The speed of the answer ought to have reassured her. Instead, irrationally, it stung.
She lifted her chin. “And that we remain sensible.”
“Yes.”
“And discreet where it matters.”
“That, too.”
Aurelia nodded, as though they were agreeing upon the terms of some ordinary household matter and not an utterly outrageousdeception. She kept her eyes ahead, fixed upon Clara’s pale bonnet and the captain’s easy stride.
Then movement across the path caught her attention. Charlotte stood some distance away beneath a young tree, with one gloved hand resting upon its trunk, her posture lazy with observation. She had evidently not gone on so far as Aurelia had assumed. She was watching them.
Of course she was.
Aurelia felt her whole body tighten at once. She did not need to turn to know that Lord Westbridge had seen her, too. The faint change in the air beside him told her enough. Charlotte’s gaze moved from Aurelia to Lord Westbridge and back again with poisonous interest.
Aurelia’s instinct was immediate and old as fear itself: step away, diminish the impression, leave nothing that could be sharpened into gossip. Her body had half obeyed before she caught herself.
But before she could move, Lord Westbridge did.
It was the smallest shift, no more than a deliberate shortening of the space between them. Yet it was unmistakable. He stepped a little closer to her side, enough that anyone watching would see not accident but intention.
Aurelia’s breath caught.
He did not look at her. But in that quiet movement was a message as plain as any declaration.
Let her talk.
If Charlotte Langley was determined to spread gossip, then let her spread the version they had chosen.
A strange warmth rose in Aurelia’s chest. It was alarm braided tightly with gratitude, and something else she refused to name. When they reached Clara and Captain Harrow, Clara turned at once with the bright expectancy of one who believed all the world existed to become more romantic by the hour.
“There you are,” she chirped. “I thought you had both fallen hopelessly behind.”
Captain Harrow glanced between them, and Aurelia had the fleeting impression that he noticed rather more than Clara did. But if he did, he gave no sign beyond the briefest flicker of amusement at the corner of his mouth.
Lord Westbridge said evenly, “Miss Finch and I were discussing a matter of future convenience.”
Clara’s eyes widened with immediate delight.
Aurelia, hearing the phrase and knowing just how much had been packed into it, nearly choked.
“Were you indeed?” Clara asked.
“Yes,” said Lord Westbridge.
The walk resumed, but nothing in Aurelia felt as it had before. She had agreed to a false courtship. The thought ought to have filled her with dread. In some measure, it did. She knew too well what happened when appearance and reality became entangled. She knew too well the cost of whispers.
And yet, beneath the apprehension, there was something else, a feeling almost like hope, though she did not trust herself enough to call it that.
Whatever happened next, there would be no retreat now. Charlotte Langley had seen. And any woman in London could be trusted to carry a story exactly where it would do the most good or the most damage.
Beside her, Lord Westbridge walked in silence, steady as ever, as though proposing false courtships in Hyde Park were the sortof thing he did every day. Aurelia kept her eyes ahead and told herself very firmly that she had agreed only for practical reasons.
Chapter 13
Aurelia woke unsettled the following morning.
