Page 44

Three days had passed since the lake incident, and Laura was glad to be back in London, where she could at least distract herself.

“I will not take a bath in the Thames,” she added jokingly.

“I would not advise it,” Nathaniel said, before turning to Iris and ruffling her hair. “Please listen to Laura.”

She nodded obediently.

He looked back at Laura. “I have some business to attend to and will be heading to the club later. I may miss you.”

I will be avoiding you, more like it.

“Very well,” she said with a smile, too excited at the prospect of seeing her friend to think of grumpy dukes or their plans.

Kitty insisted on meeting them at the milliner’s on Bond Street, and by the time Laura and Iris arrived, she was already sitting by the window with two bonnets balanced on her lap.

“Oh, thank heaven!” She abandoned both bonnets the moment she spotted them and swept Laura into her arms. “I need someone with sense to help me decide, for my own judgment has utterly abandoned me.”

“The blue one,” Laura said, without needing to look twice. “It matches your eyes and does nothing for mine, which is precisely why I’m the right person to ask.”

“Married a month and already wiser than the whole of London.” Kitty turned to Iris, crouching slightly to address her properly. “And you must be the famous Iris my dearest friend has written to me about over the past weeks. I have heard a great deal about your tulips.”

“There are eleven Geralds now,” Iris informed her with great seriousness, and was promptly delighted to discover that Kitty took this news with the gravity it deserved. “We’ve planted the bulbs because it is autumn, and they will grow bright and tall in the spring!”

“Isn’t that grand!”

Miss Borden settled Iris at a nearby counter heaped with ribbon, close enough to watch but far enough to give the two friends some privacy.

Kitty wasted no time once they’d sat down.

“Now.” She fixed Laura with a pointed look. “Tell me everything, and do not dare give me the polished version. How are you, truly?”

Laura opened her mouth to relay the polished version anyway, out of pure habit.

“Everything is great at the castle,” she started, her voice quiet.

But then she quickly found she couldn’t hold it under Kitty’s steady gaze.

“How are you, really?” Kitty pressed.

“I don’t know how to answer that.”

“That’s already more honest. Go on.”

“He is not who the papers say he is; I will start there.” Laura twirled a length of ribbon around her finger absentmindedly. “He’s gruff and guarded, and there is an entire section of the castle that he won’t let me near. Half the time, I cannot tell if he wants me close or a hundred miles away. Indifferent, most of the time.”

“That does not sound very promising, Laura.”

“But I’ve also seen him read to Iris. I’ve heard that he quietly pays off a tenant’s debts and refuses to let anyone thank him for it. I fell into a lake, and⁠—”

“Oh, Lord! Are you all right?!”

“It was an accident. The water was barely deep enough to reach my chest. But he went in after me fully dressed as though I were drowning, and afterward his hands were shaking so badly that he could barely give orders to the staff.”

“That does not sound like indifference,” Kitty said carefully.

“No, it doesn’t.” Laura set the ribbon down. “And that is the problem. I married him for none of the reasons one is meant to marry. I didn’t choose him. He chose me at an auction,” she whispered. “I have spent every week since telling myself that I would guard my heart carefully against a man who might not even want it. Instead, I find myself listening for the sound of his boots in the hall and thinking of him at the oddest hours, and I don’t know what to do with any of it. I think of his haunted brown eyes, his thick beard, his tall limbs and strong arms…”

Kitty was quiet for a moment. “It seems you are falling in love, Laura, whether you asked for it or not. I hate to be the one to say it, but it’s true. It sounds like⁠—”