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“How much did you hear?”

“Your answer.”

He drew his cuff straight. “I see.”

“I was looking for my mother’s room.”

“The next door.” He nodded toward it without moving.

“Thank you.”

She ought to have moved at once. Yet she stayed where she was refusing to walk past him with her head lowered like a woman caught at a keyhole. She had been looking for her mother. He had been discussing her marriage. “I did not know you were in there,” she said.

“It is my study.”

Heat rose beneath Lydia’s collar. He spoke as if she ought to have known which doors were safe to pass in a house she had entered less than an hour ago. “The door was closed,” he added.

“I heard you as I came out of my room.”

A short silence followed. “Then you heard very little.”

There was no apology. Not that she expected one for his refusal to marry her; he had every right to make that decision. The injury lay in being discussed as though her future was of no consequence to the conversation. She wanted him to acknowledge that distinction, and, rather inconveniently, she found herself caring what he thought of her.

“You need not look so concerned,” she said. “I heard nothing that requires discretion.”

“I would prefer that a private conversation remain private.”

“Then I shall try to forget my part in it.”

“That was not directed at you.”

“You mentioned me.”

“It was directed at my mother.”

“Yes. But it concerned me.”

Below them, someone called for a footman, and another voice answered farther away. The house went on being ordinary while Lydia stood outside a stranger’s study trying not to feel foolish in front of him. Tristan turned back to her. “She should not have placed you in this position.”

“No.”

The agreement surprised him. Lydia adjusted the book beneath her arm. “But I would prefer that you did not speak of me as though I had been brought here for inspection.”

“That was not my meaning.”

“What was your meaning?”

“That there will be no marriage.”

He delivered it with the firmness of a man closing an account she had never opened. Lydia’s fingers tightened around the book again. “I believe I have understood that now.”

His attention dropped to her hand, then rose.

She moved aside to let him pass. He did not. “You may have been given expectations I knew nothing about.”

“May we leave my expectations to me?”

Her voice remained quiet. She was glad of it. Loudness made other people hear anger; quiet made them listen for the blade. Tristan studied her, apparently waiting for a qualification she did not offer. “Very well.”