“I have no intention of sitting.”
“That was not a suggestion made for your comfort.”
Alexander met the older man’s gaze and, for one sharp second, nearly snapped at him for the presumption. Then he recognized the wisdom beneath it. His body was all restless force at present. If he remained standing, he would pace. If he paced, he would think too quickly and perhaps not clearly enough.
He sat.
Cartwright lowered himself into the chair opposite and leaned forward slightly, elbows to knees, the picture of grave attention. “Tell me.”
Alexander exhaled once through his nose, forcing the images into order. “I was in a dark alley. Then I heard a man’s voice behind me.” He paused, the memory dragging over his nerves like broken glass. “He had been drinking. I could hear it in him.”
Cartwright’s face did not change, but his hands tightened once against his cane.
“He said something about my Duchess,” Alexander continued, the words lower now. “That I should have stayed away from her. That I had no right. Then he struck me.”
Cartwright’s eyes narrowed. “Did you see him?”
“I can’t recall.” Alexander leaned forward. “It sounds familiar, and yet, I’m not entirely sure.”
Silence settled heavily between them.
Cartwright absorbed the information with the terrible seriousness it deserved. “You think you could recognize the man’s voice?”
Alexander’s mouth hardened. “Yes.”
Cartwright sat back slightly, studying him now. “You are in a hurry this morning.”
“I should think that obvious.”
“It is.” The older man’s voice stayed level. “More obvious still is that you are not hurrying on your own account.”
Alexander went still.
Because Cartwright was right. He had not rushed there for himself at all. He had done it for Diana. Through the nightmare, the ride, and all the fury driving him forward, she had been the true source of his urgency.
“Diana? Good God, what has happened?”
Martin’s voice reached her before the butler had even finished announcing him, warm with alarm.
She turned too quickly from the window. The movement made the room tilt for half a heartbeat and left her with no time to compose her face into anything more convincing than the frayed, weary thing it had become.
Martin stood just inside the drawing room, tall and well-made in dark clothes that fit him with easy elegance, his auburn hair brushed neatly back. His expression was stripped of all its usual lightness now that he had caught sight of her properly. There was genuine concern in his face, and after the past miserable days, the sight of it pierced her far more deeply than she had expected.
“I might ask the same of you,” Diana said, but the effort at dryness came out weaker than she intended, her voice lacking its usual polish. “You arrive at Rosewood House unannounced and look as though the entire city has gone to ruin.”
Martin closed the distance between them by a few steps.
“Georgina has gone to visit her parents for two days,” he said. “I was meant to spend the afternoon pretending to enjoy my own company, but then I heard you had refused Emma’s invitation and had not been seen anywhere. I thought that did not sound like you at all.” His gaze searched her face. “Now I can see that I was right.”
Diana tried to smile, but her lips would not behave properly. The smile she managed felt fragile, poorly assembled, likely to collapse under the slightest strain.
“You have become absurdly observant.”
“I have always been observant where you are concerned.”
The words were gentle, spoken with the easy warmth of long friendship, yet something in them lingered longer than usual.
She only looked away, toward the fire that had burned low in the grate, and hated that the room still seemed touched by absence, as though every chamber in the house now held the outline of Alexander’s body, whether he stood in it or not.
