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“And it became easy?”

“No. But I wanted to be with her. I had to stop behaving as though that was something she ought to cure.”

He rang for fresh tea. Tristan watched him straighten the cravat his son had pulled loose. He had come hoping for some assurance that he could choose Lydia without being afraid afterward. Sebastian had made his choice without such an assurance. Tristan could not see how to do the same.

“I do not know what to do about Lady Lydia,” he said. “I do not like what my mother has done. I do not like the position I am in. I am not sure I like anything about it, except…” He stopped.

“Except,” Sebastian prompted, quite gently.

“There is no except.”

Sebastian rested a hand on the back of the empty chair. “If your mother had kept out of it, would you have gone back to see her?”

The room was quiet. Outside, a dray rumbled past in the street, and somewhere in the house a door closed. Tristan found that his hands had closed on his knees. He opened them.

“It does not matter what I want,” he said. “I cannot risk it again.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the only one I have.”

“You said that before you met her.” Sebastian lowered himself into the chair by the window. “If you mean to refuse her, do it. But do not keep calling while you decide. She will suppose it means something.”

“My mother has already had the papers prepared.”

“Papers are easier to alter than a marriage,” said Sebastian.

Tristan stayed until the fresh tea had gone cold. In the hall Sebastian caught him before he could put on his hat. “Come back this evening if you need to,” he said. Tristan began to refuse, then thought of the evening ahead at his mother’s table. “Perhaps I shall.” Sebastian stepped aside, sparing him an answer.

His mother’s carriage was standing at the door of Ashcombe House when he returned. The horses were put to. The footman held the step. Hollis, at the top of the stairs, looked with great attention at a piece of paneling.

“Tristan,” said the Dowager Duchess, descending in a hat he had never seen. “How well you look. We are going to the Pembrokes’ for tea.”

He stopped on the bottom stair.

“We are what?”

“Lady Pembroke has asked us. It is entirely proper. You called yesterday, you walked in the Park with her daughter in the sight of half the ton, and it would be a great discourtesy to leave it at that.” She drew on a glove. “The carriage is waiting.”

“I am a peer of the realm, Mama. I do not go where I am led.”

“No,” she said pleasantly. “You go where you are pushed, since you resent being led. It comes to the same. You are no longer a little boy, Tristan. I should not like to put you in that carriage myself in front of the whole of Berkeley Square. And do not doubt that I would do it. But I should be sorry to be seen to.”

It was the tone that decided him: quiet, unhurried, without a trace of anxiety. He climbed into the carriage, and she followed, and the door closed on them, and the world became a small room of leather and shadow with the sound of hooves beneath it.

“It is settled,” his mother said.

“I have not agreed to a single thing.”

“Well I have agreed to take tea with the Pembrokes. Lady Pembroke and I continue to see the possibility of a match between the two of you, and her husband is willing to hear what you have to say. Nothing more. I assure you, he will not consent to anything his daughter does not want.” She drew her skirt clear of the door as the carriage started. “I do not think she will refuse you.”

“You are very sure of a great many people’s minds.”

“I am sure of one. I am sure that you are going to sit in that drawing room and behave, and I am going to tell you why.”

He turned from the window. On Wednesday evening she had struggled to keep her hands still. Now her reticule lay quietly in her lap. She had prepared this conversation before he entered the carriage, and the discovery made him attentive in spite of himself.

“You are going to behave,” said his mother, “because I know about the Circle.”