He paused. “I’ve lost you. What are you thinking about?”
“Parliament,” she hedged.You being wrong for me in every way.
“I don’t mind. Most people see it as an excuse to come to Town for the Season.” He winced as he belatedly realized most residents of this village might not share that privilege. “Oh. Have you ever had a… Have you been to London?”
“No and no,” she answered, for the first time wondering how different her life might have been, had she made different choices. “I have a great-aunt who would have been willing to sponsor me for a proper come-out, but my place is here.”
“You could be part of Society,” he said with astonishment, “but you saidno?”
“It’s… I couldn’t leave my father. You didn’t see him after the fever took my mother. I mean, you don’t see him now, but back then it was even worse. He was too melancholy to rise from bed, to dress, to eat. If it hadn’t been for me, I think he would have died of a broken heart. I couldn’t leave him and risk the melancholy returning. Not when there would be no one to save him this time.”
“I am sorry,” Azureford said softly. “I do not know what it was like to be in your situation, but I do know how it feels to lose one’s parents. I would not wish it on anyone.”
She pushed up from the table with a forced smile. “Weren’t we meant to finish packing up the library?”
“Of course.” He rose to his feet, but his dark gaze stayed locked on her. “After you.”
For the next hour, the only words spoken between them related to the titles she was adding to the master list, or the books Azureford swiped from the crates and carried over to his stack of rescues.
Carole was just about to tease him about keeping Edward Gibbon’sCritical Observations on the Sixth Book of the Aeneid, when she finally caught sight of a familiar blue journal with a distinctive Q embossed on the front cover. She wrenched it from the stack and pressed it to her pounding chest with a disbelieving gasp. It was here. She’d found it!
She resisted the temptation to flip through its pages at once, raking her eyes over her reimagined renditions of local landmarks and private parlors. It was as if a part of her heart had finally been returned. The part that believed escaping into a false reality was just as good as living in the real world. She started to tuck the sketchbook inside her reticule before Azureford noticed anything amiss, only to realize he was staring right at her. Her stomach sank as she slowly turned to face him.
He raised his brows. “What did you find?”
“M-my missing earring?”
“It looks surprisingly like one of my books.”
“Not your book.” She took a deep breath. “Mybook.”
He crossed his arms, one eyebrow cocked expectantly.
There was no good way to do this, so… out with it all at once. She held the sketchbook flat and upended her reticule. The “missing” gold-and-citrine hoop tumbled out, winking accusingly from atop the dyed leather.
“You lost your earring,” Azureford said slowly, “inside your reticule?”
“I lied,” she admitted, although it was obvious he’d worked that much out for himself. She put her earring back into her reticule and lifted up the sketchbook. “I lost this on the night of your party.”
His eyes were unsmiling. “A diary of your innermost thoughts?”
“Pictures of them,” she admitted. “It’s a sketchbook. I wasn’t going to show you, but I thought you might like—”
“—to know the real reason you’ve been visiting?” A muscle worked at his jaw. “Yes. Thank you for telling me. You can go now.”
“No, it wasn’t like that at… All right, yes. That was the reason I visitedthisyear. But I came to your party last year because I wanted to get to know you better, and I still do. You’re not at all what you first seemed, and I like you so much more than I imagined I would.”
“This apology of yours,” he said dryly. “It needs work.”
“I want to help,” she burst out. “That’s what I’m really saying. Judith is the only other person who knows this sketchbook exists, but no one but me has ever seen the drawings. I love buildings. I love imagining how I would remodel them even more. I drew your parlor—”
“You drew myparlor?”
“—when I dashed off to the retiring room for a few minutes. On my way back, someone bumped into me and my sketchbook skidded into your library. I didn’t want to look like I was stealing one of your books, or call attention to its contents…”
“You drew my parlor in ‘a fewminutes?’”
There was only one way to prove to him that she possessed the skills he needed most. Carole took a deep breath. She was going to have to trust him. A little. And hope that the duke’s infamous hauteur and reticence meant he was much too proper to gossip—not that he had close friends in town to share scandalbroth with anyway.
