Caroline’s jaw was very still. “That is what I said.”
“I know you find this arrangement difficult to end,” Laura said softly.
She was not being unkind; she was being precisely as careful as the subject warranted.
“And I understand why. But Caroline, a rake of his experience, is not a man to let in. Especially not when you are nearly engaged.” She paused. “He is dangerous, and I do not say that because he is cruel, but because he is very good at making people feel…” She hesitated, selecting her words. “Seen. And then he will be gone,and you will be the one who has lost something they did not intend to give away.”
Caroline was silent. The rain moved across the glass in thin, racing lines, and somewhere in the room behind them, a woman laughed at a pitch that carried over the rest of the noise.
“The list is finished,” Caroline said at last. “I have nothing left to ask him for.” It was a clean, simple sentence, and it was entirely true. Somewhere beneath it was the other truth she was not speaking aloud: that she would carry the last months of this Season for the rest of her life.
The dark streets and the gaming tables and the borrowed clothes and the paint still on her fingers and his forehead resting against hers in a studio that smelled of linseed oil. She would carry all of it into whichever drawing room she was assigned to, and she would not be able to say a single word of it to anyone.
“Good,” Laura said quietly, and touched Caroline’s arm. “That is the right choice.” She meant it kindly, and Caroline knew that.
She smiled and turned back to the room, and the evening continued.
Two days later, the promenade in the park was Lewis’s idea.
He had said, over the breakfast table, that the morning was fine, and Lord Powell had expressed an interest in joining them. Esther had looked at Caroline over the edge of her teacup with an expression that communicated a great deal without saying anything. Lady Hayward had observed that a walk with a prospective suitor in a public park was entirely unobjectionable, which in her aunt’s opinion was something close to enthusiastic support.
And so, there were three of them on the gravel path: Caroline in the primrose silk and her good half-boots, Lewis beside her, and Lord Powell on her other side, making their way along the south walk with the unhurried quality of a scene that was being performed rather than lived.
Lord Powell had a pleasant manner on a promenade. He pointed out a particularly fine chestnut mare on Rotten Row and offered a considerate opinion on the animal’s hocks. Caroline listened with the polite, attentive expression she had learned early and worn often.
She was thinking about his south pasture, and how long a life spent hearing about it might feel, when she looked.
The Duke of Wynford was coming along the path from the opposite direction.
She had not seen him since the studio. She had not seen him since she had turned her face into his shoulder and wept with the undignified, unguarded quality of someone who had run out of performance. He had held her in both arms without saying thewrong thing. Then he had kissed her with a deliberateness that had nothing of the casual in it.
She had not seen him since he had pulled back with the expression she had put in the painting, the one she had memorized because she had known it was the last time she would see it from close enough to count.
He looked entirely himself. Tall, broad-shouldered, the greatcoat making him look like someone who had decided how rooms worked and the rooms had simply agreed. His golden-brown hair was slightly disordered by the wind, and his jaw was set in the line she knew by now to mean he was thinking something he had not yet decided whether to say.
He saw them before they reached him. She watched him see them and watched the fraction of a second in which his eyes moved from Lewis to Powell to her. Something happened in his expression that was not quite anything she could name precisely, but that settled in her chest like a stone dropped into still water.
“Wynford,” Lewis said, with uncomplicated pleasure. “I had not expected to see you here.” He glanced at Anthony’s companion, Gideon Turner, the Marquess of Eastbell, who had just appeared from around the curve of the path. “Or you, Eastbell.”
Lord Eastbell probably said something warm and witty that produced a response from Lewis and a pleasant one from Lord Powell, who was apparently acquainted with him from someclub, but Caroline could not say she heard anything…because she was watching Anthony.
Anthony’s eyes moved to Lord Powell, and he considered him for a moment with the thoroughness of a man who was committing something to memory.
“Lord Powell,” Lewis said, making the introduction with the comfortable ease of a man presenting someone of whom he was proud. “The Earl of Powell. He has an estate in Wiltshire.”
“Linfield,” Anthony said. His voice was even, and he did not even crack a smile.
Lord Powell extended his hand with the pleasant, broad ease of a man who expected to be liked. “Wynford. I’ve heard a great deal about you.”
“I imagine,” Anthony replied.
Lewis watched this exchange with a mild and alert expression. It was obvious he’d noticed that there was something different about Anthony’s visage.
“You’ll have to excuse Wynford,” he said as he gave a short laugh. “He is in the habit of sounding harsh even when he isn’t.” He gave Anthony a look that communicated this was the moment to produce the usual smile, the one that smoothed the rough edges. “He is essentially harmless.”
Anthony said nothing for a moment. He was looking at Powell with a quality of attention Caroline had seen him direct at a loo table just before he laid down a card.
“How did you find the Whitmore party last evening?” Anthony said to Powell. His tone was entirely conversational. It was entirely even.