She looked resolved. Not nervous, not excited, not anxious as Aunt Margery was, or delighted as Cassie was. She looked as if she had made a decision sometime in the past week that he had not been present for, and the decision had settled into her face. Whatever the decision was, it had changed something in her, and the change was visible even from the first-floor window of a country house she had never visited.
She looked up and found his window. She saw him standing there watching her, his hand on the sill, his face no doubt showing everything he was failing to hide, and she held his eyes for a long second before smiling at him.
Not the polite smile. Not the composed smile. A small, private, certain smile that arrived on her face and stayed there and said, more clearly than any words could have:I have decided, and I will not pretend I did not.
He stepped back from the window, leaned against the wall, closed his eyes and pressed his hand flat against his stomach, where something had just turned over at the sight of her smile, warm and heavy and impossible to ignore.
He was in love with her. Frost was right. The question was answered. The only question that remained was what he was going to do about the wager that was still on the books at White’s and the man who had proposed it, who was arriving at Ravenhurst Park tomorrow with the rest of the set and whose amusement had curdled into something colder the night Ash had said the lady had surprised him and walked away without explaining.
He did not have an answer for that either. But she was here. She was standing on his gravel in his courtyard looking up at his house with a smile that had nothing to do with dukes or wagers or potted palms, and for the first time since the night at Aurelie’s, the absence behind his ribs was not absent. Something was there, something small, warm and terrifying.
He went downstairs to meet her.
The front hall at Ravenhurst Park was impressive, the staircase wide, the portraits of dead Hambridges watching from the walls with the particular expression that all dead Hambridges shared: a blend of entitlement and vague disapproval that suggested they had opinions about the living and were not impressed. His father’s portrait was placed at the first landing, but Ash passed it without looking at it, because looking at it would have required him to think about what his father would have said about the wager.
He opened the door himself. The butler, Hargreaves, who had been reaching for the handle, stepped back with the faintly scandalized expression of a man whose professional territory had just been invaded by his own employer.
Imogen was standing on the bottom step, her traveling case beside her, her dark blue dress catching the late afternoon light. When she saw him in the doorway, her face did the thing it had done on the gravel: the quiet resolved smile that was not performed and not polite but was genuine.
“Your Grace,” she said. “Your house is very large.”
“It is,” he said. “I have never particularly liked it.”
“Then why do you keep it?”
“Dukes do not choose their houses, Miss Goodall. Their houses choose them. I am merely tolerated.”
She smiled again, wider this time, and the width of it undid something in his stomach that the window had only loosened. He stood in the doorway of his own house and looked at the woman he was in love with and thought, very clearly:I am going to have to tell her about the wager before Devlin does, and the thought was cold and necessary, but he pushed it aside. The wager could wait one more day, just one more day, and after that he would find the words.
He offered her his arm, and they walked into Ravenhurst Park together, without saying a word and ignoring the dead Hambridges who were watching from the walls.
Chapter Eight
“Men like Ravenhurst do not become other men because a quiet girl has read a clever book, and I will say this once and not again, because you are old enough to choose.”
Bethany had arrived at Ravenhurst Park an hour after the Goodalls, in her own carriage, with a small trunk and an expression that suggested she had spent the entire journey rehearsing what she was about to say. She had not gone inside. She had not greeted the housekeeper or admired the entrance hall or allowed the footman to take her traveling case. She had walked straight across the gravel sweep to the spot where Imogen was standing watching Cassie explore the rose garden. She had taken Imogen’s arm and steered her away from the house, the servants and the windows where anyone might be watching, and she had said it.
“He is going to leave a mark on you, Imogen. Be sure you are willing to wear it.”
The gravel crunched under their boots. The house rose behind them, vast and honey-colored in the afternoon light, more windows than Imogen had ever seen on a single building; the kind of house that made you understand that the word estate was not a description but a statement of fact. The gardens stretched away on both sides, formal and immaculate, the sort of gardens that required a team of men to maintain and that existed primarily to demonstrate that a team of men could be afforded. Cassie’s laughter was audible from the rose garden, bright, uncomplicated and entirely unaware that her sister was standing on the gravel being warned about dukes.
“I know what I am doing, Bethany.”
“You do not. You think you do, and that is more dangerous than not knowing at all, because a woman who thinks sheknows what she is doing walks into the fire on purpose and calls it a choice.” Bethany’s grip on her arm was firm, and her voice carried the particular quality it took on when she was saying something she did not want to say, but she had to. “I have watched you from my window come home every evening with your cheeks flushed and your eyes doing something I have never seen them do before. I am not going to pretend I do not recognise it, because I do, and what I recognise frightens me.”
“Bethany.”
“I will say this once and not again. He is a duke, Imogen. He is the most pursued duke in London and he has chosen you, and that is either the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to you or the most dangerous. I cannot tell which, and the fact that I cannot tell is the reason I am standing on his gravel in my traveling boots telling you this instead of going inside and pretending everything is fine.” She released Imogen’s arm, straightened her gloves and looked at the house. “I am here for the duration. I will not interfere. But I will be watching, and if he breaks you, I will be the one holding the pieces, and I should like to know in advance how many pieces I should prepare for.”
Imogen stood on the gravel and looked at her oldest friend and tried to find the words to explain that the fire Bethany was warning her about was not the fire she was walking into. The fire she was walking into was something quieter and more complicated than Bethany’s warning allowed for, something that had to do with a man who had pressed her hand against his body and had given her the choice to leave. The honesty in his voice had been the thing that had undone her, not the desire. But the words would not come, because the words required her to admit things she had not yet admitted to herself, and admitting them on a gravel sweep in the late afternoon light with Bethany’s frightened eyes on her face was not how she wanted to arrive at them.
“I will be careful,” she said, because it was the only thing she could say.
Bethany did not smile. She picked up her traveling case and walked inside. Imogen stood on the gravel for a moment longer, alone, and looked up at the house and found, on the upper gallery behind a tall window, a face she had not expected to see.
Lord Stormont was watching her from the gallery railing. She recognized him from the Montford, the fair-haired man who had leaned toward Ash in the music room and murmured something she could not hear, the one whose smile had made her stomach tighten without explanation. He was standing at the window with his arms folded, his weight on one hip, and was looking down at her with an expression that was not quite amusement and not quite interest. It was, if she was reading it correctly, something closer to assessment. He was cataloguing her. Measuring something she could not identify, weighing her against some standard she was not aware of, and the weighing was cold, and made her want to step backwards off the gravel and into the carriage and ask to be taken home.
She did not step backwards. She lifted her chin, walked inside and climbed the main staircase to her room. When she passed the gallery landing where Lord Stormont had been standing, the gallery was empty. The space where he had stood smelled faintly of tobacco and something expensive and sharp, but she walked past it quickly and did not look back.
