“Lady Caroline,” he greeted with a quick bow, and was very satisfied that his voice came out entirely even.
“Your Grace.” Hers was equally placid, and he felt his lips tilting upward.
She was very good.
He had expected nothing less.
“A pleasure,” he said, then turned back toward Lewis, who had noticed none of this, and was already disappearing through the morning room door.
Anthony followed, and he did his best not to look back over his shoulder.
An hour later, he was still in Lewis’s study, which smelled of old paper—and the kind of scent that accumulated in rooms belonging to men who genuinely liked books, and not merely bought them for decoration.
Lewis was in the middle of outlining his position on the enclosure debate with the slightly aggressive patience of a man who had given the matter more thought than most. Anthony listened carefully; this was not a performance, for Lewis was one of the few people whose positions on things he found worth the effort of actually considering. And that was quite a short list of people.
He was listening, and yet…
Twice in the course of the past hour, someone had passed through the corridor beyond the study door. The first time he heard a quiet step, as if someone were creeping nearby. It clearly was not a person who was moving at a servant’s brisk pace. The second time around, it was slightly slower. And both times, he had found his attention moving toward the sound with an eagerness that was entirely unwelcome.
Focus.
Lewis was saying something about tenant protections when Anthony pulled himself back to the conversation, which was the reason he had come here in the first place.
“—and the committee’s position isn’t worth the paper it’s written on if they can’t agree on the compensation terms. Therefore, I’ve drafted a counterproposal that I’d like your opinion on before I present it next Thursday.” His friend tapped the document on his desk. “Read it when you’ve got a moment.”
“I’ll read it tonight.” Anthony reached for the paper.
Lewis leaned back in his chair with satisfaction, ready to move on to the next subject. There was a small, quiet pause.
“Have you heard anything interesting lately?” Lewis asked, in a tone that was rather too casual to be trusted. “I don’t know, from your corner of London, perhaps?”
Anthony’s brow arched. “That depends on your definition of interesting.”
“I mean… gossip. You know, talk. The sort of thing that gets around the clubs.” Lewis turned a pen over in his fingers. “About Caroline, specifically.”
His spine stilled violently at the mention of that name, but Anthony sat straighter to keep it brief and undetectable.
“Not that I’ve heard,” he said calmly.
Lewis exhaled. “Good. I’ve been worried.”
He looked, for a moment, less like the confident Duke of Grayston and more like a man who had spent a great deal of time managing a responsibility. One that he both loved very much and found very exhausting.
“She’s been in a mood lately,” Lewis continued. “A restless one, to be precise. You know how she gets.”
Anthony did not know that, in fact. He had known Lewis’s sister for approximately forty-five minutes across the span of three social occasions, the other night in the alley notwithstanding.
He said nothing, and Lewis, likely interpreting his silence as agreement, pressed onward.
“I want her settled. Not because I want to be rid of her, of course.” He frowned. “Because the world is a great deal kinder to women who are settled, and I would rather she have a good man at her side than… Well. You know how it is.”
This time around, Anthony did know. He also thought that Lewis’s definition of a ‘good’ man and Caroline’s definition of a tolerable existence might not be arriving at the same destination by the same road, but he said nothing about that either.
He nearly said something else entirely, though. He had the words assembled and almost in order:
Lewis, your sister was at the Black Boar two nights ago, in men’s clothes, with her friend, watching the boxing, and she gave an angry dockworker very nearly enough time to do something regrettable before I intervened.
He bit his lip and again said nothing.