* * *
When the dinner finished and the party was ushered back to the sitting room, Peter was stitched to her side, explaining things about birds in wrongly pronounced Latin, and she was almost grateful for it as it allowed her to appear in deep conversation rather than acknowledge Lord Marsden, who tried murdering her with dark stares. Neither Montgomery nor the countess was anywhere in sight.
She spotted a door to the terrace that was ajar, and the moment the sourish Richmond daughters approached the curate, she seized her chance and dove headlong into the dark.
The hum of inane chatter was immediately muffled.
Cold, clean air had never felt so good. Greedily she sucked deep breaths of it into her lungs.
And stilled.
Someone else was out here, a man, his face tilted up to the dark sky.
She recognized Peregrin’s lanky form against the torchlight before he turned.
“Miss Archer.” He politely stubbed out his cigarette.
“Lord Devereux.” She came to stand beside him and looked up at the stars. “Were you looking for something in particular up there?”
“The North Star. Did you know seamen have used it for orientation for thousands of years?”
“Yes, since the Phoenicians.”
He chuckled. “Have you by any chance missed that class at finishing school where they teach you to feign delightful ignorance in the presence of a man?”
“I’m afraid so.” She had never been near a finishing school.
“Marsden sure noticed,” Peregrin said. His gaze turned speculative. “I don’t think he’ll recover anytime soon from my brother’s very public dressing-down.”
She was eager to change the topic. “Are you looking forward to the fireworks?”
Peregrin stiffened. “I won’t be here for the party.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, and she was. He had been kind to her at Claremont, not just perfunctorily polite. Just yesterday he had taken the time to show her the first English edition of The Odyssey in Montgomery’s library, and had been thoroughly amused at her excitement. Now he seemed as downcast as in the carriage earlier.
“I’ve never seen fireworks,” she tried.
His frown deepened. “Never?” As he mulled it over, her bare arms snared his attention. “I’ll have someone fetch your coat,” he said.
“It’s on its way,” came a smooth voice from the dark.
They both started.
How long had Montgomery been standing there in the shadows?
In the flickering light, it was impossible to gauge his mood as he strolled closer.
Was he cross with her because of Lord Marsden?
“Montgomery,” Peregrin said. “I shall leave Miss Archer in your hands, then.” He nodded at Annabelle. “Miss.”
He ambled back into the house, and Montgomery stared after him as if he were of a mind to order him back. Instead, he said: “Are you hiding out here, miss?”
She cringed. “I’d call it a strategic evasion.”
He made a soft noise, a huff, a scoff?
“Thank you,” she began, “thank you for . . .” Protecting me?
Because that was what he had done with his little intervention, from his own peers, no less.
“It’s not worth mentioning,” he said.
“You repeatedly implied that I had a problem with authority,” she said lightly. “I’m beginning to agree with you.”
Montgomery leaned back against the balustrade. “A problem with authority, or with stupidity?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The argument put forward tonight had a blatant logical flaw. I imagine the temptation to point it out was overwhelming.”
She gave a baffled laugh. “Indeed it was.”
For a moment, they were looking at each other, and his lips were twitching as if trying not to smile. That was when she noticed that she was smiling rather widely at him.
She turned away to the dark gardens below the terrace. “Isn’t the whole point of an authority figure that he can’t be challenged, no matter what?”
“No,” he said, “first, Marsden is not your commander in chief. And second, a leader who doesn’t know what he is doing will eventually face mutiny.”
“Are you making a case for leadership based on merit, Your Grace?” It came out decidedly more sarcastic than she had intended, to him who was placed at the helm of the ship thanks to his birthright alone.
He was quiet for a long moment, and she realized that she was taking something out on him that had nothing to do with him: frustration over Marsden, the Marchioness of Hampshire, and, possibly, his liaison. And he let her, like a big cat would let a kitten claw at it.
“Tell me,” he said, “how frustrating is it to be surrounded by people considered your betters when they don’t hold a candle to your abilities?”
She stared into the dark, briefly lost for words.
How? How did he know these things about her?
And why did him knowing urge her to spill more secrets to him? To tell him that it was like a slow drip of poison, this daily flattering and placating of men for a modicum of autonomy; that she sometimes worried it would one day harden both her heart and her face?
She shook her head. “It is how it is, Your Grace. I have always struggled with just following my betters. I suppose it’s a defect in me.”
“A defect,” he repeated. “You know, the most important lesson I learned during my time at Sandhurst was on leadership. People have many motivations to follow someone, but a soldier will only ever follow a man for two reasons: his competency, and his integrity.”
It was not really a surprise to hear he had been at Sandhurst rather than Oxford or Cambridge—enough aristocratic families sent their sons to the renowned military academy, and truth be told, military suited Montgomery.
“I believe that,” she said, “but I’m not a soldier.”
“Perhaps you are. At heart.”
Now she looked at him. What a whimsical thing to say for a man like him. Her, a soldier. But oh, it resonated, it plucked at something deep inside her chest. It almost hurt. “A soldier must be discerning as his very life depends on his leader’s competency,” she murmured.
He gave a shrug. “As a woman’s life depends on the competency of the men in her life.”
“You will find it can be the other way around,” she said dryly, thinking of Gilbert, unable to make the money last until the end of the month, or her father, forgetting to eat because he was immersed in a book.