I have grown weary of women who have been trained from the cradle to be looked at. I do not blame them for it—it is what the world has required of them. But I have not been able to find in all those rooms one woman who, when she believed she was alone, behaved as though her life belonged to her. I had begun to think such a woman did not exist."

He stopped, stepping closer to the edge of the stone circle. "I saw you," he said, "before I knew your name. I am not telling you this to flatter you. I am telling you that what I have done in this house since I arrived has not been an amusement. I do not amuse myself; I have not the temperament for it. I am here this morning because you wrote a note that took courage, and because the answer I owe you cannot wait until tomorrow."

He took another small step toward her. "Your stepmother is mistaken, Miss Ashcombe. She is mistaken in every particular. I will say so to her with your permission before the noon hour. If you do not give me that permission, I will say it to her anyway, but I would rather have your permission."

Vivienne stood on the wet stones, the mist beading on her eyelashes. She could feel her own pulse in her throat. "You watched me," she said, her voice very small.

"From the window. Yes."

"I did not know."

"I know you did not. That is what made it the truest thing I have seen in a long time."

She looked away from him, down at the round, flat stones. The mist had darkened them; a few small leaves had blown into the cracks between them. Her slippers, the same slippers she had ruined three days ago, were wet again.

"I do not know what to say," she said.

"You do not have to say anything this morning."

"I should like to."

"Then say it."

She lifted her eyes to him. "I do not know if I can do what you imagine I might be able to do," she said. "I have been the woman in the corner for a long time. I do not know if I remember how to be anything else."

"I am not asking you to be anything else. I am asking you to be what you were on these stones."

"I cannot dance in the rain every day, Your Grace."

His mouth moved very slightly; it was almost a smile. "I am not asking you to dance every day. I am asking you to consider me—slowly, with as much suspicion as you require. I will give you all the time you need. I will give you the rest of my life if you require it. I will not give up because your stepmother has told you to send me away."

"She will be very angry."

"She will."

"My place in her house will be impossible."

"Your place in her house," he said, "is the place I would like, if you permit it, to remove you from."

The bird called again. She looked at him for a long, measuring moment.

"You may speak to her," she said. "Before noon."

He inclined his head. "And you," he said, "may I come to you this afternoon and sit in a room with you and ask you the questions I have not yet asked?"

"You may."

"Thank you, Miss Ashcombe."

There was a long pause. The mist was lifting very slightly, and somewhere over the wall, the sun was attempting to break through.

"Will you take my arm," he asked, "as far as the terrace?"

She considered it. "Yes," she said.

He offered his arm. She took it. His coat was damp under her hand. He smelled of rain and wood smoke and something underneath that she could still not name, and she did not try to name it. They walked together along the path of round, flat stones between the rose beds, up the three shallow steps to the small terrace door. He opened the door for her, saying nothing more, bowing to her once before she went inside.

---

He did not, in fact, wait until noon.

He went directly to Lady Marwick. He thanked her for her hospitality, told her that an important matter required his immediate attention, and that he would be remaining at Ashbourne another fortnight, with her permission, if she could spare him the room. Lady Marwick, who could spare him the room indefinitely, agreed at once.

He then asked her where Lady Pelham was to be found. She was found in the small morning room with her three daughters and a piece of embroidery.

The Duke entered. He bowed to all four ladies and asked, in a voice of perfect courtesy, if he might have a private word with Lady Pelham.

Lady Pelham rose at once, her color high. The daughters were sent out, and the door was closed. What was said inside that room was not heard by anyone in the house. The footman in the corridor reported afterward that the Duke's voice was very low and very even throughout; Lady Pelham's voice was heard once, briefly, at a high pitch, and then not again.

The interview lasted seventeen minutes. When the Duke came out, he was as composed as when he had gone in. Lady Pelham did not come out for some time. When she did, she went directly to her room.

At luncheon, she did not appear. Her three daughters appeared, very subdued, and ate very little. The Marwick daughters appeared and were brave. Vivienne appeared and sat in her usual seat. The Duke sat opposite her. He did not speak to her across the table; he spoke to Mrs. Coltrane and to Lady Marwick. But once, in the middle of the meal, when she happened to look up, she found him looking at her. He did not look away, and she did not look away, and the look lasted for the length of one slow breath, and it said everything that needed to be said in a public room.

---

The afternoon was theirs.

He came to the small library at 3:00, where she had told him she would be. They sat in two chairs near the fire. He asked her the questions he had said he would ask, and she answered them. She asked him questions of her own, and he answered them. The fire burned down by half.

A footman brought tea. The tea grew cold and was taken away, and another pot was brought. They were not alone; the library door was open, and Mrs. Coltrane sat at a small writing desk at the far end of the room, writing letters—an excellent and unnoticing chaperone. But the conversation between the Duke and Vivienne was a private one, conducted in low voices, and it covered in the course of three hours more ground than most engaged couples cover in a year.

At the end of it, he said, "I do not ask for an answer now. I will ask for one before I leave this house. Not before."

She nodded.

"I should tell you, however," he said, "that I do not expect to leave this house alone."

She looked at him. "I should not like to imagine," she said carefully, "what that means, in case I am wrong."

"You are not wrong."

There was a small silence.

"Your Grace," she said.

"Yes."

"I should like to know something."

"Anything."

"That first day, in the garden... when you watched, did you mean to?"

He thought about it, then gave her the truth. "No," he said, "I did not mean to. I meant only to look at the sky for a moment before I rang for my man, but once I had seen you, I could not look away."

"I did not know I was being watched. I have never danced in front of anyone."

"I know."

She looked at the fire for a long moment. "I am glad it was you," she said quietly.

He did not answer; he did not need to. He came to her very simply and he took her hand. He did not kiss her, and he did not say anything elaborate. He held her hand in both of his briefly and then he set it down on the arm of the chair gently, as if he were setting down something precious that had been entrusted to him.

"I will see you at dinner," he said.

"Yes," she said, "you will."

He went out.

---

The fortnight passed. She did not need it; she knew on the third day of it what her answer would be, and he knew it, too. But they used the time anyway. They walked in the garden. They rode out together once slowly when the weather permitted. He took her to the small chapel on the estate and showed her, without comment, the stone in the floor where his mother was buried. She did not say anything in reply, but she put her hand on his arm and left it there.

There was one afternoon in the second week when Vivienne was sitting in the library and the housekeeper came in with a question about the linens for the guest rooms. After the housekeeper had gone, the head footman, an older man named Mr. Pelham, came to Vivienne and asked her if he might speak frankly. She said yes.

He told her that yesterday, a young scullery maid—no more than fourteen—had broken a porcelain dish in the back kitchen and had been beside herself for fear that the cost of it would come from her wages for a year, and that the Duke had come through the back kitchen on his way to the stables and had found her crying. He had asked her what was the matter, and she had told him. He had told her that the dish belonged to no one she need worry about and that the matter was forgotten. He had said it in a voice that meant no one was to mention it again, and he had not mentioned it himself.

"He did not know I was in the next room," Mr. Pelham said. "I saw it through the half-open door. I thought you might wish to know what manner of man he is when he believes no one of importance is watching."

Vivienne thanked him. She did not say anything to the Duke about it; she kept it instead as a small folded memory, and she took it out sometimes in the evenings and looked at it.

---

On the last day of the fortnight, in the south garden, on the round, flat stones where she had danced, he asked her his question. She gave him her answer.

The mist was not in the air that day; the sun was bright on the wet leaves, and the roses had begun finally to open.

The announcement was made at dinner that evening by Lady Marwick herself, who was delighted to make it because the world had reorganized itself around the new arrangement, and she was above all things a woman who knew how to align with what was.

Lady Pelham was present. She raised her glass with everyone else. Her hand was steady, her face composed, and she did not look at her stepdaughter. Honoria and Cressida Marwick managed it gracefully; they were better young women, perhaps, than their mother had given them credit for. They came to Vivienne after dinner and they each said the correct things in the correct way, and Cressida said in a small, private voice at the end, "He was always going to choose you, you know. He never looked at us. Not properly."

Vivienne thanked her, but she did not contradict her.

They were married in the autumn, in the small chapel on the Westmere estate, in a quiet ceremony with few guests. Lady Pelham was invited, but she did not attend. Her absence was noted by no one.

---

One year later, in the south wing of Westmere Hall, in a room with tall windows that looked out over a garden of late roses, Vivienne stood at one of the windows and watched the rain. It was the first long rain of the autumn. It came down soft and steady—the kind of rain that did not roar, but whispered.

She heard his step in the corridor. She did not turn.

He came to stand behind her. He did not touch her at first; he looked with her at the rain. "You are thinking," he said.

"I am."

"Of what?"

She smiled. He could not see the smile, but he heard it in her voice. "Of the first time you watched me in the rain," she said, "from a window."

"I have not forgotten."

"Nor have I."

She turned then, putting her hand on the front of his coat, lightly, the way she had touched his arm in the chapel a year before. He smelled of rain and wood smoke and the something underneath that she had still not named, and had decided by now she did not need to.

"It is raining in the south garden," she said.

"It is."

"And there is no one in it."

He looked at her, his mouth moving very slightly in what was almost a smile. "Shall I stay at the window," he said, "or shall I come with you?"

She thought about it for a beat. "Come with me," she said.

He did.