And then the cold air, and the two streets walked quickly, head down, and the carriage found precisely where the Duke had said it would be, tucked into the shadow of the mews passage with its lamps turned low.
He was watching her now with the particular attention she was beginning to associate exclusively with him: quiet enough to pass as indifference, but not indifference at all.
“You are not lively tonight,” he observed.
“I am perfectly lively.” He drew out her urge to refute whatever he deemed to be true at any given time, be it factual or not, and Caroline was beginning to realize that it was this man in front of her now that kept drawing out that particular flaw.
“You are sitting as though you intend to be a painting.” He tilted his head slightly. “There is a distinction.”
“Perhaps I am simply calm.”
“You are determined, you are composed, you are occasionally resigned, and you are indignant. But simply calm?” The corner of his mouth lifted, fractionally. “No.”
She looked at him across the dim interior of the carriage, and the ghost of something that wanted to be irritation shifted in her chest and then settled, and she could not quite sustain it, which was the most annoying thing of all.
“Where are we going?” she asked instead.
He leaned forward, and the lamp caught the line of his jaw and the quiet intelligence in his green eyes, and she kept her gaze entirely level.
“Cambridge,” he said.
She blinked.
“Briefly. Metaphorically.” He reached beside him and retrieved a leather bag from the carriage floor. “I cannot smuggle you into a lecture at Cambridge; it would require deception considerably beyond our current arrangement and would also, in all likelihood, result in a riot.” He set the bag on the seat between them. “However, I can get you the next best thing.”
Something in her chest shifted, differently from before. “Which is?”
“A private lecture at the Royal Institution on Albemarle Street. A chemist by the name of Alderton, one of the finest analytical minds currently working in England. He gives private lectures four times a year to a selected audience.” A measured pause. “I have called in a favor.”
She stared at him.
“A rather significant one, if that is relevant to your appreciation of the gesture.” This, he supplied with an arched brow.
Warmth moved through her chest, sudden and unwelcome in its vividness. She looked at the bag, trying to distract herself from the heat suffusing her cheeks and chest in equal measure.
“And the bag?”
“Your disguise. Women are not admitted.”
“Of course they aren’t.” This time, Caroline did roll her eyes.
She opened the clasp: a dark coat, breeches, a waistcoat, and a hat of considerably better quality than the battered thing Jane had once sourced from the footman’s wardrobe lay within.
“Where am I supposed to change?”
“We’ll stop the carriage, and I’ll step out. Ten minutes.”
She pressed her lips together, and the warmth was there again, impossible, and inconvenient, and she turned to the window and said nothing further as the carriage rolled east through the dark.
By the time they drew to their discreet halt outside the Royal Institution, Caroline was bouncing giddily on her seat and sneaking glances out the window. They’d already made their stop when Anthony had stepped out of the carriage to let her change in privacy earlier.
The clothes fit better than they had any right to. This was either attentive procurement or an exceptionally good guess, and she was not going to examine which. She had tucked her hair under the hat, and the glass of the carriage door gave back the reflection of a young man of unremarkable appearance, which was precisely the intended result.
The Duke had returned after her allotted time with the entirely unnecessary composure of a man who had simply been standingon a pavement in the middle of the night and found this a perfectly ordinary way to spend the hour.
He assessed her with a single, measured glance. “The hat is better this time.”
“I adjusted the brim,” she said, this with a proud edge to her tone.