She Was The Only Woman In London Who Didn’t Want The Duke And The Only One He Wanted

PART 1

Eleanor Marsh arrived in London at the worst possible time.

Not the season — the season was fine, the streets alive with carriages and fashionable traffic, the sky doing its best impression of cooperation. What was wrong was the timing of her appearance at the Ravensworth Assembly, which occurred approximately three minutes after she had turned down Lord Pemberton, who had approached her with the confidence of a man accustomed to being accepted and found her directness on the subject of his proposal distinctly unwelcome.

She was standing in the corridor outside the ballroom, pressing her back against the wall and breathing carefully, when the Duke of Ashmere nearly walked into her.

He stopped. She stopped. They regarded each other in the corridor light.

“Forgive me,” he said, and then he looked at her face, and whatever he saw there made him pause more completely. “Are you well?”

“Perfectly.” She pushed away from the wall. “I apologize for being in the way.”

“You weren’t in the way. I was walking without sufficient attention.” He looked at her a moment longer than courtesy required. “Lord Pemberton is looking for someone in a particular shade of green. I merely mention it.”

Eleanor looked down at her dress. Green. Of course.

“Then I should use the other door,” she said.

“Almost certainly.” Something moved in his expression — not quite amusement, but in its vicinity. “The garden route would also remove you from his direct line of sight for the remainder of the evening.”

She studied this man. The Duke of Ashmere — William Cavendish, she knew him by name if not by acquaintance — was exactly what his reputation suggested: contained, precise, with the particular authority of someone who had never needed to be loud to command a room.

He was also, she noticed, looking at her with the specific attention of someone who was actually paying attention, rather than the species of attention most men deployed at assemblies which was really just the performance of attention.

“Thank you,” she said. “I will use the garden.”

“Good evening, then.” He stepped aside.

She took three steps, then stopped and turned back, because she was, as her sister frequently pointed out, constitutionally incapable of leaving things alone. “Why are you telling me this? You don’t know me.”

“No,” he agreed. “But I know Pemberton. And you looked like someone who had just come from a conversation she hadn’t wanted to have.” He held her gaze. “It seemed useful information.”

She looked at him for a moment.

“Eleanor Marsh,” she said.

“William Cavendish.” A slight inclination of his head. “Good evening, Miss Marsh.”

She went out through the garden.

That was the first time.

She had come to London because her sister Louisa had insisted, and Louisa was, as Eleanor frequently noted, very difficult to argue with.

“You have been in Shropshire for three years managing Papa’s affairs,” Louisa had said, with the finality of someone who has considered and dismissed all potential objections. “Papa is improved. The estate is in order. Come to London for the season and allow yourself one month of not being responsible for everything.”

This was a reasonable argument, which Eleanor had accepted with the private caveat that she would attend enough events to satisfy Louisa’s concern and otherwise conduct herself with her usual focused practicality. She had no interest in matrimonial prospects.

She had no interest in the social calendar’s more frivolous entertainments. She had every intention of visiting the Royal Institution, the lending library on Piccadilly, and the gardens at Kew, which she had been meaning to study for her work on soil composition.

What she had not planned for was encountering the Duke of Ashmere at intervals that began to feel deliberate, though she could not identify who was doing the deliberating.

He appeared at the lending library. He appeared at a lecture on agricultural improvements at the Royal Institution, which surprised her — she had not expected to find someone of his rank at such an event, and said so, and he replied that his rank was not the relevant credential for determining his interests, which was exactly the right answer and made her revise several assumptions about him.

He appeared at Lady Southwick’s afternoon salon, where Eleanor had gone principally because Lady Southwick had a remarkable collection of pamphlets on modern estate management and had agreed to lend them.

He did not appear to be at the salon for the pamphlets. He appeared to be there principally to continue their conversation about drainage, which had started at the Royal Institution and kept finding new material.

“You are following me,” Eleanor said, at the third such encounter.

“I am not,” he said, with the specific tone of someone telling the truth. “I keep finding you interesting.”

“That is not an adequate explanation for—”

“It is the only explanation I have.” He looked at her with the directness she had noted from the first evening. “I attend events I would otherwise avoid because you are sometimes there. I find that more efficient than pretending otherwise.”

She stared at him.

“You are very strange for a duke,” she said.

“I have been told,” he agreed.

The problem was that Eleanor found him interesting in return, which was a complication she had not planned for and dealt with by continuing to conduct herself with her usual directness and ignoring the entirely irrational way her attention organized itself around his presence.

She attended a dinner at the Pemberton house — Louisa’s friend was the hostess, there was no avoiding it — and found herself seated at the opposite end of the table from William, which meant she spent the evening watching him handle a conversation with Lord Pemberton across the table with the specific precision of a man who is choosing his words very carefully and enjoying himself moderately.

She asked him about it afterward, in the garden where people had gone for air.

“He was making remarks about you,” William said. “I disagreed with the remarks.”

“What kind of remarks?”

“The kind that men make about women who decline their proposals.” He looked at her steadily. “I found them incorrect.”

“What did you say?”

“I said that a woman who knows her own mind is considerably more valuable than one who doesn’t, and that if Pemberton couldn’t see that, the fault was his.” He paused. “Several people agreed. It was not a particularly good dinner for Lord Pemberton.”

Eleanor looked at him.

This man who appeared at lending libraries and agricultural lectures and defended her at dinners she hadn’t known he was attending, who told her she was interesting without qualifying it or wrapping it in the particular kind of compliment that was really just a management technique.

“Why?” she asked.

“I told you,” he said. “I find you interesting.”

“That is still not adequate.”

“Then let me be more specific.” He turned to face her directly. “I have attended three hundred and forty-two social events in the past eleven years. I have spoken with a great many people. I have rarely found anyone whose company I actively sought the following day.” He looked at her. “You are the exception. I would like to know why.”

“You don’t know me well enough to find me interesting. We have had perhaps six conversations.”

“In six conversations you have argued about three things I was wrong about and proven me wrong on two of them, which no one has done in eleven years. You read agricultural pamphlets for pleasure. You arrived in London planning to visit the Royal Institution and the soil collections at Kew. You declined Pemberton without apparent distress and navigated a corridor with the focused practicality of someone who does not consider dramatics a useful tool.” He held her gaze. “That is quite a lot to know about someone.”

Eleanor found that she did not have an immediate response to this.

“What do you want?” she asked, which was always the relevant question.

“I would like to take you to Kew,” he said. “And continue the conversation that keeps finding new material.”

She thought about this.

She was supposed to be conducting herself with focused practicality. She was supposed to be visiting the lending library and attending a sufficient number of events to satisfy Louisa and otherwise not complicating the month with anything that would make the return to Shropshire difficult.

“The soil collections open on Tuesday,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “I checked.”

She went to Kew on Tuesday.

PART 2

Three weeks into the acquaintance that Eleanor refused to name as anything more specific, she arrived at the Charitable Review to find William already there, which was not unusual.

What was unusual was his expression when he looked up and saw her. Not the warm, focused attention she had become accustomed to. Something more guarded, careful in the way of someone who is managing information they are not yet sure how to present.

“Sit down,” she said. Not a question. “Something is wrong.”

“Not wrong,” he said. “Complicated.”

“Tell me.”

He told her.

There was a property coming to auction that afternoon — a parcel of land, the Stratton acres in Hertfordshire, that adjoined the Marsh family’s Shropshire estate on the eastern border. Her father had been trying to acquire it for years; Eleanor had inherited the aspiration along with the estate management. The auction was today, at three o’clock, at the Grover Street rooms.

“I know about the auction,” Eleanor said. “I am attending. Mr. Hartley has arranged my bidding authority.”

“I know.” A pause. “There will also be a buyer from the Cavendish estate attending. A purchase I arranged before you and I—” He stopped. “Before this season.”

Eleanor looked at him steadily.

“You are bidding against me,” she said.

“Yes. A standing arrangement that predates any acquaintance between us. I had not known you would be bidding. I am telling you now because—”

“Because you think I should have the information.”

“Yes.”

She sat with this.

“You could withdraw your bidder,” she said.

“I could.” He met her eyes. “That is one option. I wanted you to know the situation before I made any decision.”

“Why not simply withdraw without telling me? I would never have known.”

“Because you would have found out eventually. Because you have a right to know when someone with whom you have a—” he paused again, and she noted he was also having trouble finding the word, which was interesting. “When someone you know has interests that conflict with yours. And because I don’t want to manage things around you. I want to be honest with you.”

Eleanor thought about this for a long moment.

She thought about the conversation at the Ravensworth Assembly, the corridor, the man who had given her useful information without being asked. She thought about the Royal Institution and Kew and six conversations that had become twelve and a consistent presence that she had been trying not to rely on and was finding increasingly difficult.

“Withdraw your bidder,” she said.

“If that is what you—”

“No.” She looked at him. “I want to be clear. I am not telling you to do it. I am saying that if the Stratton acres matter less to the Cavendish estate than they do to the Marsh estate, you should withdraw. If they matter equally, you should bid. I do not want your pity and I do not want you managing around me. I want you to make the decision on its actual merits.”

He looked at her.

“They matter less,” he said. “The purchase was a general expansion. Not a necessary one.”

“Then withdraw and tell your man why.”

A pause. “He will wonder.”

“He can wonder. Those are the facts.” She picked up her tea. “I appreciate that you told me.”

“It seemed the only honest course.”

“Yes.” She looked at him over the cup. “It did.”

The auction proceeded without the Cavendish bidder.

Eleanor acquired the Stratton acres at a price that was equitable and spent the evening writing a letter to her father’s solicitor with considerable satisfaction.

She did not mention William.

She thought about him quite a lot, which was a problem she had not resolved.

PART 3

London noticed.

London always noticed. Eleanor had not fully appreciated how thoroughly London noticed things until it began noticing her, or more precisely, began noticing her in relation to William, and drew inferences that she had been somewhat successfully avoiding drawing herself.

Lady Ashworth mentioned it at a breakfast gathering — with the particular warmth of someone who is in favor of what they are mentioning and want you to know it. “You and Ashmere seem to have developed quite the understanding.”

“We have several shared interests,” Eleanor said.

“Mm.” Lady Ashworth’s smile was informative.

Lady Pendleton mentioned it with less warmth and more sharpness — she had a daughter who had been angled at the Duke for two seasons and was not pleased to see the angle apparently blocked. “Miss Marsh seems to have made quite an impression on certain quarters. Though I confess I cannot see quite what the attraction is.”

Eleanor was not present for this particular observation, but Louisa reported it faithfully.

“She means to be unkind,” Louisa said. “You should ignore it.”

“I am ignoring it.”

“You are ignoring it by gripping your teacup with excessive force. That is not the same thing.”

Eleanor set down the teacup.

The observation from Lady Pendleton was not, of course, an isolated incident. It was the audible manifestation of a set of opinions circulating through the season’s social machinery — the opinion that Eleanor Marsh was not a suitable companion for the Duke of Ashmere, that she was plain and unfashionable and country-bred, that she was managing him in some way, that her refusal of Lord Pemberton had been a calculated gambit and the Duke an intended target.

Eleanor found these opinions irritating principally because they were wrong, but also because they implied she was more calculating than she was, when the reality was that she had not calculated at all, which was in retrospect possibly the oversight.

She addressed the matter with William directly, which was the only way she knew how to address things.

“People are talking,” she said. “About the two of us.”

“I know.” He was looking at a pamphlet. “I do not find this particularly concerning.”

“It is concerning for me. For my reputation, and my return to Shropshire.” She looked at him. “And because I do not know what this is. I have been deliberately not naming it, which has not been honest.”

He set down the pamphlet.

“What would you like to name it?” he asked.

“I would like you to tell me what it is. From your side. Because I am quite aware of what it is from my side and I do not know if those match.”

A long pause.

“From my side,” he said carefully, “it is the first time in eleven years that I have sought out specific company for reasons that have nothing to do with obligation or strategy.” He looked at her steadily. “From my side, it is the most intelligent and honest arrangement of conversation I have ever had, and I use the word arrangement deliberately, because it has not been accidental.” Another pause. “And from my side, it is the first time I have wanted to ask someone a question to which I did not already know the acceptable answers.”

“What question?” she said.

He held her gaze.

“Whether you would consider staying,” he said. “Not for the season. As a permanent consideration.” He looked at his hands briefly, which was the only sign she had ever seen that he was not entirely composed. “Whether you might be willing to marry me.”

Eleanor looked at him.

The first response her mind produced was the pragmatic one — the facts of the situation, the family circumstances, the estates, the practical consequences of saying yes.

The second response was the honest one, which was that she had known for approximately ten days that this was where she was heading and had been avoiding looking at it directly, which was unlike her, and which she now addressed.

“You should know,” she said, “that I am not particularly interested in the social dimensions of being a duchess. I find most of London tedious. I intend to continue managing my family’s estate regardless of any other arrangement. I am not decorative and have no ambitions in that direction.”

“I know all of this,” he said. “These are features, not concerns.”

“I am also,” she said, “not easy to argue with.”

“Eleanor.” Something happened in his expression. “You have been arguing with me for six weeks. I am asking you to keep doing it. Indefinitely.”

She looked at him.

She thought about Shropshire, about the Stratton acres she had just acquired, about her father’s improved health and the estate in good order and Louisa’s patient argument that Eleanor had been responsible for everything for long enough.

She thought about the lending library and Kew and three hundred and forty-two social events and the first person in eleven years.

“Yes,” she said.

He looked at her for a moment in the way of someone who has asked a question seriously and has received a serious answer and is adjusting.

“Yes?” he repeated.

“To the permanent consideration.” She held his gaze. “The question was whether I would consider it. I have considered it. Yes.”

Something happened to his expression — the control was present, it was always present, but underneath it was something she had not seen before, which she thought she was going to find endlessly worth studying.

“You considered it in approximately fifteen seconds,” he observed.

“I had been considering it for ten days,” she said. “I was simply avoiding looking at it directly.”

“Why?”

She thought about this.

“Because I am better at being responsible for things than at wanting things,” she said. “It seemed safer to avoid naming it.”

He reached across the table — they were at the lending library, which was improbably where this conversation was happening — and covered her hand with his.

“I know,” he said. “I understand that entirely.”

She looked at their hands on the library table, in the afternoon light, with the sound of someone’s pages turning at another desk.

“You will have to ask me properly,” she said. “With sufficient advance notice that I can prepare an appropriate response.”

“How much advance notice do you require?”

“None,” she said. “I simply wanted it on record that I expect you to ask properly.”

He looked at her with the expression that was not quite amusement and was in its vicinity.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “I will ask properly. In a garden, because you seem to do your best thinking outdoors.”

“Also because gardens are less likely to have people at adjacent desks,” she observed.

“That too,” he agreed.

They sat in the library for another twenty minutes, reading in the specific comfortable silence of two people who have said something important and are allowing it to settle.

He asked her in the garden at Ashmere House.

Not his garden — his mother’s garden, the Dowager Duchess having invited Eleanor to tea with the expression of a woman who has been waiting for this specific invitation for several years and intends to conduct herself accordingly. The garden was unremarkable — well-maintained, English, with the particular quality of a space that had been tended by someone who genuinely liked plants rather than someone who tended them for appearance.

Eleanor had mentioned, at some point in the preceding weeks, that she preferred gardens where you could tell the person actually cared. This was that kind of garden.

She noticed this. She noticed that he had noticed it.

The proposal was not elaborate.

He said: “I told you I would ask you properly in a garden. I am asking.”

He said: “Eleanor Marsh. Will you marry me. Not as a social arrangement, not as a family alliance — as a partner. As the person I wish to consult about things that matter and argue with about things we disagree on and sit with in libraries and go to Kew with and generally continue in the direction we have been going, except permanently.”

He said: “I love you. I should have said that first.”

Eleanor looked at this man who had spent eleven years being bored by the wrong kind of attention and had walked around a corner and found someone who argued correctly and attended agricultural lectures and said that is not an adequate explanation when it wasn’t.

“Yes,” she said, for the second time, though this time it was a different kind of yes — not the considered practical affirmative of someone who has weighed the question, but the particular yes of someone who recognizes something.

The Dowager Duchess, emerging from the rose beds with the timing of someone who had been positioned for precisely this moment, said: “Excellent. I hoped she would say yes. I rather thought she would, but one never knows.”

“How long were you there?” William asked.

“Long enough.” She looked at Eleanor with warm assessment. “I have wanted my son to find someone whose intelligence he could not simply manage around for a very long time. I am glad it has happened before I lost patience.”

Eleanor found that she liked the Dowager Duchess enormously.

London’s reaction was, as anticipated, divided.

Eleanor conducted herself with complete indifference to the divided part, which was the only sensible approach and which William supported with the particular effectiveness of someone who had thirty-five years of practice in declining to be concerned about things that didn’t matter.

“Lady Pendleton said something cutting at the Forsythe gathering,” Louisa reported.

“I wasn’t there,” Eleanor said.

“I know. I was there. I addressed it.”

“What did you say?”

Louisa smiled in the way of someone who is not going to provide full details. “I said that Eleanor had acquired the Stratton acres, managed an estate through her father’s illness, and selected her own husband for reasons that had nothing to do with title or wealth, which seemed to me to suggest a woman of unusual competence and judgment.”

“And?”

“And Lady Pendleton had nothing particularly useful to add after that.”

Eleanor thought about this.

“I rather wish I had been there,” she said.

“I thought you might. I was representing you in your absence.”

Louisa was, as Eleanor frequently reflected, genuinely excellent.

The formal announcement appeared in the Times on a Thursday in July. The responses ranged from enthusiastic to bewildered to several carefully phrased letters of congratulation from women who had been hoping to make this match themselves and were exercising tremendous social composure in not showing it.

Lord Pemberton said nothing, which was the wisest course available to him.

Eleanor’s father, improving steadily in Shropshire, wrote a letter that was composed with the specific emotion of a man who is very pleased and does not have the words for it but is making the attempt. She read it twice and kept it.

The wedding was in September, at the church in Shropshire that the Marsh family had attended for four generations.

Not London. Not a grand society ceremony. Eleanor had been clear about this and William had agreed with the specific ease of someone who also finds grand society ceremonies tedious and was entirely prepared to be married in a Shropshire church with no significant audience.

The audience was: Eleanor’s father, who stood straighter than he had in two years and looked at his daughter with an expression she had seen on his face rarely but recognized immediately. Louisa, who cried with the competent efficiency she brought to everything. Mr. Hartley the solicitor, who attended because he was fond of Eleanor and because he had negotiated the settlements and felt a certain proprietary interest in the outcome. William’s mother, who sat in the second pew and watched her son with the warm, satisfied expression of someone whose patience has been rewarded.

Edmund Fairfax, William’s closest friend, who was best man and who had apparently been hearing about Eleanor for several months and had the expression of someone who has heard a great deal about a thing and is now seeing it for himself and finding it accurate.

And Mrs. Holloway, the housekeeper at Marsh House, who had served the family for thirty-one years and had specifically requested permission to attend, which Eleanor had granted immediately.

The vows were said in the clear, direct way that Eleanor said most things.

William’s expression, when she came down the aisle in the plain ivory dress she had selected without external consultation because she knew what she wanted and did not require assistance, was the expression she had been studying since the lending library — the one that appeared when the control relaxed and the thing underneath it became visible.

She found it, as she had predicted, endlessly worth studying.

They spent the autumn between Shropshire and the Ashmere estate in Wiltshire.

The estates turned out to have complementary problems, which Eleanor found satisfying — the Ashmere drainage was better managed but the soil was being worked in a way that would produce diminishing returns within a decade, while the Marsh estate had excellent soil management and drainage that had been patched rather than properly addressed.

She drafted a plan over three weeks in October while William reviewed the financial settlements for three tenant arrangements that had been poorly negotiated before his inheritance.

“You work very quickly,” he observed.

“I have been thinking about this for years. The Stratton acquisition changes the eastern boundary significantly — the drainage can be integrated across three parcels now.”

He looked at the plan with the focused attention he gave everything that mattered.

“This is excellent,” he said.

“I know.” She looked at him. “You can say so without qualification.”

Something happened in his expression.

“It is excellent,” he said. “Without qualification. I don’t know why I added it.”

“Habit,” she said. “You are used to managing expectations.”

“I am not managing yours.”

“No.” She looked at him. “You are not. I know.”

He looked at her for a long moment across the desk they had taken to sharing in the mornings, which had started as a practical arrangement and had become something else.

“Eleanor,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I would like to say something that I find I am having difficulty finding adequate words for.”

She set down her pen. “Tell me what you are trying to say and I will help you find the words.”

He looked at his hands. The gesture — the only sign, ever, that he was not entirely composed — was one she had catalogued carefully and found valuable.

“I spent thirty-five years,” he said, “managing things. Managing the estate, managing my position, managing social obligations and political connections and the expectations of a title I inherited at twenty-two before I knew what to do with it.” He looked at her. “I was very good at managing things. I was less good at existing alongside someone who did not require management.”

“No one requires management,” she said.

“I know that now.” His eyes were on hers. “What I mean to say is that I have been — I am— very grateful that you appeared in a corridor and could not leave without asking why.”

She looked at him.

“I am also grateful,” she said, “that you were the person who appeared in the corridor.” She paused. “That is not quite it either.”

“Tell me what you are trying to say,” he said, “and I will help.”

She thought about this.

“I am not easy,” she said finally. “I am direct and impractical about some things and I have strong opinions and I am genuinely not interested in most of what society considers important. I came to London for a month and spent it going to agricultural lectures and acquiring land.”

“I know.”

“And you found this interesting.”

“Yes.”

“I am trying to say,” she said, “that I am grateful you found me when I was being precisely that. Not managing myself for presentation. Simply — myself. And that you found it worth seeking out again.”

He looked at her with the expression that was not quite amusement and was something considerably more than that.

“I found it worth seeking out again,” he said. “Yes. I intend to keep seeking it out for the remainder of my life, if that is acceptable.”

“It is acceptable,” she said.

They went back to their work.

It was a very quiet morning, and a very good one.

Three years later, Eleanor stood at the edge of the Stratton acres on an October morning and looked at what had been done with them.

The integration with the eastern drainage had worked exactly as she had planned. The soil had been amended. The yields from the first full season were better than projections. Her father, well enough now to walk the grounds occasionally, had looked at it with the expression of a man whose daughter had accomplished something he was very proud of.

William appeared at her shoulder with two cups of tea, which was a thing he did with the specific practicality of someone who has determined that tea is frequently the correct response and proceeds accordingly.

“You are pleased,” he observed.

“I am very pleased.” She took the tea. “The southern corner is still draining slowly. I want to address it before winter.”

“It will need deeper channeling.”

“Yes.” She looked at the view. “I am already planning it.”

He stood beside her looking at the land with the attention he gave to things that Eleanor found worth attending to, which over three years had become a considerable category.

“I should tell you something,” he said.

“Tell me.”

“When Edmund came to Ashmere in August, he said he had never seen me like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like someone who is genuinely present rather than managing.” He looked at her. “He has known me for twenty years. He said I seem like a different person.”

Eleanor thought about this.

“You are not a different person,” she said. “You are the same person without the management overhead.”

He made a sound that was, she had learned, his version of a laugh.

“Yes,” he said. “That is exactly it.”

She looked at the Stratton acres, her father’s long aspiration and now her accomplished fact, the drainage working and the yields strong and the future of the land looking as it should.

“William,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I love you.” She said it in the direct way she said most things, without qualification. “I know I do not say it with the frequency one might expect.”

“You say it when you mean it,” he said. “I find that preferable.”

She looked at him. He was looking at the land, the October morning, the specific good view of what had been done with something worth doing. He was the person who had found her in a corridor and then found her at every lending library and agricultural lecture, who had withdrawn his bidder and told her why, who had asked whether she would consider staying without making it sound like anything other than the honest question it was.

“I know,” she said. “So do I.”

She drank her tea.

He drank his tea.

The Stratton acres stretched out before them in the morning light, productive and well-managed, as things tended to be when properly attended to.

It was, Eleanor thought, an extremely good life.

THE END