“It will not be easy,” he said.
“Will you come in?” she asked when they reached the house.
“I will not, thank you” he said. “I have taken enough of your time. I am sorry if I upset you by stirring up old memories. And there is noifabout it, is there? I ought to have used the wordthat. I am sorry that I upset you. And I am sorry I ever made the mistake of thinking your serenity indicated a woman who had never known any great trouble in her life. I have much to learn. I wonder you put up with me.”
She set her hand in his and he raised it to his lips.
“I do it because you care,” she said. “You could so easily be arrogant, Colin. You have everything from which arrogance often springs. But you care for others. Even, I think, your mother. You cannot simply ride roughshod over her and impose your will now that you are able, can you? Instead, you look for a solution that will suit everyone, your mother and your future wife included.”
“I suppose it really cannot be done, can it?” he said ruefully. “Are some problems just without solution, Elizabeth?”
“I do not know,” she said. “That is too hard a question. Thank you for the walk. Thank you for listening. Colin…” She hesitated. “Choose someone you canreallycare for. Someone you can love. Not just someone you believe capable of filling the role of baroness.”
“And yet,” he said, smiling at her, “you would choose with your head only and no reference to your heart.”
“My case is different from yours,” she told him.
“Because you are elderly and past the age for love and romance?” he asked.
She laughed softly. “Something like that,” she said.
“You can be so foolish sometimes,” he said, “despite your experience and superior wisdom. You are not elderly or even close. And you were made for love. And probably even romance.”
“And laughter and joy?” she said, and he remembered using those two words with her at the Dunmore ball.
“Yes, and those too,” he said. “Please do not do something you will forever regret just because you believe life has passed you by.”
Surely she would regret marrying Codaire. He was a dry old stick, to say the least. Though perhaps he was just the man for her. What did he know? All he did know was that he wanted her to find and experience all the good things life had to offer. Ifhewere Codaire, he would spread the moon and stars and everything that was bright in the universe beneath her feet.
He kissed the back of her hand again and took his leave of her. He waited until she had been admitted to the house and then made his way back along the street. If Overfield were still alive, he thought, it would give him the greatest pleasure to confront him. His uncontrollable drinking had been a sickness, Elizabeth believed. Perhaps it had. But she was too kind in her judgment. Nothing—nothing—could excuse him for his abuse of his wife. Nothing could excuse him for killing her two children while they were still in her womb.
Good God almighty. Elizabeth!
He was not worthy to kiss the hem of her garments.
•••
“I was unfortunately mistaken,” Lord Ede said, flicking open the lid of his snuffbox and preparing to take a pinch. “I was off by one day.”
“Wrong is wrong, Ede,” Lady Hodges said, her sweet voice sounding a little petulant. “And now I will have to go out two days in a row. It is very inconvenient. And it will be remarked upon.”
“But of course it will. Thetonwill be in raptures,” he said. “How often are you seen twice in as many days?”
She gestured away with a slender white hand the fan one young gentleman was wafting before her face. “You are quite sure it is tomorrow, Ede?”
“Quite,” he said. “Weather permitting, I daresay. The delectable Miss Dunmore. At the fashionable hour. In his curricle.”
“Isshe delectable?” she asked. “Quite flawlessly beautiful? The most sought-after beauty of the Season?”
“It is being said,” he told her, one hand hovering over his snuffbox while he appeared to concentrate upon its contents, “that she is more lovely than anyone else this Season or last Season or indeed any Season all the way back to…When was it you made your own come-out?”
“A few years ago,” she said.
“All the way back to a few years ago, then,” he said before setting a pinch of snuff on the back of his hand and sniffing it up each nostril.
“Everyone said when I made my come-out that my beauty was unsurpassed in living memory,” she said. “Some said it would remain unsurpassed for many years to come.”
Lord Ede sneezed into his handkerchief. “They were right,” he told her.
