The Duke's Bed Warmer-Chapter 37: Sewing Circle

The sewing circle grew to eight women in a week. The bench by the fountain was no longer enough. Someone brought a blanket; another arrives with cushions. The garden was becoming crowded, and Alina found herself at the centre of something she had never meant to build.

She sat on the bench working and listening to the women talk.

"My marriage was unhappy," Lady Brennan said. "I was alone before he died and have been alone since."

"I’m afraid of my mother-in-law," Marguerite added. "She visits me every week and tells me how to talk to my husband, and how to dress. She says she’s helping but every time she leaves, I feel like I’ve failed something I didn’t even know I was being tested on."

The following day, Alina got an idea to help Marguerite.

"Invite your mother-in- law to sew with us," Alina said.

"What?" She said, surprised. "She won’t come. She doesn’t like me."

"She is lonely and displaced. If she comes here, she’ll feel better."

Marguerite had never thought of her that way.

"Fine. I’ll invite her," Marguerite said, after thinking a little.

She came and sat with them in the corner. Lady Brennan handed her a needle and fabric and Lady Talbot showed her the stitch they were working on. Within an hour, she was sewing; within two, she was talking.

She told them about the garden she had planted when her son was born, about her dead husband, and about the loneliness she felt now that her son no longer needed her.

She came back two days later and sat beside Marguerite now. Marguerite’s husband noticed the change and was happy to see his mother and wife finally getting along together.

Soon, the word spread that a bed warmer gives good advice.

The next morning, a maid delivered a box wrapped in white paper and tied with a silver ribbon to Alina’s room. She opened it and found dozens of embroidery threads inside, all of superior quality and clearly expensive.

Beside the threads, was a note.

For your sewing circle.

Audrey.

The gift was generous and thoughtful but it was also intentional. Her circle was growing, and Audrey was making sure it grew within her reach.

One afternoon, Emeric stood at the garden gate, with a coat over his arm, feeling out of place. The women stared at him. He was the only man who had ever walked through that gate and came towards them.

"My coat," he said, holding it up. "I tore it. My uncle said to go to you."

The women laughed and made space for him. He immediately sat at Alina’s feet and gave her the coat. She examined it and found a tear on the shoulder.

"What did you do?"

"I fell off a horse," he replied, embarrassed.

"I can expect that from you."

She threaded her needle and everyone resumed their work. Emeric then told a joke.

It was awful, but Alina laughed along with the other women. Emeric grinned up at her from the grass, and the scene with eight women and one man in the afternoon light somehow looked like a painting.

Austin was passing through the corridor when he saw this scene unfolding before him. He should have dismissed it. A handful of women sewing in a garden was not a matter that required his attention, and yet his gaze did not move. It was fixed on the man sitting casually at her feet, and Alina laughing without hesitation. It was not the laughter that unsettled him. It was that it wasn’t his.

He did not stay. He turned away before the moment could become harder to ignore, his steps measured as he continued down the corridor. But the scene followed him anyway. It stayed with him through his meetings, lingered between lines of reports, and sat in every conversation he was supposed to be listening to.

He had read the same page three times without understanding a word from an urgent report he was supposed to finish today. And when he entered the great hall for dinner, the image was even clearer than before.

Emeric was already there. He was seated next to Alina, in the seat usually taken by Lady Talbot or Marguerite. Alina had turned slightly in her chair, talking to him as if the rest of the hall didn’t exist.

Lord Ashby then decided to tell everyone a story. He was a good storyteller who knew how to build, and how to let the silence before the punchline stretch until the room could not bear it.

"And the dog, who had been missing for three hours, emerged with the baroness’s wig in his mouth," he concluded.

The table erupted in laughter. Alina, while laughing, snorted loudly. She froze, pressing her hand over her mouth, her face burning and her eyes watering.

Across the table, Austin saw it. She was mortified. She had ducked her head as if trying to disappear into her hand. But underneath it, she was still laughing.

And then, surprisingly, just for a second, he laughed as well. But he immediately stopped himself.

Audrey saw him laugh, but she looked away, pretending not to see it. Alina missed it as she was still busy wiping her eyes.

That night, she was still smiling when he entered the room. He lay down and spoke first.

"You looked very happy today. You even snorted at dinner tonight," he said.

She turned towards him.

"I did not."

"Everyone saw it. Ashby nearly choked."

"He chokes on everything. He choked on his coffee this morning and on a bread roll yesterday. The man is a hazard."

"The bread roll incident was not choking. It was a coughing fit." 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

"It was choking. I saw his face. He was gone. We almost lost him." She said.

He laughed. She smiled.

"I’m not going to live the snort down, am I?"

"No. I’ll always remember it," he replied.

She smiled and lay straight on the pillow, closing her eyes.

"You should laugh more often."

He did not reply. But something in the silence had softened. The distance between them was still there but it no longer felt like a wall.