The gate clicked softly behind her. They ventured into the square together, moving at a pace that would not interest a watchman. The gravel gave a quiet, regular answer to their steps.
“This is unwise,” she cautioned. “The houses look upon us.”
“The houses look upon many things,” he replied. “They rarely know what they see.”
“My face is not unknown,” she reminded him. “Nor is yours.”
“True. Which is why we will not give them a clear view.” He led her toward the southern border, where a line of yews stood sentry and the lamps thinned. “The gardeners have been lazy here. The hedges are thick. The gravel is poor. The owners complain of damp, so no one lingers.”
She followed, though her lungs had tightened as if she had been running.
It was easier to be brazen in a study where the door shut and the fire hummed like a sleeping beast. Here, the night kept score. Windows could open without a sound. A maid could lean on her elbows with nothing to do but remark on shadows.
“You chose the garden gate,” she observed. “Why?”
“It has two keys,” he answered. “One is mine, the other belongs to a man I have paid since his youth to forget faces.”
“That is a poor habit to purchase in a servant.”
“It has served me. As will this path.”
Gwen felt a pang of unfounded jealousy in her chest at the thought of him bringing other women here.
They turned beneath the yews. The city seemed to fall a little further away. The lamps behind the hedge became small blurs, more suggestion than light. The river made its distant presence known with a faint, damp breath.
The Duke glanced down at her. “You are uneasy.”
“I amsensible,” she corrected. “If you wished to be truly discreet, you would have kept us in your study.”
“My servants watch,” he said. “I trust them, but I do not tempt them. A footman can keep a secret until a laundress offers him a laugh and a pie. A gentleman may stroll in a square with a lady and be accused of nothing but air.”
He said it so calmly that she wished to be angry. Anger would have burned away the flutter in her stomach.
Instead, she kept her voice level. “You think of everything.”
“I try.”
“I’m sure you do not, and I do not trust you,” she scoffed, before her politeness could throttle the truth. The words felt cool and honest.
“Good,” he uttered. “I am not offended by prudence.”
“I do not trust any man,” she added. “Not to remember what he promises when he is comfortable. Not to keep his hands where they belong when he is angry. Not to keep his temper when the world refuses to obey him.”
They had reached a small alcove where a stone bench bowed out from the hedge. A plane tree lifted a dark hand above it, bare and black against a faded sky.
The Duke stopped and turned so that the path lay behind his shoulder. He did not touch her. He did not move closer than was necessary for a private conversation.
“If we are to continue,” he said, with that dry clarity that felt like the edge of a well-honed blade, “you will have to trust me at least enough to follow my instruction.”
She kept her chin up. “Your instructions have been agreeable only when they match my purpose.”
“Then we are not so far apart,” he replied. “Your purpose requires privacy. Mine requires it as well. Allow me to provide it.”
“You ask too much of a stranger,” she protested.
“You are no longer a stranger,” he pointed out. “You are a conspirator who arrives at the stroke of the hour and leaves when the clock tells her to leave. You keep your word. I keep mine. If you wish us both to keep our words tonight, you will accept a small measure of inconvenience.”
“Inconvenience,” she repeated, with a small, incredulous sound that almost passed for laughter. “What a gentlemanly word for panic.”
