"I pay attention to details," she replied, a little too quickly, and turned back to the desk so he would not see the color rising further in her cheeks.
They worked side by side for some minutes, Christina conscious of every small movement he made — the way he heldhis quill firmly as he noted observations in a tight, decisive hand, the careful manner in which he aligned the two letters beside each other and then compared them to a sample of his own handwriting he had brought for reference. He was methodical, precise, and thorough. She found her gaze returning to his hands more often than she ought.
"The seals." Christina picked up the letter he had received. "Look at the wax impression on yours. It is uneven — pressed at an angle, as if the person doing it was in haste or unfamiliar with the proper method."
Isaac — Lord Coventry — leaned forward, his shoulder nearly touching hers. "Yes, I see it. The impression is shallow on the left side." He frowned, the line between his brows deepening. "Someone who does not regularly handle their own correspondence."
"Or someone who was imitating a seal they did not possess," Christina added.
The room was very quiet. Sophie's needle moved through fabric with a faint, rhythmic whisper, but otherwise, there was only the sound of their breathing and the occasional scratch of the quill on paper.
"I think we must consider who, among the gentlemen present at Whites that evening, would have both means and motive," Lord Coventry said, setting down his quill and turning to face her. The movement brought them closer still, and Christina found herself looking up at him from a distance of barely a foot. "You know of Lord Granton's interest in your company."
The name pulled her attention back from wherever it had been drifting. "Lord Granton?"
"He was there that evening. He is a friend of mine, though not an intimate one, and his displeasure when I requested your waltz was visible to the entire company." Lord Coventry'svoice was careful, measured — the tone of a man presenting evidence rather than an accusation. "He has been persistent in his attention to you."
Christina frowned. It was true that Lord Granton had shown marked interest. His disappointment at the waltz request had been obvious, and he had, on at least two occasions since, positioned himself near her at social events with the transparent hope of securing her attention. He had motive — or at least, what looked like motive from the outside.
"It is possible," she said, slowly. "He has been attentive."
"And yet." Lord Coventry's fingers drummed once, lightly, on the edge of the desk before stilling. "Attentiveness alone is not enough. A man who hopes to win a lady does not, as a rule, begin by forging letters that ruin her. Whoever wrote these wished not merely to supplant me. He wished to wound you — or, at the least, to wound us both severely enough that no reconciliation would seem possible. That is a different kind of man from one who merely wishes to court you."
Christina considered this. He was right, she thought. The cruelty of the letters had been their peculiar signature — not the absence of love but the presence of a calculated unkindness. Whoever had written them had not simply wanted her hand. He had wanted her heart broken first.
"Then we are looking for a gentleman whose interest in me is bound up with something harder than affection," she said. "Whose hope is not merely to win me but to take something from me."
"Or from me." Lord Coventry's mouth twisted into something that was not quite a smile. "Or from us both."
Their eyes met. The silence between them was different from the silences that had come before — not the careful, guarded quiet of two people circling each other, nor the heavy stillness of unspoken pain. This was the silence of two minds arriving at thesame conclusion at the same moment, the electric recognition of a shared intelligence.
"You see things I miss," he said, softly.
"You have the discipline to trace what I can only feel," she replied.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. The candle on the desk cast a warm glow across the scattered papers, touching the edge of his hand where it rested beside hers. Christina was aware of the distance between their fingers — an inch, perhaps less. She could feel the warmth radiating from his skin.
He leaned forward to point at a line in the letter, and his hand covered hers. The touch was accidental — or nearly so. His palm, warm and steady, settled over her fingers where they rested on the edge of the paper. His thumb moved once across her knuckles — a gesture so instinctive, so familiar, that it preceded thought. He was pointing at something, some detail in the handwriting, but the words he spoke dissolved before they reached her comprehension.
Christina did not pull away. Her breath caught, held, and then released in a slow, unsteady exhalation. Beneath his hand, her fingers pressed lightly against his palm — a movement so slight it might have been involuntary. It was, and it was not.
He turned his head. She was already looking at him.
The distance between them had shrunk to almost nothing. She could see the precise grey of his eyes — not cold, as she had once feared, but the grey of morning light, silver-touched and warm. The line of his jaw was tight, his breathing carefully measured, and she recognized in his expression the same battle she herself was fighting. His gaze dropped to her lips.
Her breath stopped.
The room narrowed to the width of the space between them, the papers and the evidence and the mystery dissolving into irrelevance. There was only the warmth of his hand over hers,the quickening of her pulse in the hollow of her throat, and the slow, inevitable inclination of his head toward hers. She leaned in. That careful distance she always maintained was shrinking, and she was not repairing it, not this time.
His breath touched her lips. She closed her eyes.
"I do believe it is time for tea."
Sophie's voice, clear and deliberate, cut across the room like a bell. Christina sprang back, her chair scraping against the floor, heat—blazing, furious heat—flooding her face and throat. Lord Coventry straightened abruptly, his hand leaving hers as if the contact had burned him. He reached for his cravat and tugged it unnecessarily, clearing his throat with the studied composure of a man trying to remember how breathing worked.
A beat of silence. Then two.
"Your sister," Lord Coventry said, his voice slightly rough, "has excellent timing."
