Victor saw the letter in his head before he admitted he would write it. The lines arranged themselves with the same balancehe applied to ledgers. A place. An hour. A precise invitation that allowed no misreading and offered no threat.
He would not summon; he would invite. He could not abide the thought of her returning to a house where fear slunk through corridors like a cat. He did not know that fear lived there, but he suspected it. He suspected it because the other possibility felt worse.
“She agreed to see you again,” Roderick ventured with a smile.
“She will,” Victor said.
“Then you will stop prowling like a hound that has been told to wait.”
“I do not prowl,” Victor protested.
“Oh, to call a prowl a stride,” Roderick answered cheerfully. “Whenyou stride. One can hear the capital letters.”
They stopped at the corner. Roderick tipped his hat toward the tailor’s window, where a dummy wore a coat that could only be intended for sin. “Shall we dine at White’s? I would like to watch Benedict lose with honor.”
“Perhaps,” Victor replied. “I have letters to send.”
Roderick’s smile grew. “Of course you do.”
Victor returned to Greystone House, went directly to the library, and wrote without flourish:
My Lady,
If you will honor me with your company this evening, come by the garden gate at half past eleven. You will be received without notice.
V.S.
He sealed it with the small signet he used for private matters, then rang for a footman. The young man entered at a trot and bowed.
“Deliver this to Fenwick House,” Victor instructed. “Place it in the young lady’s hand, and do so without a remark. If not, give it to her maid with the plainest instructions and return at once.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
The door closed. Silence fell.
Victor stood for a long moment with his hand on the back of his chair, feeling the grain of the wood beneath his glove. He imagined the lift of a hood, the steadiness in eyes that had not yet learned how to look away.
Seven nights. Seven lines. Keep the rule. Keep the distance.
He sat and opened the ledger that Halden had pretended to balance. His pencil moved. The numbers settled into their places with relief. Behind them, like a second column in invisible ink, ran a different count that insisted on being kept.
Half past eleven.
CHAPTER 7
Gwen reached the garden gate a few minutes before the appointed time and found the iron colder than she had expected beneath her gloved hand. A lamplighter had passed not long before and left a meek flame that shivered in its glass cage.
The square was quiet. No carriage rattled, no late reveler sang to the winter air. She drew her cloak closer and listened to the small noises that belonged to the night—the hiss of the gas, the soft rustle of branches.
A key turned once in the lock. The gate yielded. The Duke stood within, not in full evening dress, but in a dark coat and plain hat that made a gentleman look like a shadow who had learned to walk.
He inclined his head. “Lady Gwendoline.”
“Your Grace.”
“Walk with me,” he demanded.
She hesitated on the threshold. Garden paths could hide and reveal in the same minute.
