He snorted. “Touché. But the rest?” He leaned back, gaze on the shifting moonlight above. “It’s like walking through a maze where every turn leads back to the same entrance.”
She found herself wanting to contradict him, to point out that he’d always had options, but the words died in her throat. She remembered the conversation she’d overheard in the arbor, the way his voice had sounded almost lost.
“Why do you do it, then?” she asked. “If you hate the path, why not break out of the maze?”
He was silent so long she thought he wouldn’t answer.
“Because,” he said finally, “sometimes the devil you know is less terrible than the one you might become.”
She looked at his hands, folded tightly together, the knuckles shining pale in the lantern light.
“My father drank himself to death,” he said, voice flat. “To escape my mother’s coldness, or perhaps just for sport. And she retreated so far into propriety that I sometimes wondered if she remembered how to breathe without consulting an etiquette book first.”
Louisa stared at the night-blooming datura curled around the bench, its trumpet flowers scenting the air with something cloying, almost poisonous.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and meant it.
He laughed, but there was no edge to it now. “No, you aren’t.”
She considered denying it, but the lantern made his eyes too honest for lies.
“Perhaps not,” she conceded. “But I understand.”
He looked at her then, really looked, and the moment stretched between them fragile, ridiculous, but entirely real.
“Your turn, Primrose,” he said softly. “What would you do if you could leave the maze?”
She smiled, a small, private thing. “Light it on fire.”
He grinned, but the humor in it was raw. “You see, this is why I prefer you to every other woman in that house. You don’t just want to break free. You want to burn the rules to the ground.”
She didn’t reply, but the words buzzed through her veins.
For a long time, they said nothing, sharing the bench and the scent of wisteria, each aware of the other’s warmth but unwilling to move closer. When the clock in the house chimed midnight, Louisa rose.
“I should go,” she said. “My mother’s spies grow more inventive after midnight.”
He stood, and for once, did not offer an arm. “Until tomorrow, Lady Louisa.”
She left him under the trellis, alone with the moon and the echo of his words.
As she reached the steps to the house, she glanced back. He hadn’t moved. He stared up at the tangle of vines, as if searching for a route she couldn’t see.
Louisa slipped inside, heart pounding for reasons she preferred not to examine.
Louisa slept poorly. Her dreams twisted through ballrooms and gardens, punctuated by laughter and faces that turned away at crucial moments. She awoke before dawn, her throat raw andher limbs tangled in sheets, as if she had wrestled invisible adversaries all night.
In the library that morning, she feigned interest in a botanical guide while her mind replayed the conversation under the wisteria. The weight of Foxmere’s words, the unfamiliar texture of his honesty ringing through her. By noon, her nerves were so taut that even Sophia’s attempts at distraction, such as a wager on whether Lord Bertram could be induced to eat a live snail, barely registered.
It was late afternoon before she saw him again. The household had gathered for a garden party, and the air was thick with the scent of grass and the sound of champagne being poured into cut crystal. Louisa lingered at the edge of the event, determined to avoid him, but fate, or perhaps just Lady Featherstone, intervened. Within minutes, she found herself cornered between a rose arch and a hedge maze, with Foxmere blocking her only means of escape.
He looked tired, which she found oddly satisfying, though she told herself it was because he deserved it.
“Lady Louisa,” he said, the glint in his eye dimmed, as though he had exhausted all his mischief.
“My lord,” she replied, cold and crisp as the champaign in her glass.
A pause ensued as he studied her, not in his usual predatory way, but with a look of calculation, as if piecing together a puzzle that had just shifted shape.
