“I heard.” Anthony shook his hand. “I understand it went well.”
“Considerably better than well.” Hartley’s words were more of an assessment rather than a compliment. “The revised projection is the first one in three years that the agricultural committee passed without amendment. Dunmore moved to approve without debate.” A measured pause. “If you know Dunmore, you understand the significance.”
Anthony knew Lord Dunmore. He had spent the better part of eighteen months ensuring Dunmore’s understanding of the Wynford drainage problem was thorough enough that approval became the path of least resistance.
“Willoughby was asking after the Wynford tenancy arrangements last week, as well,” Hartley continued. “Said your retention figures were the best in the county this decade.” Another pause, brief and deliberate, carrying the weight of a man who selected meaning precisely. “Your father’s figures were not, historically, something one mentioned in favorable company.”
“No,” Anthony agreed. “They were not.”
“I mention it only because it is worth knowing that people notice,” Hartley said it plainly, without ceremony. “The old guard remembered your father’s name well enough, once. The younger set never knew him. What they know is you, and what you have made of that estate in six years is not a small thing.”
Anthony said, “I am glad to hear it,” and meant it in the complete, unsentimental fashion he had taught himself to mean things: as the quiet acknowledgment that the work and upkeepof the family estate he had undertaken with more stubbornness than pride had registered somewhere in the world’s accounting.
That was sufficient. He allowed himself that much, and no more.
It was only afterward, when Hartley had moved on and the broader conversation had shifted, that he saw her.
She was on the far side of the room, and that was a mercy, in the sense that eighteen feet of social occasion provided a reasonable argument for incidental proximity. She was speaking with two men, whom he did not immediately place; young, well-dressed, and arranged in the attentive posture of people who had found an interesting conversation and intended to remain in it. She was laughing at something, not the modulated drawing-room variety, but the real kind, which arrived without calculation and communicated something entirely unguarded.
One of the men leaned toward her as he spoke, and Anthony looked at his glass.
“You are staring,” said a voice at his elbow.
Gideon materialized beside him with the unhurried regularity of a man who appeared wherever Anthony was least prepared for company. He was holding a plate he had assembled from the refreshment table with evident personal satisfaction, and he regarded the room with the expression of someone thoroughly enjoying himself.
“I am observing the room,” Anthony said.
“You are observing Lady Caroline, who is, to be fair, also in the room.” Gideon ate a small pastry without breaking stride. “You have been observing that particular corner for approximately four minutes.”
Anthony refrained from sighing aloud. “And you, irritating cur, have been watching me for four minutes.”
“I frankly have nothing else to do.” He glanced sideways. “The gentleman to her left is Forbes. He recently came into a reasonable living and has an estate in Berkshire. Oh, and he has anexcellentsense of humor…he’s very well-regarded at his club. And I am sure she must agree because he’s been making her laugh for nearly a quarter hour.”
Anthony said nothing, but he was well on his way to strangling his friend with his bare hands if only to shut the man up. He was barely holding himself back as it was.
“Imagining things, am I?” Gideon offered, with the equanimity of a man who had already made his point and saw no need to repeat it.
“Yes.” The word was flat, unambiguous, and delivered with the finality of a man closing a door.
Gideon ate another pastry in a silence that was not, in any meaningful sense, silent.
Anthony did not look at Caroline again. The effort this required was something he declined to examine.
He had obtained the tickets through a contact in Southwark whose discretion was proportional to the intelligence he had quietly accumulated over the years and who understood, without being told, that this particular arrangement was not one that should be recorded in any ledger.
The circus came through twice yearly, pitching its tents on a flat expanse just east of the city.
Anthony had attended once before, years ago, in the company of men with whom he no longer associated and had thought nothing of it at the time.
He thought rather more of it now, for reasons he had filed alongside the book in the bottom drawer.
He arrived at Grayston House well past dark, in a plain coat and an unornamented cloak, and waited in the carriage while the agreed signal was given.
She arrived at the side gate in four minutes, which showed him she had been ready and quietly expecting the meeting.
She was dressed plainly: dark wool, sensible half-boots, a cloak drawn close against the cold. Her hair was simply arranged.Without the garnet silk and the mask, without the particular studied elegance of a woman performing theton’sexpectations, she looked…
Likeherself.