But in the moment before their lips met, Louisa broke away. She stood, abrupt and wild, her heart racing.
“This is precisely what I meant,” she said, her voice tight. “Good night, Lord Foxmere.”
She walked, fast and unsteady, back through the maze and toward the party lights.
Foxmere remained on the bench, his hand suspended in the air where her face had been.
Niall lingered in the center of the maze long after Louisa had left. With slightly trembling hands, he lit a cigarette, watching the tip glow against the dusk. He drew in the smoke, held it, and exhaled a sigh that seemed to extract all his remaining energy.
It wasn’t the rejection that stung. He’d faced worse from women with less charm, but the sense of possibility cut short, the feeling that for once he’d edged close to something real only to falter at the last moment.
He replayed their conversation, recalling the look in her eyes when she spoke of her friend and the way she had said ‘trap,’ as if it were a curse she feared might settle upon her. He remembered how her fingers had trembled, a detail he might have missed if he hadn’t been paying close attention.
When the cherot burned low, he stubbed it out on the heel of his boot and stood. He dusted imaginary lint from his waistcoat, straightened his cravat, and reset his expression to its usual setting amused, detached, impervious mask.
As he made his way back to the house, the maze yielded to his steps as if it, too, had nothing left to challenge.
The drawing room buzzed when he entered. Lady Sophia had organized a game of charades, and the other guests laughed at Lord Bertram’s attempt to mime the Battle of Trafalgar. Niall accepted a brandy from a passing footman and joined the circle, flashing a grin that made the nearest debutantes simper.
He played the game as he always did, brilliantly and recklessly, but his gaze kept flickering to the door, searching for a flash of blue silk or the glint of a familiar eye. Louisa was nowhere to be seen. He wondered if she was hiding in the library again or if she had gone to her room to compose herself, or more likely, to prepare for the next battle.
He missed her, which felt absurd, irritating, yet true.
The night wore on. The games gave way to cards, then to late-night gossip around the dying fire. Niall maintained his performance, never once letting the mask slip. But when the room thinned out and the last of the punch was gone, he slipped away, leaving behind only a lingering scent of sandalwood and tobacco.
Breakfast the next morning felt like an ordeal. Louisa entered last, cool and composed, her hair immaculate and her gown a shade of cool grey that mirrored her mood. She surveyed the table, calculated the distance between herself and Foxmere, and seated herself at the furthest remove.
She buried herself in conversation with an ancient baroness, nodding and smiling as if every word were wisdom. Niall, meanwhile, made a show of pouring himself coffee, laughing a bit too loudly at Lord Simon’s risqué joke, and engaging Lady Sophia in a duel of wits that left the rest of the table breathless with anticipation.
The real contest unfolded in the glances—how often Louisa looked his way—never, and how many times he caught himself glancing at her—too many to count, tangled with the subtle war of presence that played out in every motion.
When breakfast ended, Louisa swept from the room with a nod to her mother, and Niall, though he wanted nothing morethan to chase after her, remained in his seat, staring into the swirl of his coffee.
He was still there half an hour later when Lady Honoria swept in, her yellow silk gown a bright contrast against the dreary English light.
She paused just behind his chair, her voice pitched to carry across the room. “The flame flickers, but does it smolder or die?”
A ripple of giggles ran through her circle of listeners, who pretended to be shocked but drank it in.
Niall set down his cup, his jaw tightening just enough to betray the effort of restraint. He turned, met her gaze, and smiled a dazzling smile.
“Careful, Lady Honoria,” he said, his voice low and sweet. “You’re standing a bit too close to the fire.”
He rose, executed a bow that was pure theatre, and swept out of the room. The gossips watched him go, hungry for more.
He gave them nothing.
But outside, in the cool light of morning, Niall allowed himself a single, unguarded moment of hope that the next time Louisa set fire to the maze, he would be waiting at its center.
CHAPTER 5
If the day belonged to polite society, the night belonged to its misfits. Tonight Louisa sought them out on purpose. She wandered the estate's corridors in a wrapper, her bare feet silent against the cool marble. The lamps had been extinguished in most rooms, but here and there, a single candle flickered, casting shadows that set her nerves on edge. She had not intended to go anywhere in particular, but the feeling of being trapped by her family’s well-meaning oppression, the watchful eyes of the ton, and her own restless heart, compelled her to move.
The quiet hour was punctuated by the occasional rattle of wind at a window, the distant snap of a settling floorboard, and the chime of a clock marking her insomnia. Then, from somewhere below stairs, music permeated the stillness—an ill-fated attempt to murder a waltz on the music room’s pianoforte.
The cacophony rose and fell in a pattern that suggested both despair and a stubborn refusal to learn the melody. Louisa hesitated. She might have turned back, returned to bed, and left the perpetrator to his own misery, but she recognized the tune, and the man butchering it had once played it perfectly toimpress a room full of bored aristocrats. Foxmere, she’d wager her pin money on it.
She followed the sound to its source, tiptoeing down the main staircase and into the marble-floored vestibule. The music room lay just beyond, its doors open as if inviting rescue. Inside, the chandeliers were dimmed, the only other illumination a pair of flickering candles on the instrument’s lid. And at the keyboard, sat Niall Fairmont, Lord Foxmere.
