She narrowed her eyes. “No novels?”
He smirked. “I confess, I have a weakness for gothic melodramas. Only the worst kind.”
Abigail looked momentarily stunned—then laughed aloud. It wasn’t demure or measured. It was full-bodied and utterly delightful.
“Well,” she said, eyes shining, “you’ve just upended every assumption I had about you.”
“Good,” Arthur said, his voice low. “Assumptions are dangerous things.”
Their tea cooled slowly as the conversation stretched onward. They discussed the romantic poets—she adored Shelley, he admired Keats. They debated whether Caesar’s ambition outweighed his brilliance.
Abigail’s eyes lit with quiet satisfaction as she lifted her teacup once more. “I confess I have a particular fondness for Marcus Aurelius. There’s something… grounding in the way he writes. As though he’s speaking not to an audience, but to himself.”
Arthur’s gaze sharpened, intrigued by the candor in her tone. “You readMeditations, then?”
“Of course. More than once.”
He leaned back in his chair, the corners of his mouth twitching into something between a smile and a challenge. “Then I trust you’ll indulge me if I share a favourite line?”
Abigail tilted her head, intrigued. “By all means.”
Arthur’s voice dropped slightly, becoming quieter, almost reflective. “‘When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive—to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.’”
Abigail didn’t speak right away. The quote hung between them like a shared secret, gentle and steady.
“That one,” she said finally, “makes me feel both small and strangely powerful at once.”
Arthur nodded slowly. “As it should.”
And through it all, something bloomed between them—not affection, not yet, but familiarity. Respect. Interest. A kind of spark that neither had expected and neither entirely welcomed.
At one point, she turned to look out the window, and Arthur studied her in profile—the strong line of her jaw, the thoughtful set of her mouth, the elegant sweep of her neck beneath the edge of her bonnet.
She wasn’t what he’d expected. She wasn’t what society expected either.
And that made her dangerous.
He had often joked that he couldn’t abide young ladies of the ton who insisted on reciting poetry or having it recited to them—and yet, here he was doing that exact thing with Abigail, as if it was something he did every day.
It was unsettling for him to drop his guard.
But as she turned back to him and offered a quiet, knowing smile, Arthur realised—perhaps for the first time—that danger might not be a thing to avoid.
Perhaps, just this once, it was something to explore.
***
The return journey to the Darlington townhouse passed in a quiet sort of contentment. Abigail sat beside Eliza once more, both women quietly conversing about the tea-shop’s confections, their earlier walk, and the number of glances they’d drawn in Hyde Park. Yet, beside them, Arthur remained uncharacteristically quiet.
He listened with half an ear, nodding occasionally, but his thoughts were elsewhere. It unsettled him more than he’d care to admit—that he had not wanted the outing to end. The soft lilt of Abigail’s laughter, her eyes bright when she spoke of Marcus Aurelius, the way her brows knitted ever so slightly when she thought deeply—all of it had lingered with him longer than it should have. He had not expected the performance to feel so… real.
And now, as the carriage wheels clattered over the cobbles once more, drawing ever closer to the Darlington townhouse, a dull twist of reluctance tightened in his chest. The facade had held, indeed. But something beneath it had shifted.
He offered his hand as Abigail stepped down from the carriage, her gloved fingers brushing his only briefly. Their eyes met for a moment—hers calm and unreadable, his carefully masked—and then it was done. The moment had ended.
He offered her a small bow as she curtsied to him, but he did not trust himself to speak in case he told her to come back with them.
He had to remind himself, as he re-entered his carriage with Eliza, that it was supposed to be a game. It was all a ruse, and had to remain only that.
