A single tear dropped to Miss Oldham's cheek.
Then she turned and hurried away from him, disappearing back into the crowd.
Isaac stood where she had left him.
The waltz continued — other couples reforming, the music swelling into its final measures — but he did not move. His hand was still extended where she had released it, the warmth of her fingers fading from his palm. Slowly, deliberately, he curled his fingers into a fist. His breathing came in ragged pulls, each one shallower than the last, and the blood had not returned to his face.
A polite voice beside him: "Lord Coventry? Are you well?"
He could not answer for a moment. His lips moved, but no sound emerged.
"Coventry?" A hand touched his arm — Lord Kinsley, perhaps, or some well-meaning acquaintance. "Shall I fetch you something?"
Isaac shook his head. The movement felt disconnected from his body, as if he were watching himself from a great distance. He made himself walk. His legs were unsteady, each step requiring conscious effort, as if the floor itself had become uncertain.
He walked off the dance floor and kept walking — past the card room, past the refreshment table, past the clusters of conversation and laughter — until he reached an alcove near the servants' entrance where the noise dimmed to a murmur. Hepressed his back against the wall, both hands at his sides, palms flat against the cool plaster.
The foundation of two years of belief had just cracked beneath him. Every harsh word, every cold glance, every deliberate cut he had directed at the woman he loved — loved, still loved, had never stopped loving — had been built on a lie. Not her lie. Someone else's.
Everything he thought he knew was wrong.
And he could not go back to hating her now. He could never go back.
7
Dragging in ragged breaths, Christina leaned heavily against the wall of her bed chamber, having managed to keep her composure steady right up until the moment she had stepped into her rooms. The drive home had been an agony, her thoughts so weighted that they had pressed an ache right in between her eyebrows. She had managed to use it as an excuse for her silence, at least, telling her mother and father that she was weary and tired, and they, to her relief, had not pressed her with any further questions.
Now, however, Christina was alone, and it felt as if the shadows were pulling in at her, threatening to drown her in the depths of their darkness. She could remember that letter as if she held it now in her hands, could almost trace every word with her finger. The terse words had ripped away at her happiness until she had been left with naught but agony, her hopes broken and shattered around her. The way she had seen him in that moment, her view of him as the days and weeks and months had gone on… that was now a falsehood.
He had not written it.
Closing her eyes to steady herself, Christina kept one hand on the wall beside her, using its stability as her only source of strength. Memories assailed her, pushing back into her mind Lord Coventry as he had been – perhaps, even now, as he was. The gentleman she had loved, the gentle smile, the fervor with which he had asked her to marry him – all of those things were still true, it seemed. She had believed them all to be lies, to be a mask he had worn to deceive her into loving him.
She had been wrong.
Christina did not go to bed. She could not be still — her body would not permit it. She paced the length of her chamber, her steps quick and uneven, her skirts hissing against the carpet with each turn. At the writing desk, she stopped. Her fingers hovered over the small drawer where she kept her personal correspondence — letters from Sophie, birthday notes from her father in his careful hand, and beneath them all, folded and refolded until the creases had become permanent, the letter that had shattered her world.
She pulled it out. Unfolded it with hands that trembled. The handwriting spilled across the page — familiar in its loops and angles, heartbreaking in its coldness. She had read it so many times that the words were scored into her memory, but now she read it differently. Now she was looking not at the meaning but at the making of it.
The ink was a deep black — not the faded brown of the ink Lord Coventry had used when he had written to her father requesting permission to call. She remembered that letter, too; her father had shown it to her, proud and pleased, and the ink had been a warm sepia, the handwriting tilted slightly to the right with a distinctive flourish on the capital C.
This letter’s handwriting did not tilt. The capital C was formed differently — rounder, more controlled.
Christina’s breath caught. She carried the letter to the candle on her dressing table and held it close to the flame, tilting it to catch the light. The paper was thick, cream-colored — expensive but not distinctive. She turned it over. No watermark. No identifying feature beyond the seal, which had been plain wax pressed with what appeared to be a signet ring.
She closed her eyes, pressing the letter to her chest. Who had access to wax and a signet ring? Who had known where she lived, where Lord Coventry lived? Who had known of their connection at all?
The silence of her chamber offered her nothing — no answer, no direction, only the steady hiss of the candle flame and the unbearable weight of not knowing.
Someone else orchestrated this.
Christina pushed herself away from the wall. Her legs were unsteady, but she crossed to her writing desk, pulled the chair out with a scrape that sounded too loud in the quiet room, and sat down. She lit the candle with trembling fingers, opened her writing box, and drew out a sheet of clean paper.
She dipped her pen.
At the top she wrote: What I know. Beneath it, in a hand far less steady than her usual: He did not write the letter. I did not write the letter. Someone else did both.
She stared at those three lines. Then, below them, she wrote: Questions. Her pen hovered, dripping a small blot of ink onto the page. Who knew of our engagement? Who had access to both households? Who would benefit from our separation?
