As if last night had never happened.
Alice took her seat with the careful grace of a woman walking on ice, her smile fixed in place. The coffee service passed; she poured. The toast rack arrived; she selected a piece and buttered it with hands that did not tremble because she would notpermit them to. She answered questions about her rest, her plans for the morning, whether she had tried the excellent preserves—all the while feeling Samuel’s presence at the other end of the table.
He had cleaned the library. He had covered her with a blanket before leaving. He had folded her nightdress.
And now he sat fifteen feet away, pretending she did not exist.
The preserves were strawberry, sweet and sharp on her tongue. Alice tasted nothing. Her throat felt tight, her chest constricted by the effort of maintaining the performance she had chosen over honesty. She thought of the hillside, his hand beneath hers, the words he had spoken about control and penance, and of wanting something more permanent than pleasure.
I just don’t know if I deserve it.
The memory struck with unexpected force. She set down her knife, masking the tremor in her fingers by moving with deliberate care. He had kissed her, held her, taken her apart piece by piece in a firelit library. Then put himself back together without including her in the reconstruction.
“Quite scandalous, don’t you think?”
The voice came from her left. Alice turned to find one of the twin sisters, the elder by a fewminutes, she thought, regarding her with bright curiosity.
“Forgive me,” Alice said, drawing a smile from some hidden reserve. “My mind wandered. What is scandalous?”
“The new fashion from Paris. Necklines have plunged to indecent depths.” The sister giggled, covering her mouth with her hand. “Mama says it’s the influence of Bonaparte’s court, even now.”
“How alarming.” Alice managed the words with automatic ease, her attention drifting—traitorous—back to the far end of the table, where Samuel spread butter across a roll he would not eat. “One shudders to think what depths society might yet plumb.”
The irony of her own words lingered.
“Speaking of depths.” The new voice came from across the table, silky over broken glass. Alice looked up to find Lady Harrington—a sharp-featured matron with an elaborate turban of violet silk and peacock feathers—leaning toward her neighbor behind the shield of a raised fan. “One wonders what liberties were taken in the garden.”
The whisper carried, meant to pierce. Lady Harrington had mastered the art of insinuation. Private in posture, public in effect.
“Such a shame,” the matron continued, her fanfluttering with calculated delicacy, “when a lady of good breeding forgets herself.”
The breakfast room fell silent save for a dropped fork here, a suspended cup there, heads turning. Alice felt the shift of attention toward her as a physical weight, the scrutiny of a dozen gazes measuring her for evidence of guilt.
Her fingers tightened around her fork, silver digging into her palm.
She should speak. She should wield her wit as a weapon, cut Lady Harrington down with the skills honed over five Seasons of social conflict.
Nothing came.
The words she needed deserted her, fleeing in the face of whispers that struck too close to the truth. She had not been in the garden—she had been in the library, which was worse—but the accusation landed all the same, exploiting the breach last night had opened.
A chair scraped at the far end of the table.
Alice looked up.
Samuel had risen, his napkin falling to the floor, his face set in an expression of cold fury that made her barely recognize him. The composed man who had ignored her all morning had vanished, replaced by someone more dangerous—someone whose eyes had turned to steel.
“Perhaps, Lady Harrington,” he said, his voice steady, each word carefully placed, “the shame lies with those who mistake malice for observation.”
Silence settled like dust. Not a cup clinked. Not a breath sounded.
“I find Lady Alice’s conduct beyond reproach.” He did not look at Alice as he spoke; his gaze remained locked on Lady Harrington with an intensity that made her fan falter. “Unlike those who spread poison at the breakfast table under the guise of polite conversation.”
Lady Harrington’s mouth opened, closed, then opened again. The peacock feathers in her turban trembled with indignation, but no words emerged. She had been outmaneuvered—publicly—by a man whose opinion society valued far more than her own.
Alice sat very still, her fork clutched too tightly, her heart racing with a force that made breathing difficult. Around her, conversation resumed in fits and starts, hushed murmurs, exchanged glances, the hum of a social order trying to knit itself whole after an unexpected tear.
He had defended her. Again. Publicly. Fiercely.
