The wheels struck a rut, jostling them both. Outside, the coachman called to the horses. The sound of wheels on stone replaced the softer rhythm of earth. They had entered the outskirts where nature was cloaked in stone.
“It’s nothing,” Adeline said. “I suppose I’ve grown used to the silence of Greystone. London feels like an approaching storm.”
“A pleasant storm,” Cordelia said, “and one you’ll weather perfectly. You particularly, little storm-bird. Music. Dances. There’s no better cure for nerves than company.”
Adeline turned her gaze to the window. A line of shops rolled past, milliners, apothecaries, booksellers, and, beyond them, the sweep of brick terraces. She caught her reflection in the glass, composed, unremarkable. Safe.
Cordelia’s voice softened. “If you’re worrying about meeting him, you needn’t. London is vast. It swallows people whole. It’s quite unlikely you’ll encounter your former fiancé.”
Adeline’s head snapped toward her. “My…?”
Cordelia blinked, surprised by her reaction. “Well, yes. You did tell me you’d been jilted. Surely you remember confiding that when you turned up at my door, bedraggled and half drowned, two years ago?”
Adeline forced a laugh. “Of course. It has been so long since I thought of him…” Her pulse stuttered, as she tried to remember if she had given her fictitious jilter a name.
I do not think that Cordelia has ever asked. I am sure that I never volunteered a name. Or did I?
She was not a natural liar. Such things had been punished severely when discovered by her father. It had left her with a terror of untruths. She steadied herself with effort.
“I only… I didn’t expect you to recall the particulars. It was long ago.”
Cordelia tilted her head, eyes narrowing slightly. “Long ago? Two years is hardly a lifetime. Perhaps for the young such streams of time seem like rivers.”
“I suppose they do.” Adeline adjusted the folds of her shawl, buying time. “Memory makes such things larger. Truly, it was nothing worth revisiting.”
Cordelia studied her another moment but said no more. Adeline looked out again, heat prickling her neck. That one small lie, to explain her being out of doors on a stormy night. To disguise her origin so that word would not reach her father.
Not that he is sober enough to take it in. Or so I thought. If that gentleman from Bow Street is to be believed, he has found his faculties now.
But if Cordelia ever learned the truth, she would not know what to believe. It would undermine everything that Adeline had built.
I must let her believe I fear my fiancé because the truth is that I am in terror of my father. And of what I know him to be capable.
The carriage slowed as they reached Piccadilly. Adeline caught the scent of smoke and horses, the city’s strange blend of vitality and decay. Everywhere she looked, faces passed too quickly to read, men in dark coats, women with parasols tilted just so. Each stranger seemed a possible ghost. Her father might be among them.
She pressed a hand to her chest, though her stays allowed little comfort. In her mind, she saw him as he had been before the drink consumed him. Immaculate, calculating, eyes like cold metal. If he discovered her here, if he learned she lived under another name in a Duke’s household…
He cannot force me to go back. But if he is marshalling the force of the law, it would mean scandal for the Burgess family. Louisa’s heart would be broken. Winston would…
She forced her mind away from what Winston would do. How he would feel. Away from the certainty that if Winston defended her, her father would try to ruin him. Or worse.
He has killed once, after all.
“You’re trembling,” Cordelia said gently.
“Am I? The air is close.”
Cordelia leaned forward, peering through the window.
“We’re nearly there. Winston’s townhouse isn’t far. Once we arrive, you can rest, and I’ll see to the unpacking.”
Adeline managed a nod. She would rest but not outside her rooms. She would keep within the walls, hidden from the eyes of London. The carriage turned onto St. James’s Place, the horses’ hooves ringing cleanly against the stone. Winston’s townhouse stood three stories high, its façade pale against the soot-streaked brick of its neighbors. A butler waited on the steps, arms clasped behind his back, feet planted, as though the Duke’s arrival were a parade.
A carriage ahead of them had stopped and Winston appeared, tall and self-contained in his dark coat. Louisa darted from behind him like a bird loosed from a cage.
“Adeline!” she cried. “You must come see the park! Papa says the carriages go round and round like ribbons!”
“In time,” Adeline said, climbing down with care. “We’ve only just arrived.”
