The flame did not move. “You need not beat around the bushel, Gideon. I will admit that I was there,” Anthony said.
“Oh, I know.” Gideon’s expression was amiable. “I am more interested in who this companion of yours was.”
“A young scholar. He is a friend I made recently.” He kept his voice entirely level, even as the lies rolled off his tongue. “He is a shy fellow, so having his name circulate would do him no service.”
“A shy scholar,” Gideon repeated, in the tone of a man tasting a wine he has already assessed. “With a command of oxidation reactions and a notable rosewater habit.”
Anthony let his friend’s sly remarks roll off his back. “Chemistry draws all varieties of enthusiasts,” he drawled with a lazy shrug.
“Apparently.” Gideon looked at him with playful calculation lurking in his gaze. “Alderton also said that if the young man had been in any other room in England, he would have been the most interesting person in it.”
An emotion arrested Anthony’s chest, insidious and rather unwelcome. He did not permit it to reach his expression.
Caroline.
He remembered how Caroline had been in that amphitheater. She was fascinated, riveted by the science.
He had watched her from his peripheral vision almost helplessly. This woman, for whom this lecture was not an entertainment or an amusement, had been enthralled. It waswaterto her. Something she had been kept away from and was now drinking in with the grateful intensity of a person who knew it would be taken from her again.
And heaven help him, Anthony wanted to know what else she knew.
What else had she managed to extract from three years of supervised travel and confiscated volumes? He wanted to put a question to her with no audience, no performance required. He wanted to simply hear what she produced: the real thing, theversion that had answered before she could stop herself in a hall full of men who had not heard a woman’s voice in that room before and would not again.
But hecould not wantthat. He had to be very clear with himself on this point. She was Lewis’ssister, and the guilt sat in him like a ballast. He was already taking things too far by helping her with her list. He could not allow himself to go any further.
“My scholar friend,” Anthony said with finality, “prefers anonymity. I trust you’ll respect that.”
“Naturally.” Gideon raised his glass as though he were taking a vow. “I am the soul of discretion.”
“You are the opposite of the soul of discretion.”
“I am discretion’s soul,” Gideon insisted pleasantly, “when the occasion warrants it. I simply exercise judgment about which occasions those are.” He swirled the remainder of his claret. “This, I have decided, is one of them.”
Anthony looked at him. Gideon looked back with the open, guileless expression he deployed when he was being most deliberate, and Anthony had known him long enough to understand that the expression was not innocence but its very approximation.
“Goodnight, Gideon,” Anthony said, and stood.
“Already?” Gideon looked mournfully at the table. “I have half a bottle left and no one to share it. Lewis has gone home to his wife, and you are apparently required elsewhere by your very busy schedule of things you aren’t going to tell me about.”
“I have an early morning.”
“You have never in your life had an early morning. Not voluntarily, at least.” Gideon tilted his head. “You once told me that any man who rose before nine was either bankrupt or in love, and that both conditions were equally avoidable with sufficient planning.”
Anthony reached for his coat. “I was younger then.”
“You said it in October.”
“Good night,” Anthony said.
Gideon leaned back in his chair and smiled up at him with such satisfaction that Anthony wished to slap him.
“Good night, Anthony. Give my regards to your, ahem, scholar friend.”
Anthony held his gaze for one beat, and then he put his hat on and walked out.
It was obvious that Gideon knew something. Not the whole of it, but enough to be curious, and a curious Gideon was a patient and thorough instrument. This would not be the last time they had this conversation.
He let out a deep sigh and walked to his carriage.