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Her chin came up at that. “Easy for you to say.” She drew a deep, bosom-lifting breath. “Being born both female and of a certain rank, one is not permitted the full range of action in the world.” She shrugged. “So we do what we can.”
“Much better to come with me then.” He pushed away from the wall and came around the horse to stand beside her. The mare cocked an ear his way.
“What? So I can drop glassware down a stairwell?”
“You have to admit that you enjoyed it.” He grinned at her.
Her gaze dropped, but she didn’t deny it. “Why did you need me to do it, I wonder. What purpose did it serve?”
He reached up to give the mare a scratch behind her ears. “What’s her name?”
“Circe, and you didn’t answer my question.”
“Didn’t I?” He let his hand slide along the sun-warmed flank of the horse. “Does she deserve a witch’s name?”
“Sometimes.” She laughed and patted the mare’s rump. “She appears docile, but she will surprise you when she wants her own way.”
“Is that what you’re doing? Trying to have your own way?”
She faced him. They were closer than he’d realized. She tapped him on the chest with the currycomb. “What I would like is answers to some very reasonable questions about your actions last night.” Tap. “What were you doing when you disappeared from my side?” Tap. “How did you know where to find Lord Ravenhurst’s missing papers?” Tap. “Why did you return them?” Tap. “Why—”
He caught and trapped her hand against his chest. The fine thread that had stretched between them from the moment he’d unfolded himself from Rosalind Villiers’s couch caught and held, a single shining filament of need.
She stared at his mouth. Behind him a groom’s coarse shout and the rattle of carriage wheels broke the moment. He released her hand, and she dropped it to her side.
He made himself answer lightly. “Suit yourself, but an hour in the park could get you the answers to your questions.”
* * * *
Emily had long understood that Hyde Park at the fashionable hour of five in the afternoon was not the park of her morning rides. As London society from the lowest to the highest ranks streamed through the gates in carriages, on horseback, and on foot, the park’s horizons shrank. One did not look up through the tracery of lofty trees, or out across rolling vistas of the faintest green. One did not hear the cries of birds, but the clatter of wheels and shouts of greeting. It was necessary to keep a sharp eye out for erratic drivers and the careless tide of humanity.
She squirmed a little on the seat of Lynley’s neat curricle. With her mother away, she’d had her first chance to visit Arthur Broome in jail, yet she’d succumbed to the temptation to go driving with Lynley in the park. Curiosity about her fiancé was a character weakness she did not care to examine.
She had to admit that Lynley was a neat driver with a light hand to which the horses responded readily. She could not help admiring a man who treated his animals well. And of course a tall, darkly handsome man must be observed. Heads turned and ladies fell into conversation as they passed. She could not repress a twinge of satisfaction at the expression on the faces of certain of her old friends when they saw Lynley and realized that he must be the fiancé of whom they’d heard. To those ladies she gave a friendly wave.
“Enjoying yourself?” he asked.
“Am I so readable? It is the tallying hour.” She straightened her spine. “A time for chalking up points. Everyone is busily measuring his neighbor’s consequence in new equipages or horses or...”
“Fiancés?”
“Exactly.”
“Anything I can do to add to your tally?”
“If you must know, there is an art to the whole business of parading. One has to be seen without appearing to notice that one is being observed. It’s all a great strain on one’s neck.”
With a slight movement of his hands he made the horses dance a little in their traces, setting the harness jingling. His whole attention appeared focused on driving, but heads again turned their way.
When the horses settled back to a sedate pace, she was sorely tempted to poke him in the ribs with her parasol. “You know exactly how to draw attention without seeming to do so.”
“And you apparently know how to court invisibility.” He gave her outfit a severe frown. She had dressed in a fawn-colored spencer jacket and plain chocolate velvet bonnet, lined with pale green silk. “Is tallying points only for ladies?”
“At least I’m not wearing black.” Emily saw no reason to tell him that he would score no points for being seen with a woman who had been on the shelf for nearly five Seasons.
“You were going to tell me what you were really doing at the Ravenhurst party last night,” she said.
“Was I?” An approaching barouche caught his attention. The stately vehicle carried a petite iron-haired lady in a deep-wine-colored coat and hat, black feathers curling over the brim, with her hands stuffed into a black fur muff the size of small spaniel.
