“But?” Amelia pressed.
“It’s hard to make plans for London when we are here in Brighthollow, isn’t it?”
“Well, we aren’t staying here forever,” Amelia said with a light laugh. “The remainder of the Season is to be had, with friends to be met and balls to attend.”
Her sister-in-law sounded so hopeful that Lizzie wanted to slither to the ground and roll beneath the settee to hide from her expectations. After all, she didn’t want to go back to London. She didn’t want to leave her home. To leave Morgan.
No, not Morgan. She shook her head at the wayward thought. Her reasons for wishing to stay in Brighthollow had nothing at all to do with her brother’s man of affairs.
“Your pale cheeks worry me,” Charlotte said, pursing her lips. “My dear, surely the idea of the Season doesn’t cause you this much distress.”
“It…does,” she squeaked. “I so appreciate the thought to include me and the desire to see me participate in what comes naturally to all of you.”
“Not all of us,” Charlotte assured her gently. “Ewan has always been uncomfortable with the city. With practice he has become more at ease, but I know he doesn’t care for these things any more than you do.”
Lizzie drew in a long breath. Ewan had been mute since birth. He had been treated badly by his family and sometimes by those in Society. She felt the accusation in Charlotte’s comparison, as if she shouldn’t feel apart when she’d always had a place in the world she shunned.
“I just don’t know,” she began, but before she could try to explain herself better, there was a light knock on the open door behind them.
The group as a whole turned, and Lizzie caught her breath as she saw Morgan standing in the entryway, his gaze trained on her and a broad smile on his handsome face.
“My apologies for the interruption, Your Graces. I am about to go see the progress in the garden and I wondered if Lady Elizabeth might wish to join me and see the headway the workers have been making on the gazebo.”
Lizzie pushed to her feet, smoothing her suddenly damp palms on her skirt. “Yes, of course. I’d love…I’d like to do that, if my friends don’t mind me so rudely abandoning them.”
Amelia’s brow wrinkled and her gaze slowly shifted from Lizzie to Morgan and back again. “We don’t mind at all,” she said, her voice soft. “I’m certainly looking forward to seeing what you two are cooking up back there.”
Lizzie was already moving across the room to join Morgan at the door. She cast a quick smile of farewell to the duchesses before he swept his arm forward as if to tell her to take the lead.
She did so, feeling the weight of his presence beside her as they strolled up the long hallway together. This was their first time alone since their game of piquet and she felt…shy. The world had shifted between them, after all. How was she to behave normally when she knew what his mouth felt like when it pressed to hers?
“Mr. Banfield?” Masters called out before they could reach the exit to the terrace and the stairs there that led to the garden.
Morgan gave her an apologetic nod and turned back. “Yes, Masters?”
“A missive just arrived for you from London, sir,” he said as he held out a note.
Morgan’s brow wrinkled and Lizzie immediately saw the flash of concern on his face. He took the note with a quick nod and glanced at her. She could feel he was torn between being polite to her and seeing what the letter was about.
“Of course you should look at it if you believe it might be important,” she said.
He looked down at the missive a second time and then said, “Come, we’ll step onto the terrace, at least. Might as well not waste a perfectly beautiful day.”
They exited into the sunshine and Lizzie stepped away a fraction to allow him some privacy in his letter. Or at least, that’s what she should have done. Only she couldn’t help but glance at him from the corner of her eye as he broke the seal on the folded sheet of paper and let his gaze drift across whatever had been written to him.
His mouth tightened and his shoulders stiffened. He stared at the letter a moment, then folded it and stuffed it in his pocket.
“Do you need to—to handle that?” she asked.
“No.” His tone was gruff, dismissive, and she found herself moving even further away from him. He’d been all friendly regard, and then this wall had been erected with just one single word.
And it reminded her, in a flash of awful memory, of Aaron Walters that horrible night her brother had found them on the road to Gretna Green. Her lover had been sweet, kind, and then cold as steel as he dismissed her and all they had shared. That moment where she realized she’d been played for a fool was one she often thought about.
She shook off the memory and thrust her shoulders back. She and Morgan had kissed, yes, but there was certainly nothing that connected them beyond that slip in judgment. She couldn’t fool herself that there was.
“Well, then I think you should lead on, Mr. Banfield,” she said, retreating back to formality because it felt safer. “Show me what you wanted me to see.”
He nodded and they went down the stairs together. A few turns through the garden, and as they came around the last corner, she saw it. The frame of the new gazebo, just as her mother had designed it in her plans all those years ago.
