He had the sense that Mr. Delacorte was crossing his fingers for hope and luck beneath the game table.
Suddenly, leaving this room seemed the wisest thing he could do. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that. He flicked a glance at the back of Keating. For some ridiculous reason even the nape of her neck seemed poignant.
“I’ll get my coat,” he told Delacorte, who gave a delighted little hop.
In the wake of the Shillingford ball, Lady Wisterberg was consumed with the final preparations for their party, to be held within a week. She’d invited nearly seventy carefully curated (according to her standards) people. And all of them—all of them!—were coming.
Well, as of yesterday, all of them were coming save three, as three invitees had just regretfully informed Lady Wisterberg that they would not be able to attend, after all, and they were, to Catherine’s relief, Miss Seaver and the Hackworths.
Oh, but that’s to be expected with every party, Lady Wisterberg had said, airily.We shouldn’t receive more than that.
Catherine had spent several mornings during the past week at Lady Wisterberg’s town house with Lucy, pressed into helping to make decisions about flowers and menus and the order of dances, and whether they should hire someone to draw a fancy chalk design on the ballroom floor.
When the invitation to Lord Vaughn’s friend’s house party at last arrived—addressed to Catherine and Lucy—Lady Wisterberg had spent a moment speechless with glee and triumph, her hands clasped over her heart.
“Oh. My dear,” she said, sounding subdued. Awestruck. “It’s like a dream come true, isn’t it?”
The young woman who had arrived in London a few short weeks ago would certainly have nodded in vigorous agreement.
Catherine knew what to do: she nodded. And she could, with a little effort, in fact muster a faint pang of genuine excitement, an echo of the enthusiasm with which she’d arrived in London. And given time, she might be able to fan it into a flame.
Surprisingly, no new invitations to balls or parties or picnics had yet arrived for her this week, but Lady Wisterberg wasn’t concerned.
“Oh, it’s probably just a lull, dear. After the Shillingford ball, everyone needs a bit of a rest,” Lady Wisterberg said, comfortingly.
And now she lay stretched out on her bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for sleep.
Now and again the floorboards above her creaked as he moved across the room.
Odd to think that she might never have another conversation with him. She had seen him only briefly this week. And there would come a day when she might not ever see him again.
He was impossible to forget. That was the trouble. But he was designed that way. And yet, perhaps it wasn’t personal to her at all. The sun, after all, feels warm to everyone. She supposed that was the destiny of some people, to be felt far and wide.
Perhaps he was writing to his son.
She wondered if Anna, now married to another man, had thought about Dominic every day for seventeen years, even when she was in bed with her husband. Had she longed for him at night? Had she thought about him every time she looked at Leo? When and how had the longing for her first love ebbed, if circumstances were indeed as civilized as Dominic claimed? Had it at last felt merciful when the pain subsided, or had she been sad to realize the last of the old feeling was gone?
Had life seemed dull to Anna in the absence of that longing, or had she been relieved at last to be free of it, content with the life she’d made for herself? Had she truly managed to fall in love with the farmer she’d married?
Catherine couldn’t quite shake the aching jealousy—perhaps it was more like envy?—she felt for Anna, who was the first and might be the last to ever have him. But it was undeniably tempered with compassion.
For how she must have suffered. Missing someone whom you know is gone forever was one thing. Missing someone while they still walked the earth was quite another.
And missing Lord Dominic Leo Kirke was something else altogether.
To know him when he was free and naive and passionate and open... who could have resisted him?
He had clearly never forgiven himself for a momentof passionate selfishness that had ruptured lives. But she could not seem to muster anything like the total censure he seemed to feel he deserved. He’d been so young. And thanks to him, she now understood how passion could be a temporary madness. One could be lectured about its risks, but like love or death, there was no true way to comprehend how overwhelming desire could be until one experienced it. For instance, in a garden, in the moonlight, with one’s skirts hiked up.
She thought about Leo, and how he must feel about discovering that he and the brothers and sisters with whom he’d been raised had different fathers. She wondered how his brothers and sisters might feel about it. Was there relief, or a new loneliness in this, too, to learn he was different? He’d thought he’d known who he was his entire life. And suddenly he was new to himself, and to them.
Just like she was. Changed forever as a result of Lord Dominic Kirke.
She wondered if he yet knew how lucky he was to have Dominic as a father. The man who raised him no doubt truly was a good man. But now he also had a father who would surely go to the ends of the earth for him, and do it with fiery flair, should the need arise.
She thought she’d heard Dominic curse—a staccato rap of a word—which made her smile. Perhaps he’d stubbed a toe, or read something outrageous, or spilled ink.
And then, at last, for quite some time, it was very quiet.