Alice wore the wilted-lilac that evening. It made her appear rather without color. They hardly touched her hair, except to loosen a few strands from the unfashionable bun. She kept on her spectacles and her father’s ring, sliding gloves on to wear down to the table.
With no other adornments, Alice practically ran down the corridors to the main floor. She arrived in the corridor outside the dining room, where a footman waited for her.
He bowed when she approached. “Miss Sharpe. The guests are about to leave the drawing room to enter the dining room. You must wait here until all the guests have walked by, then you join the last gentleman at the rear of the party.”
“Thank you.” Alice gifted him what she hoped would appear as a confident smile. On the inside, her nerves started to twist, and her stomach clenched around the dinner she had already eaten with the children.
Eating at a table full of ladies and lords did not exactly intimidate her. She had grown up a member of the gentry, taking her meals at the dining tables of her relatives. Her family had expected Alice to make herself interesting enough to entertain their guests, without being too forward as to draw attention to herself. But the idea of sitting at the table of an employer, someone not expected to keep her on if she made a mistake, struck her differently.
Be personable, affable, but never so interesting as to attract comment on your behavior or person. The second wife of one of her uncles had given Alice that admonishment.
She smoothed a small wrinkle on her gown, then let her eyes roam up to the tall ceiling of the main corridor. Though the castle had only completed construction ten years previous, it had the air of a medieval fortress. The duke and duchess were avid collectors of antiques and artwork. Along the particular passage, they had hung shields along the top of the wall. Tapestries depicting ancient forests hung on the walls beneath those shields, and between every tapestry was an oil painting of either a landscape or a scene from British history.
The ducal couple had modeled the corridor, with its gray and white marble floors, in a style to impress upon the duke’s guests of the might of England.
Liveried footmen opened a set of double doors on one side of the passage. Light and laughter spilled out just before the duchess and a male guest stepped out, followed by the duke and a female guest.
Two new footmen appeared out of doors nearer to where Alice stood, hidden in shadow now that light streamed in from other directions. The party made their way toward Alice and turned into the dining hall.
Alice waited with her eyes lowered, watching only the feet of each couple as they passed her. Fourteen couples went by before a lone pair of polished shoes appeared and then hesitated before her.
Alice stepped forward with a footman prepared to make introductions.
The footman sounded as formal as a majordomo or master of ceremonies, despite his quiet tone. “Mr. Gardiner, may I present Miss Sharpe, the family governess and your dinner companion for the evening.”
Alice curtsied, then raised her gaze at last to the poor gentleman stuck with a governess for the evening. She knew well enough that he would not be enthusiastic about the idea.
Except.
Black hair swept somewhat untidily across his brow, and peeking through the tips of his hair, glittering green eyes took her in. The gardener from that afternoon, sans dirt smudges and in a forest green coat of superfine, was not a servant.
He was a guest.
“Miss Sharpe. A pleasure.” He bowed, then extended his hand to her.
Gulping back a squeak of surprise, Alice allowed him to take her hand and place it upon his sleeve. “Mr. Gardiner.”
Their exchange took only seconds, putting them barely behind the last couple to enter the dining room. Mr. Gardiner kept his head better than Alice did, thankfully, as he took her directly to a chair in the middle of the table, to the duchess’s right. He held her chair out for her. Alice sank into it most gratefully.
Then Mr. Gardiner sat next to her, appearing perfectly at ease by the surprise meeting. Of course, he could not be nearly so surprised as she. The man she had taken for some sort of servant, a groundskeeper, was a gentleman. An important enough gentleman to sit at a duke’s table, amid other members of nobility.
Alice’s mortification grew, extending beyond previous bounds, as she admitted to herself that she had hoped to meet the man again.
But not like this.
She glanced at him from the corner of his eye. He smiled. She blinked and hastily turned away.
The pale, silent woman eating at Rupert’s left might bear a physical resemblance to the governess he met earlier, but her manners had undergone a severe change. The Miss Sharpe he met in the garden had brimmed with energy, her countenance naturally bright and intelligent. But now she sat stiffly, her gaze unfocused behind the glass of her spectacles.
The informality of their garden meeting verged on comical. When the butler informed him in apologetic tones that the governess would be his dinner companion, Rupert had perked up somewhat. He had been slated to keep company with the local vicar’s wife, a woman full of nervous laughter and incapable of speaking on subjects outside of her personal charity work. With the vicar’s wife fallen ill, and her husband still in attendance, he accepted the reprieve gladly.
Perhaps the duke’s guests intimidated her. As her assigned escort and dinner companion, it fell to Rupert to set her at ease. “Miss Sharpe?”
Her blue eyes widened a fraction before meeting his. “Yes, Mr. Gardiner?”
Rupert leaned toward her to murmur. “I am glad to see you again. It gives me the opportunity to inform you that I released the little butterfly you caught. Back into the wilds of Clairvoir.”
After a quick glance at others sitting around the table, Miss Sharpe spoke in a soft tone unlikely to carry farther than his ears. “I am pleased to learn it, sir. I imagine she is grateful she was only your captive for a short time.”
Rupert tipped his head to the side. “You think butterflies have the capacity for gratitude?”
She lifted one shoulder less than an inch, toying with the slice of candied beet on her plate. “I cannot be certain they do. Can you be certain they do not?”
“Most of the world would say it is not possible for so tiny a creature to have thoughts or feelings.” Rupert tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair, then reached for his cup.
“Most think creatures of insignificance, unworthy of notice by their betters, are therefore unworthy of everything.” She dropped her hand into her lap. “Simply because we do not know the inner-workings of an animal or insect, and cannot know, does not make them beneath our care.”
Rupert lowered his cup without drinking, studying instead her profile. No hint of a smile or laughter took away from her words. “Do you care about butterflies in general, Miss Sharpe?”
“Yes. I think most should. Do they not carry pollen from one flower to another, as bees do? For creatures performing such an important function, they merit some thought.” Miss Sharpe’s smile appeared, albeit briefly. “I might ask if you care about butterflies, sir, given your collection of them.”
“I do. Of course.” Ah. Now her strange behavior grew understandable. He had thought that someone might have told her about him, given his position as a guest of the duke. But she had only taken up her position the day before. Perhaps it was arrogant of him to assume people spoke about his work when he was not present. Certainly, not everyone found the subject of his studies worth notice. “I am an amateur entomologist and botanist.”