They both looked away at the same time, a shared moment of denial. The carriage creaked. A bird called somewhere in the fields.
"We should be rejoining the others shortly," Crewe said, his voice neutral. "I can see the lead carriage ahead."
Alice followed his gaze. Dark silhouettes appeared against the bright road, a procession heading toward the picnic grounds. The pink muslin of the whispering sisters fluttered in the second carriage, the stout baroness's bonnet bobbed in the first.
Normal life continued as if the past minutes had not happened.
"How fortunate," Alice said. "I was beginning to fear we'd been forgotten."
It was a weak statement, and they both knew it. The bright tone she had used all morning felt hollow now, insufficient against the shift that had just occurred between them.
Crewe made a sound that might have been agreement. His hands remained clenched against his thighs.
The irritation lingered at his propriety, his pronouncements, his certainty that sense and purpose were shields against the messiness of living. But now something else had crept in, a hint of a melody she did not recognize but found herself straining to hear.
Unwelcome. Inconvenient. Impossible to ignore.
The picnic grounds appeared over the next rise. A stretch of manicured lawn beside an ornamental lake, with servants laying out blankets and hampers and parasols standing against the grass. The other carriages pulled up in an orderly line, unloading their passengers into the sunshine.
Alice gathered herself, straightened her spine, and found her smile.
"Well," she said as the carriage slowed, "we have survived the journey. What shall we quarrel about over sandwiches?"
Crewe looked at her then, really looked, and for a moment his expression was unguarded. Something flickered there that she could not name, and it made her breath catch despite her resolutions.
"I'm sure," he said quietly, "we will find something."
The carriage stopped. A footman appeared at the door, and Alice stepped out, acutely aware of the man behind her and the long afternoon still ahead.
The scene unfolded like an idilic painting. Quilts and tartan blankets lay spread beneath the branches. Wicker hampers opened to reveal cold chicken, raised pies, and strawberries piled like rubies in porcelain bowls. Laughter rose and fell with the breeze.
Alice made herself the center of motion withouttrying. She drifted from group to group with the ease of a woman born to scenes like this, accepting a glass of lemonade here, a teasing remark there—always moving before anyone could pin her to a singular expectation. She played at quoits with the pink-muslin sisters, then watched Crispin coax the baroness into a disastrous attempt at archery that ended with an arrow embedded in the turf and the baroness insisting it had been “a strategic choice.”
And all the while, she was aware of Crewe.
He kept to the edges. Close enough to be included, distant enough to refuse belonging. When she laughed too freely, she felt his gaze turn. When she fell silent for half a heartbeat, she felt it sharpen. Once, as she stepped over a tree root hidden by grass, her boot slid and she caught herself, but not before Crewe’s hand started forward, then stopped. The restraint of it left her oddly unsettled.
Later, when Lady Harrowby remarked that Lady Alice had “the constitution of a boy and the judgment to match,” Alice merely smiled and offered the woman a strawberry as if it were a peace treaty. Crewe, standing just behind the speaker, said nothing at all. But his eyes met Alice’s over Lady Harrowby’s shoulder—steady, intent, and unmistakably disapproving of the insult.
It should not have pleased her.
It did.
By late afternoon the sun began to sink, the air cooling, and the company packed up with the satisfaction of having been wholesomely entertained. Servants appeared, and Clara, ever the gentle commander, promised “something diverting” after dinner, an amusement suitable for a house party and dangerous only in the way words could be.
By the time the carriages rattled back to Oakford in the cool dusk, Alice was once again opposite Crewe, their silences sharper than conversation. She was wound too tight for ease.
When they arrived, she went upstairs to change with a strange restlessness in her blood, as if the day had been a prelude and the true game was waiting behind closed doors.
CHAPTER 4
Dinner passed in a blur of linen, silver, and polite laughter Alice could not quite join. Then Clara’s promised ‘diversion’ drew them all to the drawing room.
The blue damask and silver room was ready for the evening's entertainment, chairs arranged in a loose circle around a low table. Candelabras flickered, casting a warm glow over playing cards and small crystal tokens. The flames danced, illuminating the glasses and the gilt frames of portraits, tightening the room into a private glow.
Alice settled into her chair with practiced ease, her position angled toward the center of the circle where Clara stood arranging the cards. She kept a clear view of the chair opposite, the one occupied byViscount Crewe, who sat upright, his expression betraying a desire to be anywhere else.
Their eyes met briefly as she adjusted her skirts. She looked away first, the memory still vivid—the jolt, the collision, his hand covering hers.
