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“And did you prevail?” he asked.

She gestured across the room. “You may see it from the window.”

He rose and crossed to it, and she found her eyes following the line of his shoulders against the dark glass. She had meant the offer as a small, careless thing. Instead, her pulse quickened as she watched him look out at the garden. The plain stone bench sat among the lavender at the end of the path. It was hers. She had fought for it, and it was the first thing she had chosen entirely without anyone’s approval.

He looked at it for a moment, then back at her, and something in his face, an unguarded tenderness, made her fingers tighten in her lap. “It looks like a very well-fought victory,” he said.

“I sit upon it with considerable satisfaction,” she said, her voice softer than she intended, a shy, half-defiant admission.

“I can imagine.” His voice was low and a little rough.

She wondered whether he truly could. She had never shown anyone that place, and she was startled by how much she wanted him to see it. For him to understand what it meant to sit there in the evening with a book and the scent of lavender around her, answering to no one. She liked that he could. She liked, too, that he seemed interested in the ordinary business of her life. He asked which room she used most, whether she spent much of the year in London.

When she mentioned she had an engagement the following morning, he asked nothing beyond whether she expected fine weather. Charlotte had been prepared to refuse questions about how she spent her time with her friends. She discovered there was a peculiar comfort in not having to refuse them at all. “And what have you done with your afternoon?” she asked. “Besides placing yourself at my mercy.”

“Answered correspondence,” he said, lowering himself into the chair across from her. He stretched his long legs toward the hearth with the ease of a man at home. “Offended my steward by suggesting a matter might wait until tomorrow.”

“A dangerous habit,” Charlotte said, lifting the teapot to refill their cups. She kept her eyes on the amber stream as it fell into his cup. However, she could feel him watching her hands.

“I am prepared to risk it occasionally.”

“For tea?” She set the pot down with a small, careful click, and arched a brow, because it was safer than smiling.

“For the company,” he said.

She should have found that answer practiced. She had heard such lines before, tossed across card tables and dinner tables by men who wished to be thought charming. She had learned to consider such words carefully before believing them. He said it so simply, without a glance to see how it landed, that it warmed her instead. The warmth spread through her chest before she could stop it. Her fingers trembled slightly against the pot's handle. Charlotte reached for her cup, mostly to give her hands somewhere to be, and let the porcelain’s heat steady her.

“You need not be charming every moment,” she said, more softly than she meant to.

“I am enjoying myself.” His eyes crinkled at the corners, and he lifted his cup in a small salute. “It requires very little effort.”

His gaze held hers, and she became acutely conscious of the quiet room, the open window, the fact that no one expected her to leave this chair until she wished. She could invite him to stay another half hour. The thought was sufficiently tempting that she set down her cup. Alexander glanced at the clock and placed his own upon the table.

“I have kept you longer than I intended,” he said.

“You have not kept me at all.” He looked back at her, and the pleasure in his face made her wish she had chosen less honest words.

“My sister is helping me receive a few friends on Saturday,” he said. “Nothing elaborate. Cards, conversation, probably an argument about the cards. Would you care to come?”

“Does she know you intend to add to her guest list?”

“She has ordered enough refreshments for twice the number invited,” he said dryly. “I believe she expects me to remember several neglected acquaintances.”

“And am I a neglected acquaintance?” she asked.

His expression softened. “I should like you to be rather more than that.”

Charlotte’s fingers rested against the edge of the saucer. The sensible answer would have been to remind him that a pleasant call settled nothing. Instead, she found herself studying his hand on his knee, relaxed now, though it had once held hers with such youthful certainty. “Saturday, then,” she said. “I should be pleased to come.”

***

By Saturday evening, Charlotte had convinced herself that accepting the invitation had been perfectly sensible. She continued telling herself so as she entered Merewood House. Alexander’s sister greeted her beside the drawing-room door. Lady Eleanor Whitcombe had her brother’s blue eyes and, when pleased, none of his restraint. “Lady Sylvan. How lovely to see you again.”

They had met years earlier, when Eleanor was still a girl. Now she wore an elegant gown of warm rose silk and the composed expression of a woman perfectly capable of managing her brother’s guests. “And you,” Charlotte replied. “Though I fear I remember you as considerably shorter.”

“I was fourteen,” she said, then laughed. “Alexander continues to find the change bewildering.”

“Only when you give orders in my drawing room,” he said, joining them.