“It has.” Lily’s voice was steady.
Her eyes were not.
They found his across the room, and in the space between one breath and the next, something passed between them that had nothing to do with arrangements or purposes or the careful bloodless language of two people pretending to discuss strategy.
He looked away first.
“We can begin the dissolution at the next event,” he said. “A quiet conversation with the right people. His Grace and Lady Lily have come to a mutual understanding. The engagement was premature. Both parties remain on excellent terms. Thetonwill talk for a week and then move on to something else.”
“Just like that?” Aunt Margaret swirled her wine. “You build a fiction, dismantle it over canapés, and everyone simply accepts the revised version?”
“Society has a short memory, Lady Oldbarrow. And a shorter attention span.”
“Society has neither. It simply pretends to forget while keeping meticulous records.” Margaret set her glass down. “But I take your point. A clean dissolution is preferable to a messy one.”
Lord Brimsey nodded from his chair. “If Wilfrey is prepared to court Lily properly, then the sooner the engagement ends, the better. We do not want to give the impression of impropriety.”
Lady Brimsey reached for her husband’s hand. “Our Lily will be settled. That is all that matters.”
Hugo’s grip on his glass tightened.Settled.As though Lily was a piece of furniture being placed in a room where she would remain, fixed and ornamental, for the rest of her life.
“Then we are agreed,” Hugo said. His voice carried the pleasant neutrality of a man chairing a meeting about crop yields. “We can announce it at the Hollingsworth soirée on Thursday.”
“Thursday,” Lily repeated the word as though assessing its weight. “That is soon.”
“You wanted this resolved quickly. Wilfrey is interested. The longer we wait, the more opportunity there is for complications.”
Their eyes met again. The wordcomplicationshung between them, loaded with everything it did not say. The terrace. The moonlight. The sound of her voice in the dark.
“Thursday it is,” Lily said.
Sophia, who had been sitting beside Edward with the watchful stillness of a woman absorbing every word and filing it for future analysis, opened her mouth to speak.
The drawing room door burst open.
Allen, Edward’s butler, stood in the doorway with a stricken expression.
“Your Grace.” He addressed Edward. “I apologize for the intrusion. Mr. Colborne is here. He says it is urgent.”
Edward rose. “Show him in.”
Mr. Colborne appeared behind the butler before the invitation had fully left Edward’s mouth. He was hatless, his coat buttoned crookedly, his spectacles fogged, and his chest heaving. He carried a leather satchel under one arm and gripped the collar of a second man with the other.
The second man was small, wiry, and terrified. He wore the rough wool coat of a laborer and the hollow-cheeked look of someone who had not eaten well in some time. His eyes darted around the drawing room, taking in the silk wallpaper and the crystal decanters and the faces of the aristocrats staring back at him, and the color drained from his face.
“Mr. Colborne.” Edward gestured to a chair. “What has happened?”
“I caught him.” Colborne released the man’s collar and pushed him into the center of the room.
The man stumbled, caught his balance, and stood with his shoulders hunched and his hands clasped in front of him.
“I was working late at the office. I heard a noise at the back entrance. When I went to investigate, I found this man leaving a stack of printed pamphlets on my doorstep.”
Colborne reached into his satchel and pulled out a sheaf of papers. He held them out to Hugo.
Hugo took them. The paper was the same cheap rag stock as the first forgery. The masthead bore Lady Fairhart’s name in the same compressed letterforms, and the rosette was still missing.
But the text beneath it was new.
