“Who is that?” he asked.
Dominic followed his gaze. “Lord Hargrove’s second son. Inherited a tidy estate in Hampshire last year. I believe his name is Frederick. He is reasonably handsome, tolerably wealthy, and apparently interested in your betrothed.”
“She is not—” Lucien stopped himself.
She is not truly my betrothedwas what he had almost said, and the correction would have unraveled everything.
He clenched his fingers around his glass. “She is speaking with him out of politeness. She speaks with everyone out of politeness.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about.” Dominic sipped his wine. “And yet you look as though you are considering whether Lord Frederick’s head would fit through the garden trellis.”
Lucien said nothing, because the image was not entirely inaccurate.
Below, Lord Frederick touched Elinor’s arm. A brief, deliberate graze of fingers against her sleeve, and Elinor did not pull away. She smiled, and something dark and hot and entirely unwelcome coiled in Lucien’s stomach.
He set his glass on the stone balustrade and walked down the terrace steps without excusing himself. Behind him, he heard Dominic sigh.
The reading had paused between poems, and guests were milling about the arbor, exchanging pleasantries. Lucien moved through them with the ease of a man who had spent a decade learning to navigate a crowd without appearing to hurry, though tonight his stride carried an edge he could not entirely smooth.
He reached Elinor as Lord Frederick was mid-sentence, something about the merits of Cowper’s verse. Lucien did not care about Cowper’s verse.
“Lady Elinor.” He pitched his voice low enough that only she and Frederick could hear. “I require a word with you.”
Elinor blinked up at him. “Now?”
“Now.”
Lord Frederick straightened, his hand finally leaving the back of her bench. “Your Grace. I was merely enjoying Lady Elinor’s company. She has a remarkable knowledge of poetry.”
“She has a remarkable knowledge of most things.” Lucien held the man’s gaze long enough to watch the confidence falter. “If you will excuse us.”
It was not a question. Frederick inclined his head and retreated toward the refreshment table, and Lucien extended his hand to Elinor. She took it, her expression caught between confusion and the beginning of irritation, and he led her away from the arbor, past the rose beds, toward the quieter paths at the far end of the garden where the lanterns thinned and the hedgerows grew tall enough to block the view from the terrace.
He found a stone alcove set into the garden wall, half-hidden by climbing jasmine, and stopped.
Elinor pulled her hand free. “What are you doing?”
“What was he doing?” Lucien’s voice came out harder than he intended. “His hand was on your arm, Elinor. He was leaning into you as though you had invited him to.”
“He was being pleasant. We were discussing poetry. You are being ridiculous.”
“I am being?—”
He stopped and drew a breath. He could hear how he sounded, and it appalled him. He was a man who did not lose control, who had built his entire adult life around the principle that feelings were weapons other people aimed at him, and he did not hand them the ammunition.
“You are right. I am being ridiculous.”
“Yes, you are.” Elinor’s chin lifted. The lantern light caught her spectacles, and behind the glass her blue eyes held a steadiness that made something crack in his composure. “Our engagement lasts until the end of the Season, Lucien. You said so yourself. After that, I am free to speak with whomever I please, and he was perfectly civil.”
The words hit him in the chest. She was right. She was entirely, infuriatingly right, and that her rightness made him want to put his fist through the garden wall told him everything he had been refusing to hear for weeks.
“Until then,” he said, and his voice had dropped to something rough and low that did not sound like pretense, “you are mine.”
Elinor went still. Her lips parted. The irritation in her expression did not vanish, but it shifted, making room for something that looked like the same reckless heat he felt burning through his own restraint.
“That is not what we agreed,” she whispered.
“No.” He stepped closer. The jasmine brushed his shoulder, and the scent of it mixed with the night air and whatever Elinor wore that always made him think of clean linen and old books. “It is not what we agreed. But I am telling you what is true.”