The garden was cool, dark, and entirely welcome after three hours of candlelight and managed conversation.
William had taken her hand from his arm and kept it. Not dramatically, but simply kept it, his fingers closing around hers as he steered them toward the door to the terrace. She had let him, and neither of them had remarked on it.
Now they were outside, in the November air, with the music faint through the glass behind them and the rest of the garden dark and quiet ahead.
He led her away from the terrace, where two other couples stood taking the air, further along the stone path to where a low wall separated the formal garden from the lawns beyond. A lantern on a post nearby gave just enough light. The voices from the terrace faded.
He stopped.
She stopped beside him.
They stood for a moment, looking at the dark garden, and she thought how strange it was that the most honest conversations she had with him seemed to happen in the dark—the nursery, the carriage, and now here.
“Better?” he asked.
“Much.” She breathed it in—cold air, damp grass, the distant smell of woodsmoke from somewhere. “I had forgotten what air felt like.”
“You were doing well in there.”
“I wasperformingwell in there,” she corrected. “I think there’s a difference.”
He looked at her. “Is there? Tonight, it seemed the same thing.”
“It never feels the same from the inside.” She looked at the dark lawn. “You’re better at it than I am. You walk into a room, and the room adjusts to you. I walk in, and I adjust to the room.”
“That is not what I observed.”
“You observed the result, not the effort.”
He was quiet for a moment. “I suppose I did,” he relented.
It was honest enough that she looked at him.
The lantern light caught the side of his face—his jaw, the shape of his lips, the green eyes that were looking at her with an expression that was very different from what she was used to.
“The suitors,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow. “Still?”
“One more question.”
“You said curiosity before.”
“I was being imprecise.”
She waited.
“When you asked me if I thought it was foolish, is it because you regret it?” he asked. “Not choosing one of them. The lovely one, in particular.”
She looked at him for a long moment. There was something in the way he had saidlovely, as if he had been doing his best to sound neutral and had not quite managed it.
Is he jealous?
The thought came with a warmth she had no intention of suppressing.
“No,” she replied.
“No regrets at all?”
