“But the risk to his own reputation …” George’s voice emerged strangled.
“His Grace was unconcerned with personal risk.” Howlett’s gaze moved between the siblings. “Lord Sulton, you owe your freedom, your reputation, and possibly your life to the Duke of Calborough. I trust you’ll remember that debt.”
George nodded, apparently unable to form words. His throat worked convulsively, as if trying to swallow emotions too large for his body to contain.
After Howlett departed, the front door closed with quiet finality, and George sank into the nearest chair like a marionette with severed strings. His head dropped into his hands, fingers tangling in hair that needed cutting.
Louise crossed to him, her footsteps silent on the worn carpet. She rested her hand on his shoulder, feeling the fine tremor that ran through him like electricity through wire.
“It’s over.” The words came out soft, barely disturbing the morning air.
George’s shoulders shook. Silent sobs wracked his frame as weeks of terror finally found release. When he lifted his head, tears tracked down his face in silver rivers.
“Because of him.” His voice broke on the words. “After everything I did, everything I cost you both, he still saved me. He had every reason to let me rot, to let scandal destroy us completely. Instead, he used his influence, risked his reputation, to protect us.”
Louise had no answer for that. The contradiction sat like glass in her throat, sharp and impossible to swallow. Aaron had saved them all, arranged their safety with meticulous care, then walked away as if they meant nothing. As if the weeks they’d spent in his home, the laughter they’d shared, the love that had bloomed between them despite every obstacle, had been merely a pleasant interlude in his orderly life.
She moved to the window, staring out at the narrow street where vendors were beginning their morning calls. A flower seller pushed her cart past, bright blooms that seemed obscene in their cheerfulness against the gray sky.
“Louise.” Her name carried all the gentleness their father had once used when delivering hard truths. “Men like the Duke of Calborough don’t make oversights. Every penny is accounted for, every decision deliberate.”
She pressed her palm against the cold glass, watching her breath fog the window. “Then it’s guilt. Or pity. Or some misguided sense of obligation.”
“Or love.”
The word hung between them, too large for the shabby room to contain. Louise closed her eyes against the truth of it, but that only brought Aaron’s face more clearly to mind. The way he’d looked that last morning, resolution and misery warring in every line of his body.
“Love would have fought for us.” Her voice emerged flat, emotionless. “Love would have asked us to stay.”
George rose, joining her at the window. Side by side, they watched London wake to another gray day. “Perhaps love thought letting go was kinder.”
“Then love is a fool.”
Her brother’s arm wrapped around her shoulders, pulling her against his side the way he had when they were children and thunderstorms frightened her. “Yes. I rather think it is.”
“Lord Sulton! We heard you were still recovering!”
Lady Huffington descended upon them the moment they entered her drawing room for the poetry reading, her elaborate coiffure trembling with the force of her enthusiasm. The room blazed with candlelight that couldn’t quite mask the shabbygentility of furniture past its prime, much like many of the guests themselves.
George straightened his shoulders, assuming the role of invalid with practiced ease. His hand went to his chest in a gesture they’d rehearsed, suggesting a man still fighting for full health.
“The Bath waters worked miracles, Lady Huffington, though I confess I still tire easily.” He touched his chest delicately, the perfect picture of aristocratic fragility. “There were days I couldn’t leave my rooms, the fatigue was so overwhelming. My physician insisted on complete isolation for weeks at a time.”
“How dreadful!” Lady Huffington’s friends clustered around them like hens around scattered grain, hungry for details of suffering that wasn’t their own. “No wonder so few people encountered you there. Lady Montford wrote that she visited Bath twice and never saw you once!”
“The physicians were quite strict.” George managed a wan smile that Louise had to admit was perfectly calibrated. “No visitors, no correspondence, nothing that might overtax my constitution. I might as well have been in prison, although considerably more comfortable.”
The ladies tittered at his weak attempt at humor, already composing letters to their correspondents about poor Lord Sulton’s terrible ordeal.
Louise maintained her position at George’s elbow, her hand resting lightly on his arm, ready to steady him if his performancerequired it. Around them, London’s literary elite gathered in small groups, their conversations a low hum of culture and carefully veiled gossip. She caught fragments of discussion about recent scandals, declining popularity of certain authors, and someone’s daughter who had made an unfortunate match with a merchant’s son.
“Shall we find seats?” Louise guided George toward chairs near the back, away from the scrutiny of the front rows, where the most dedicated poetry enthusiasts would analyze every reaction.
They passed Lady Farleigh, who inclined her head with cool politeness that didn’t quite mask her curiosity. Lord Calderdely stood near the refreshment table, his gaze following Louise with interest that made her stomach turn. She kept her expression pleasantly neutral, the mask she’d perfected in recent weeks.
The poet, a young man with artfully disheveled hair and an intensity that suggested either genius or excellent marketing, took his position before the assembled crowd. His velvet jacket had seen better days, but he wore it with the confidence of a man who believed poverty enhanced his artistic credibility. He held a slim volume bound in burgundy leather, its pages edged with gold that caught the candlelight.
“I shall begin with something of my own composition,” he announced, as if bestowing a great gift upon the unworthy masses. ’Love walks not in beauty but in shadow, seeking light it dare not claim.”
