He said nothing.
Down the course, Cecily repositioned herself for her shot with the focused composure of someone who had decided to be entirely normal and was succeeding at approximately sixty percent.
William was smiling again. He was aware of it this time and made no effort to stop.
CHAPTER 15
She was watching him more than the game.
He had his coat off. She had noticed this at the third hoop and had been managing the noticing ever since with mixed results. He had handed it to the footman without looking, rolled his sleeves to the elbows with the absent efficiency of someone who had done it a thousand times and attached no significance to it, and returned to the game entirely unconcerned with the effect of any of this on anyone in the vicinity.
Which was, she was finding, considerably more difficult to manage than the deliberate version of him.
The deliberate version she had prepared for. She had studied it, cataloged it, and built something sensible against it. This version—the one that played Pall Mall without performing anything, that laughed at Edward’s remarks with full unguardedness,this version had arrived without warning, and she had no architecture for it at all.
She was aware of this and found it deeply inconvenient, but she could not seem to stop.
“Your shot, Edward said pointedly.
She looked at her ball. She had been looking at William while he played the previous shot and had entirely lost track of where things stood.
“I know,” she said.
She took her position and hit with more force than she had intended. The ball went through and kept going. Edward said something she didn’t hear because William had glanced at her in the same moment with the look he’d been giving her all afternoon—the quiet, unhurried look that she could not yet read and that landed in her chest every time with the reliability of something practiced.
She walked to the next hoop.
Stop looking at him.
She looked at the ground instead, which was better, and thought about the angle of approach to the eighth hoop, which was more useful, and did not think about rolled sleeves or quiet laughs or the way he had said,I know,twenty minutes ago, with a simplicity that had made her forget what she was arguing about.
She was doing well.
Then he came to stand beside her to wait for his turn. She felt the warmth of him in the cool garden air and stopped doing well entirely.
Edward won the final hoop, and she disputed it on principle. Alas, she lost the dispute on principle and surrendered with the compressed, formal grace of someone who had decided to be a good sport about something and was finding it required genuine effort.
“Well played,” she told Edward when the game ended.
“You were formidable,” Edward offered, with the magnanimity of a man who knew he’d won and could afford to be generous about it.
“I was robbed,” she countered. “But thank you.”
The footman collected the mallets. Beatrice had already drifted back toward the house with an expression that said she had gotten everything she came to the garden for and was now ready for tea.
Edward fell into step with William behind them, resuming their discussion about the land reform bill, their voices settling into a low, unhurried register.
Cecily walked beside Beatrice and told herself she was not listening to the conversation behind her. She could hear William’s voice. The cadence when he was talking aboutsomething he had actually thought about—not the easy charm of a dinner party, but the direct, undecorated version. She had been hearing it all afternoon, and she was beginning to understand that this was the version he reserved for people he didn’t feel required managing.
“You’re quiet,” Beatrice noted.
“I’m cold,” Cecily corrected.
“You’re never cold. You complain about being cold. Those are different things. Besides, it is currently hot.”
Cecily said nothing.
Beatrice opened the door, and they went inside.
