“No. It wasn’t hot enough.” Isadora set the paper down and turned it slightly so the words were no longer visible.
Mrs. Holt mopped the spilled coffee. “The cup is fine,” she said, examining it. “No harm done.”
“Good,” Isadora said. “Thank you.”
Mrs. Holt glanced at her. She was too professional to do it twice, but it was there.
“Will there be anything else, Your Grace?”
Isadora looked at the paper.
Unchaperoned. Late evening hours.
“No,” she replied. “Thank you, Mrs. Holt.”
The door closed.
She read the column a third time. She did not know why she did. It did not say anything different on the third reading. It said exactly what it had said the first time.
Her hands shook as she put the paper down. So she folded them in her lap and looked at the window.
She was aware of her own heartbeat. It was quick, erratic, and not entirely comfortable.
Miss Caroline Pembley.
She stood. She sat back down.
She was being… She was being reasonable. She was looking at a newspaper that employed people specifically to observe and record things that would produce exactly this response in exactly the people most susceptible to it, and she was being entirelyreasonable about what she was feeling right now, which was not…
She was not going to think of the word.
She picked up the paper again, then put it back down.
He said it was better if you stayed, she thought, tears already threatening to spill.He was already thinking about London.
That was the thought she had been managing for four days. The quiet, persistent thought she had been embarrassed about, had decided was paranoid and foolish and entirely unworthy of a woman of her intelligence and composure. And now here it was in the morning papers.
She thought about the kiss.
She had been holding the kiss carefully for two weeks, turning it over in the private, unmanaged part of her that she rarely let anyone see. She had kissed him back on the terrace with everything she had.
The warmth that had been sitting in her chest for weeks—the warmth she had finally, reluctantly acknowledged did not disappear. She wished it would. It would have been considerably easier if it had simply packed its things and left.
It remained, and it hurt, which was considerably worse than if it had not been there at all.
Perhaps the kiss was the kind of thing that happened in a charged moment, with the right lighting, and that a man with James’s history did not necessarily carry with him into London the following week.
She opened her eyes and looked at the paper. Then she stood up, this time with finality, and rang for Briggs.
“Briggs,” she said when he appeared.
“Your Grace?”
“Please tell Mrs. Holt to come back up.” She looked at the window. Anywhere except the paper. “Tell her I’ll need my trunks brought down.”
Briggs looked at her for just a moment and then inclined his head. “Yes, Your Grace,” he said. “Of course.”
Mrs. Holt came in, assessed the situation, and asked no questions. The trunks were brought down. The maids came and went with the quiet efficiency of people who had been given a clear task and were executing it without editorializing.
