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“Your hosts will wish to speak with you.”

“In a moment,” he said.

“Lord Merewood...”

“May I have a little time with you first?” he asked.

His voice was quiet. Charlotte could still hear the conversation around them. The clink of a glass, Amelia’s laugh, the soft murmur of a dozen voices. Everything continued as usual as she considered an invitation she never expected, and her pulse beat steadily in her throat.

“What do you wish to discuss?” she asked.

“You.” She lifted a brow, though her heart gave a hard thud against her ribs. “The woman you are now,” he added. “If you will permit it.”

There was no reason to agree. She owed him nothing, and she had long since learned to distrust the pleasure of being wanted, the dizzying lift of it, the way it could leave one worse off. Yet she was curious. She wanted to hear him speak without an audience, to discover whether the man before her understood anything the young Alexander had not. She wanted to know whether the years had taught him what they had taught her.

“The room beside this one is unoccupied,” she said. “The door shall remain open.”

He nodded. “Of course.”

Charlotte moved toward it, her skirts whispering across the carpet, then paused and looked back over her shoulder. “Five minutes.”

He inclined his head, his blue gaze steady on hers. “I shall make good use of them.”

As she led him from the drawing room, she hoped she would not regret giving him the chance. Her heart pounded, and she held her chin high. She was done making mistakes, and she would never let a man control her again. Even one as tempting as Alexander.

Two

Alexander had imagined meeting Charlotte again often enough to have prepared several sensible things to say. None came to mind as she led him into the adjoining room, her skirts brushing the carpet and the faint scent of her perfume drifting back to him. He had remembered her beauty. He had been less prepared for the pleasure of hearing her correct him, the crisp edge in her voice, the small lift of her chin. That, at least, had survived the years.

She stopped beside a small sofa upholstered in blue silk. Beyond her, two candles lit a writing desk. Its surface was crowded with books and a neglected embroidery basket, a half-finished rose trailing a loose thread over its rim. The room offered a quiet retreat from the gathering, though the open door let in enough conversation to remind him their privacy depended on their hosts' goodwill.

Charlotte glanced at the clock upon the mantel. He nearly smiled. She had meant the five minutes. “Will you sit?” he asked.

“For so brief a conversation?” She arched one brow, her hand resting lightly on the back of the sofa.

He nodded. “I should prefer you to be comfortable.”

“I am quite comfortable standing,” she told him.

“Then I shall try not to give you reason to leave,” he said, his voice gentler than he had intended.

She folded her hands before her, her fingers interlaced. Candlelight warmed the red in her hair and caught upon the small stones at her ears. It threw tiny sparks against her neck. She had always known how to discourage a man with a look. He remembered thinking it formidable when he was nineteen. When she had turned it on a suitor who stood too close at a ball. He had watched, torn between pity and delight. He found it no less effective now. His mouth had gone slightly dry.

“You wished to discuss the woman I have become,” she said, her gaze level. “I am not certain how to begin such an account.”

“Then perhaps I ought to begin with an apology,” he said.

“For this evening?” Her fingers stilled against one another, and he saw the corner of her mouth tighten. “You could hardly have known what my friends intended.”

He shook his head. “For leaving as I did.”

Her gaze moved to the open doorway. In the other room, someone laughed, followed by the soft clatter of counters upon a card table. For a moment, she listened, as though the ordinary sounds might offer her somewhere to rest. “That was a long time ago, Alexander.”

His name, spoken without ceremony, unsettled him more than her earlier coolness. He had not heard it in her voice for years. For a moment, he was back in her father’s garden. The scent of cut grass and lilac in the air… He had held her hands and mistaken her silence for agreement. His chest tightened at the memory, and he forced a slow breath. “I know.”

“Then you need not spend your five minutes explaining why you went,” she said, a little more softly. “I understood your reasons.”

“I thought you did,” he said. He had been such a bloody fool. “At the time, that seemed sufficient.”