Knowing it would be fruitless to explain she was not pining over him, she maintained a dignified silence until they were escorted inside the house. Then, as they made their way to the drawing room, she said, “I hope you fall in love one day, Caro.”
Her friend shuddered. “Heaven forbid. What a frightful fate.”
George was the first to see them, leaving the group he had been entertaining and coming to greet them at the doorway. Most if not all of the guests had arrived already, and were gathered in picturesque groups around the large room. In the end, the invitation list numbered an equal amount of ladies and gentlemen.
“Lady Bolton,” George said, mindful of his audience. He lifted her gloved hand to his mouth, and over his shoulder, she saw Knight, finally, his veneer of charm worn away to reveal the malevolence that lay underneath. His grey eyes burned with anger.
Magnificent. He truly had been taken off-guard by her arrival.
“George,” she said affectionately. “Thank you for the last-minute invitation.”
He turned his attention to Caroline, whose smile was secretive and flirtatious in equal measure. Evidently their meeting in the park had gone well, because his eyes lingered on her pretty mouth and then dropped lower to her generous bosom.
Well. They would be occupied for quite some time.
George tore his attention away from Caroline long enough to say, “Henry is here somewhere. Don’t go wandering anywhere without him.” The emphasis onwanderingtold her that he was referring to Knight’s chambers.
“Fear not,” she said, seeing an acquaintance at the other end of the room and lifting her hand in greeting. “I won’t do anything stupid. Enjoy yourself, you two. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”
“Oh,” Caroline said in a low purr, “we absolutely shall.”
Henry had often been called cold by his fellow soldiers. Untouched, so they said, by the bloodshed and the death. When faced with adversity, cool calm swallowed his panic and cleared his senses. It was only afterwards that he felt the effects, and never to the degree that he was found vomiting in a ditch. He endured, because that was the only way to survive and keep his men alive. For it, he was called cruel, and he had not minded. If he had ice in his chest instead of a heart, all the better to lead his men with. To fulfil his duty with.
But like all men, he had an Achilles’ heel. A source of weakness.
Louisa laughed lightly from across the room, the centre of a large group the way the earth circled the sun—and just as bright.
An odd burning ache suffused him. This was the first time he had heard that sound in nine years, and it transported him to a different time—an easier, better one, when he had felt as though he could look forward to the future with something other than white-knuckled determination.
According to George, she had accepted his help, reluctantly, but nothing about their interactions had implied that she welcomed his presence in her life again. If anything, she resented him. He understood it, but he never thought he would be able to look on that fact with equanimity.
Across the other side of the room, Knight watched her with a similar intensity. Of course, he pretended he wasn’t, flirtingeasily with the two girls in front of him, but his attention was always on Louisa; if she shifted, he did too.
There was no chance that he would leave her alone now she had arrived, too. Perhaps he even suspected she had orchestrated the entire event—which, as he understood it, she had—in order to lure him away from his house.
Either way, Henry suspected that he would fight like a cornered rat if it came to it, and he resolved to never let it come to it. Not on his watch. If Knight dared try anything to Louisa, he would find himself with broken bones to contend with.
“My lord?” Miss Winton said at his side. He started, so lost in his observation of potential danger—Knight—that he had been unaware of her presence. A rueful smile tugged at his lips. At his request, George had invited her so he might have a chance to better get to know her, and he should be making the most of that.
“Miss Winton.” He bowed. “I apologise, I was lost in thought.”
“Not at all.” Her smile was the brisk, efficient thing she always brought out in front of him. “I’m happy to see you arrived safely.”
“Yes, indeed. Would you like to sit?” A party had recently vacated the seats by the fire, and he led the way to them, doing his best to ignore the low, smoky way Louisa chuckled now. This movement had brought them closer together, and he was starting to suspect it was a mistake.
In the streets of London at night, when the only recourse was to be together, their proximity made rational sense. He could justify it to himself, a need to be by her side to protect her. But in a room filled with people, she was in no danger. The only person in danger was himself—in danger of remembering too much of how it felt to be on the receiving end of that laughter.
Miss Winton sat opposite him and smoothed her skirts over her lap placidly. “Shall we skip the necessary small talk?” sheasked in that disconcertingly blunt way of hers. “I know most ladies are more than happy to discuss the state of the roads and the weather and the latest fashions, but I confess it bores me.”
He raised his brows. “What would you rather talk about?”
“Mama believes that my being here will secure you as a husband.” Her voice was matter-of-fact. “If you’re amenable, once we return to London, you would be free to ask my father’s permission at any time, and he would be certain to grant it to you.”
“I see,” Henry said. Two weeks of courtship in these close quarters was evidently enough. He thought of Oliver and his father, their hopeless mismanagement of their finances. Just that morning, his mother had written to complain that their modiste would not make any more new gowns until the outstanding payments had been addressed. Theo and Nathanial had stepped in, but this could not continue, and Henry’s stomach gave an angry twist at the thought. The sooner he married, the better. “That seems satisfactory,” he said.
She dipped her head in acknowledgement. “Good.”
“Does that arrangement work for you?”
