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He did not move. The leather strap beside the window swung with the motion of the carriage, tapping against the frame. She could not mean the Circle. He had never spoken of it to her, never put its name in a letter she might see. For an instant he tried to remember whether he had left anything among his papers, then understood that the search itself was an admission.

“I beg your pardon.”

“The Bacchanalian Circle.” She gave the name the faint distaste she reserved for the more foolish indulgences of wealthy gentlemen. “I know what you and your friends began at Cambridge, and what you made of it afterward. Private houses, private suppers, private parties. Guests whose names were not to be repeated. Did you imagine none of it would reach me?”

The name sounded ugly in her voice. He thought of evenings he had kept separate from the rest of his life, of the discretion he and the others had trusted without much effort to deserve it. He had believed those arrangements asked nothing of him beyond silence. Now his mother was reciting them on the way to Lydia’s house. He felt exposed before she had named a single person involved.

“Who told you?”

“More than one person, over a number of years. A hostess wondered why the same gentlemen frequently left her gatherings together. Someone mentioned a house. I made inquiries.” She held his gaze. “And when the inquiries turned toward you, I persuaded people to concern themselves elsewhere.”

The carriage swayed around a corner. Somewhere in the street a boy was crying oranges. Tristan looked at his mother’s gloved hands, folded in her lap. The privacy he had taken for his own achievement had depended on her interference. He wanted to deny it. Worse was the thought of Lydia hearing an account chosen by someone who wished to hurt him, and having to decide which part of it described the man who had walked beside her yesterday.

“You have been protecting me.”

“I have been protecting a name. Yours happens to be attached to it.”

“And now you will stop.”

“Now I shall stop, if you insist that your only obligation is to be left alone. While you treated every consequence as someone else’s concern, I have protected your privacy, Tristan, and I have done so willingly.” Her hand closed around the fastening of her reticule. “But if you intend to withdraw from the world entirely, I see little reason to continue managing what society may or may not discover about you.”

He had never considered the Circle something to be ashamed of. They had created it willingly, knowing what they risked. But Lydia was another matter. She knew nothing of that part of his life, and he disliked the thought of her learning of it through the careless gossip of someone who understood even less.

“You know what society would make of it,” he said,

“I know what society makes of most things. Very little of it is accurate.”

“And if Lydia were to hear of it?”

His mother regarded him steadily. “That is precisely what you should be thinking about.”

“I did not know you were involved.”

“You know now.” She glanced at the window. “I am asking you to consider a woman you care for, not to marry a stranger you despise.”

“Why?” His voice cracked slightly, and he was too angry to be ashamed of it. “Why this, Mama. Why her. Why now.”

“Because when she was at Ashcombe you listened for her in the passage.” His mother’s voice lost its briskness. “You came down when you heard her. I had forgotten what that looked like.” She pressed her lips together. “I have watched you retreat since Eleanor died. I cannot go on helping you make the retreat comfortable.”

Her use of the name made him turn away. It was not the first time he had heard it spoken with affection. It was the first time she had attached it to a threat.

“Do not call it kindness.” He pulled the carriage strap clear of his knee. “You are asking me to go into that house and offer her a marriage with the threat of scandal hanging over my head.”

“I am asking you to stop finding reasons not to go in.”

He looked through the window. A bookseller was lifting a shutter into place. They were nearly there. He could refuse her, and for several seconds the relief of doing so was almost enough. Then he thought of the note he had sent Lydia. He had wanted to see her before his mother mentioned the Circle. Anger would be a convenient reason to forget that.

“And Lydia?” his mother asked.

He did not answer at once. Lydia would be waiting in the drawing room, unaware of any of this, perhaps expecting him to ask about her drawing. He had asked to see it. “Leave her to me,” he said.

His mother sat back. For the rest of the journey she concerned herself with a loose thread on her glove, working it between two fingers until it broke. Tristan watched the shops give way to houses and tried to recall the first thing he had meant to say to Lydia before the carriage door closed.

They were at the door in Brook Street before either of them spoke again.

He remembered the tea afterward as a series of tableaux. Lord Pembroke standing when they entered, courteous, watchful, giving nothing away. The countess pouring with a hand that did not shake and a face arranged with tremendous care. Edmund at the window, studying a plant in a pot. Lydia in a pale blue gown, seated straight-backed beside her mother, with a small line between her brows that he had last seen in a library.

On the windowsill, in a glazed pot, sat a familiar green plant with round leaves. It had been placed where the sun would reach it. He looked at it for a long time.