“He is not…it was not what I expected,” Caroline continued, because this was the thing she had been trying not to say for three days, and here, on the gravel path with Laura beside her and the rest of the world at a merciful distance, she found she could not quite maintain the project any longer.
“He kissed me,” Caroline said, “like…like it mattered. As if…” She stopped, frowning slightly, because every formulation she attempted sounded either inadequate or more revealing than she intended. “He is a rake,” she said instead, settling on the simpler ground. “He has done this a very great number of times. One would expect a certain…professionalquality. You know, suave…polished.” She paused. “It wasnotpolished. Or if it was, it was also…”
She trailed off again. Laura waited.
“Something else,” Caroline finished, which was the most honest thing she could say and also the most useless.
The elm trees moved again. Somewhere behind them, at a distance that suggested they were being given exactly as much time as they required, her aunt Judith’s voice carried over the path in a tone that indicated she was delivering a considered opinion on something horticultural.
“And afterward?” Laura asked.
“He apologized,” Caroline said.
And that was why she had to retrace her steps and act as though it was nothing. It was why she wasstill tryingto act as though it meant nothing.
“Oh.”
“It is on the list,” Caroline said, in a bid to brush it off. “It has been crossed through. That was the purpose.”
“Caroline.” Laura stopped walking again, and her voice was gentle now. “Is that what you actually believe?”
Chapter Eighteen
“It is what it is,” Caroline said.
The gravel crunched beneath their feet. Across the water, the two ducks had arrived at some accommodation and resumed their navigation southward.
Laura looked at her for a brief moment before she said, “You are doing that thing.”
“What thing?” Caroline’s tone was flat, for she could not summon emotion anymore if she’d tried.
“The thing where you decide what is true before you have actually examined it,” Laura said. “You take an experience, and you file it before it has finished arriving, and then you spend a fortnight trying not to revisit the filing cabinet.”
“That is not?—”
“You told me about what the Duke said in the alleyway, after the boxing match, with rather more composure than was warranted,” Laura said. “And the gaming hell… You described being there as a satisfying exercise in applied mathematics.” She tilted her head and lowered her tone just for Caroline’s ears. “And now the Duke of Wynford kissed you until a circus crowd interrupted, apparently, and you are describing it as an item being crossed off a list.”
The accuracy of this was, Caroline found, extremely inconvenient.
“He broke away and apologized for overstepping,” she finally said, admitting the wound aloud when she had spent many, many hours turning it over in her head and trying to explain the hurt in those words away. “And offered his arm afterward.”
“Oh.”
“So, yes, it is irrelevant,” Caroline said. “He made himself clear. We both attributed it to the list, and that item is now complete. The arrangement continues only as far as the remaining item permits.” She straightened, fractionally, against the gust that came off the water. “Then, everything will end.”
“Will it?” Laura said, in a tone that could not have been less affirmative if she had tried.
“Laura.” Caroline sighed, exhausted.
“I am not disagreeing with you,” Laura said, mildly. “I am simply observing that you have said everything will end, but you do not sound like you want it to.”
Caroline had no satisfactory response to this, which was the consistent difficulty of keeping up with conversations with Laura. She combined the appearance of a gentle creature with the instincts of someone who had read every person in every room she had ever occupied and kept immaculate notes.
They turned back along the path, toward where her aunt and Esther could now be seen approaching at a comfortable pace, the older lady gesturing toward something in the near distance with the decisiveness of a woman who was continuing to share her opinions about everyone and everything.
“I do not intend to make a fool of myself over a man who regards the whole business as an item on a list,” Caroline said.
“You were the one who put it on the list,” Laura said.