“The view is quite something,” Samuel observed, feeling the need to break the silence. An observation seemed safer than anything else he might offer.
“It is.” Alice’s response was clipped, her attention seemingly fixed on securing the ribbon in her hair—a task that required neither concentration nor theavoidance of eye contact she was currently demonstrating. “Crispin used to bring me here when we were children. Before he became an earl and I became…” She paused, her fingers halting mid-motion. “Before we became what we’ve become.”
“And what have you become?”
The question slipped out before he could stop it, and Samuel immediately regretted the presumption. But Alice did not bristle or resort to her usual deflections. Instead, she moved toward a weathered fence post marking the boundary between manicured grounds and wild meadow, her palm resting against its rough surface as she stared out at the valley below.
Samuel followed at a steady pace—close enough to converse, far enough to maintain the pretense of a casual encounter between acquaintances. Nothing more than two guests admiring the same view.
The silence stretched between them, filled with birdsong, wind, and the distant bleating of sheep from an unseen pasture. Alice’s shoulders relaxed, her posture softening into something almost vulnerable. Samuel noted the change with the careful attention of a man watching a wild creature that might startle at any sudden movement.
“Do you see that stream?” she gestured toward the water cutting through the meadow, her voicelosing its practiced lightness. “I once pushed my cousin into a stream like that.”
Samuel remained silent. He recognized the quality of her tone, the raw edge beneath the surface, the confession struggling to emerge from layers of protective wit. Any response could either encourage or discourage her, and instinct told him that silence was wiser.
Alice’s fingers tightened on the fence post, her knuckles whitening against the wood. Her gaze remained fixed on the distant water rather than meeting his eyes, as if confession required the anonymity of not being observed.
“We were twelve, perhaps thirteen. I can never quite remember which summer it was, only that it was hot and I was bored and Eleanor was visiting from the country.” Her voice had flattened, stripped of its usual musicality. “She was sweet. Trusting. The sort of girl who believed everything she was told because it never occurred to her that anyone might lie. She trusted me completely.”
The wind stirred the grass around them, creating patterns that shifted and reformed.
“I told her there was a fairy ring at the bottom of the stream—some nonsense about wishes and magic—how the water sprites would grant her heart’s desire if she could reach the center.” Alice’s laughheld no humor. “She believed me. Of course she believed me. I was her worldly London cousin, the one who knew everything, the one she admired with that innocent devotion children give before they learn better.”
Samuel felt something tighten in his chest as he recognized the shape this story would take.
“She waded in wearing her best dress, the one her mother had bought for the visit. The cream silk with blue ribbons.” Alice’s voice grew distant, as if she were watching the memory replay rather than recounting it. “I pushed her when she was waist-deep. Not hard, just enough to unbalance her. She went under completely, then came up sputtering and crying, covered in mud and weeds.”
The birdsong continued, indifferent to human cruelty, past or present.
“The guests had gathered for tea on the lawn. Her mother, my mother, three countesses, a duchess, and everyone whose opinion mattered in our small world.” Alice swallowed hard. “They watched. Eleanor stood there in her ruined dress, weeping, while I laughed. I laughed, Samuel. As if destroying her trust was the most amusing thing I had ever done.”
She had used his first name. Samuel noted the intimacy of it, how it slipped from her lips asnaturally as breathing. He realized that whatever walls remained between them had developed significant cracks.
“She never spoke to me again.” Alice finally turned to face him, her eyes filled with something he rarely saw. Naked regret, unprotected by wit or performance. “Her family left that evening. I received a letter from her mother three days later, informing mine that future invitations would not be welcome. And I…” She stopped, her voice catching on something that might have been a sob if she had allowed it to form completely. “Sometimes I wonder if that is why I…”
The sentence trailed into silence, unfinished, waiting for something neither of them knew how to provide.
Samuel stepped closer before he consciously decided to move, his body responding to the unfinished sentence with an urgency his mind had not yet authorized. The careful distance he had maintained collapsed in a single stride, reduced to something more dangerous as he came near enough to see the slight tremor in her lower lip, near enough to count the individual tears she was refusing to shed.
“We all carry regrets.” The words came quietly, stripped of the formal cadence he usually employed. “Every one of us has a moment we would unmake if we could.”
Alice looked at him then, her usual defenses lowered enough that he could see the raw hurt beneath. “You speak as though from experience.”
“I do.”
The admission hung between them, weighted with everything he had not yet said. Samuel felt the old pain stir in his chest, the familiar ache of a wound that had never properly healed because he had never allowed it the air it needed. He had told her once, in a midnight library, about Charlotte. He had spoken of watching her destruction and doing nothing. But he had not, could not, explain what that failure had cost him, how it had shaped every rigid protocol he had constructed in the years since.
“You know about Charlotte.” His voice had grown rough, scraped raw by emotions he could no longer contain. “I told you that night in the library. What I did not tell you, what I could not find the words for, is how her destruction became my architecture.”
Alice said nothing, but her eyes remained fixed on his face.
Birdsong enveloped them, a counterpoint to darker memories.
His posture tensed.
“Control is my penance, Lady Alice.” The formal address returned, a defense against his newly exposed vulnerability. “My reminder of what happens when passion overrules judgment, when selfishness masquerades as incapacity. Every protocol I follow, every rigid standard I maintain. They are the walls I built to ensure I never again stand by while someone suffers for my indifference.”
He had not intended to say so much. The words spilled out, a flood breaching a dam that had held for too many years. Samuel felt exposed, more vulnerable than he had been even in the moonlit garden where he had kissed her without permission.
