It was the same quality he had noticed at the gaming hell when she had laughed unguardedly over cards, and it produced in him the same effect: a sharpening of attention he had no use for.
She settled opposite him and looked at him the way she always looked at the start of an outing: assessing, bright-eyed, managing her own anticipation with the composure of a woman who had concluded that showing it was a kind of surrender.
“A circus,” she said.
“So I am told.”
“You do not appear especially enthusiastic.”
“I am practical. It is a tent, in a field, outside London. Enthusiasm is an excess of expectation.”
She considered this. “And yet you arranged it.”
He said nothing. She received his silence with the quiet, private satisfaction she generally wore when she had made a point she intended to let stand.
Anthony rapped on the roof of the carriage, indicating to his driver to move along.
While they traversed the streets of London, Caroline peppered him with questions he simply could not answer.
“Shall we see a zebra this evening?”
“I do not know.”
“Will there be a grand performance with singers and dancers?” Her enthusiasm was barely contained when she asked that question with glee.
“I have not the first clue,” he returned.
“Is there going to be…”
“Lady Caroline,” he spoke over her, effectively indicating that she should not proceed with her inquisition.
“Yes?” she hummed.
“When we get to the circus, you will see all there is to see. I promise you will not miss a thing.”
He could not be sure of much, but that was something he could guarantee. Anthony knew, before they even set foot near a circustent, that Lady Caroline’s beautiful, curious hazel eyes would notice everything and appreciate it all.
Moments later, the carriage halted, and Anthony hurried out so that he might help Lady Caroline alight.
As her boots touched the earth, she gave a small gasp of elation.
The tents were strung with lanterns in long amber arcs against the dark sky, and the field was already alive when they arrived: families, working men and their wives, young couples arranged with the careful nonchalance of people who had planned their attendance without admitting it. Noise and warmth and colored light in a quantity that bore no resemblance to the world from which the Duke and lady had just come from surrounded them.
She stopped three paces inside the entrance.
“Do you actually believe a fortune teller can predict the future?” he asked, near her ear, which was purely only due to the noise.
She bristled for a second before turning her head toward him. “Not particularly,” she said. “But I should like to have the experience, just the same.”
At that, Anthony tilted his head. Lady Caroline was a rather hard woman to understand. “You would like the experience of being told pleasant falsehoods by a stranger for a coin.”
“I would like the experience of a tent, in a field, outside London.” Her eyes found his in the lantern light, and something in them was openly amused.
“Very well.” He nodded curtly. “Off we go then to seek out the thrills which are sure to accompany this next experience.” He steered her toward the larger tent with a hand at her back, said nothing further on the subject of fortune tellers, and told himself he was touching her for purely navigational reasons.
Inside the larger tent, the performance was already in progress.
The acrobat was a young woman who moved with a precision that rendered the crowd briefly airless: she turned above a suspended bar at twenty feet, landed, turned again, and the silence had the compressed quality of five hundred people forgetting simultaneously to breathe. Beside her, a man in a patchwork coat kept seven objects aloft, adding an eighth while the crowd counted aloud.