He followed.
Gwen did not look over her shoulder. She moved past the smaller morning room, then hesitated a fraction of a moment outside the door to his study. Her fingers tightened on the folded letter. Then she opened the door and slipped inside.
Victor stopped several paces away and considered.
She was not heading for the veranda then, which meant the summons could not have come from her. Either his assumption had been wrong, or someone else had pushed events toward a collision he had not anticipated.
He could have turned away. He did not. Instead, he crossed the remaining distance and opened the study door without knocking.
Gwen stood near his desk, half-bent, as if she had just straightened in panic. The candle on the side table cast a warm glow on her face and the letter she still held.
Her eyes went wide.
“Your Grace,” she breathed.
He closed the door behind him. The sound seemed to echo.
He took in every detail in a single sweep. The faint flush high on her cheekbones. The quick rise and fall of her chest. The way her hand trembled around the letter.
He raised an eyebrow. “Lady Gwendoline. What are you doing in my study?”
For a heartbeat, Gwen looked like a child caught stealing from a sweet shop. Then she straightened, her spine stiff, her chin lifting in that familiar stubborn way.
“I, ah, was looking for the veranda,” she replied. “I took a wrong turn.”
Victor stared at her. “You have been here several times. You know very well the veranda is not adjacent to my study.”
Color deepened in her cheeks. “It is a large house. Corridors confuse me.”
“That is not true,” he said quietly.
She flinched as if the words were a physical touch.
Silence fell between them, filled with all the things they had said and left unsaid over the past weeks. Her gaze skittered away from his, fixing instead on the lamp on his desk.
“You have no business being here,” he added. “Howard would have apoplexy if he knew you had wandered into my private rooms.”
“Howard would have apoplexy if I breathed too loudly,” she muttered. “He cannot control the air in my lungs, no matter how he tries.”
The wry bitterness in her voice cut him.
He stepped closer despite his better judgment. “Has he hurt you?”
Her hand tightened around the letter again. “Not in ways that concern you.”
“They concern me,” Victor insisted. “More than they should.”
She let out a low, mirthless laugh. “Do not say things like that. It is unkind. We both know you have been working very hard to put distance between us.”
He felt those words like a slap.
“Gwen,” he began.
She flinched at the intimacy of her name, then recovered. “It does not matter now. I only came to leave this.” She glanced down at the letter. “On your desk.”
He nodded toward it. “What is it?”
“Nothing important.”
