Lady Whitcombe leaned closer, voice lowering as though she were offering an intimate confidence rather than an insult. “It makes one wonder if there is a scandal involved.”
James’s patience thinned.
“Or,” she continued, “if the young lady is in some difficulty, and you are doing what your mother would have encouraged. A charitable marriage.”
Silence stretched.
James’s hands remained behind his back, his posture still. He did not indulge anger when calm served better.
“You are speaking too freely,” he said.
Lady Whitcombe’s brows arched. “Am I? Forgive me. I assumed that since I knew your mother–”
“Again, Lady Whitcombe, you were merely acquainted with my mother,” James corrected. “I’ll warn you to not pretend it made you family.”
Lady Whitcombe’s mouth tightened. “How dare you.”
James stepped closer, just enough to ensure she understood the distance between them was determined by him. “My personal decisions are not yours to dissect. Not now. Not ever.”
Her nostrils flared. “You have always been an ungrateful boy.”
James’s gaze did not waver. “And you have always mistaken your own curiosity for entitlement.”
Lady Whitcombe drew herself up. “You will regret speaking to me this way.”
James glanced at the courthouse in the distance, its stone facade rising through the winter haze. He had no time for this. No interest.
“I seriously doubt it. As it were, I am already regretting the last thirty seconds,” he said.
Lady Whitcombe looked scandalized. “Your Grace–”
James turned away.
Behind him, her voice rose. “You cannot simply walk away when I am–”
He did not stop.
“–when I am speaking to you!”
James turned back once more, fully facing her, his expression carved from patience and warning. Lady Whitcombe’s features tightened when she met his gaze, as though she had suddenly remembered stories best left untested.
“Write me the rest of your incessant nagging,” he said. “I am tiring of this quickly, and I have an appointment.”
Lady Whitcombe’s face flushed a furious red. “How–how–”
James turned around and resumed walking, leaving her mid-retort once again as though she were nothing more than another voice in London, loud and irrelevant.
The street swallowed him again, the noise and movement smoothing over the disturbance.
He did not dwell on it.
He did not read meaning into the mothers and daughters who turned too quickly when he passed, or the whispers that trailed behind him like smoke. They could speculate until their tongues wore out.
He had no intention of living his life according to theton’sappetite.
He had an objective.
The Doctors’ Commons waited. And if London watched him go, hungry for a story, it would have to starve.
