Chapter 2
She woke to the wrong ceiling.
The gray morning pressed through the curtain gaps and laid pale bars across dark wood overhead. Lydia did not move at once. The unfamiliar ceiling held her still for one blank, startled moment before memory returned hard enough to tighten every muscle in her body.
Her stays pinched where she had slept badly in them.
The pale blue muslin she had worn the day before clung in tired creases from bodice to hem.
When she lifted a hand, her sleeve was wrinkled nearly to the elbow, and there remained at her wrist the faintest soreness where Finchley’s fingers had closed too hard outside the solicitor’s office.
The remembrance came with such sudden clarity that her breath caught.
Not here, she told herself at once.
Not now.
She pushed herself upright and looked about her.
Blue wallpaper faded softly toward gray in the morning light.
Mahogany, yes, but less severe than she had first feared.
A neat washstand stood beside the screen in the corner, where a porcelain basin and pitcher had been set out for her use.
A small row of books occupied the shelf near the hearth—travel, sermons, a volume of poetry gone slightly worn at the edges, the sort of assortment chosen for temporary comfort rather than permanent habitation.
The carpet beneath the bed was thick enough to soften sound.
Nothing in the room had been chosen carelessly.
Even the air seemed arranged: beeswax, clean linen, and beneath it the faint citrus note she remembered from the club below.
Ordered. Respectable. Not hers.
She was above Mr. Hallworth’s club, in rooms kept for guests or emergencies—or ladies in distress, should his establishment unexpectedly begin collecting them.
And she was alone.
The thought moved through her like a draft.
Beyond the curtains, London had already begun its day.
Wheels rumbled over the street. A porter called to someone below.
Farther off came the clipped rhythm of hooves on stone.
The city went on as if nothing had altered, though Lydia had stepped into the very sort of situation Mr. Finchley would have been delighted to twist to his own advantage.
She set both palms on the coverlet and forced herself to breathe evenly.
The previous day came back in flashes rather than sequence: Finchley’s fingers biting into her wrist outside the solicitor’s office, the crush of people in Hyde Park, Edward stepping between her and danger so cleanly it had seemed he had always meant to stand there, the hackney, the dark-paneled passage at the club, and then his voice proposing an engagement as calmly as another man might suggest taking tea.
Even now the word refused to settle in her mind.
Engaged.
The notion was so reckless it ought to have been laughable. Instead it sat in her chest like a lit taper, small and dangerous.
Before that had been Mr. Henslow’s office, stale with dust and old paper.
Discretion, he had said, folding his hands as though the word itself were a remedy.
The note of hand had lain on the desk between them, the signature too firm, too certain, too wrong.
And behind it all stood Finchley, quietly putting a hand around every weakness she had not yet learned how to defend.
Her stomach rolled.
Lydia pressed her fingertips to it until the nausea passed.
She was alone in a lord’s rooms. No chaperone. No relation. No respectable explanation anyone would choose over a more ruinous one.
If Finchley learned of it—and he would, if given time—he would strip the facts of every merciful detail and leave only what served him.
A gentleman’s club. A night spent under Mr. Hallworth’s protection.
No witnesses she could command. No family to insist upon innocence where scandal would prove more entertaining.
Had she stepped out of one trap and directly into another?
The question shamed her the moment she asked it.
Not because caution was shameful. Caution had kept her upright these past months when grief, debt, and humiliation might otherwise have laid her flat.
What stung was that Mr. Hallworth—careless, indolent, reputedly reckless Mr. Edward Hallworth—had shown her more immediate consideration in a single evening than men who had known her father for years.
He had not touched her save where necessity required it.
He had not pressed when she hesitated.
He had not looked at her as if rescue entitled him to gratitude beyond simple civility.
And worst of all, because it made distrust harder to maintain, he had given her a choice.
A knock struck the silence cleanly in two.
Lydia jerked upright, one hand catching in the coverlet. For one wild second she was back in her lodging house, listening for Finchley’s tread on the stairs.
Another knock followed, quieter this time.
“Miss Ashby,” came Hawkins’s voice through the door. “I have brought tea, if you would permit me.”
Air left her in a slow rush. She loosened her grip on the coverlet, smoothed a hand over her hair, then over the front of her dress, as though the gesture might rescue either.
“Come in,” she said.
The roughness in her own voice made her wince.
Hawkins entered with the sort of discretion that made a sound seem apologetic. A tray balanced in his hands: teapot, one cup, toast trimmed into neat triangles, a small dish of preserve. He crossed to the writing desk and set everything down with measured care.
“Mr. Hallworth has instructed that you are not to be disturbed,” he said. “You may ring for anything you require. He has asked that you rest and take some nourishment before he calls upon you, at whatever hour you find agreeable.”
Lydia stared at him. “At whatever hour I find agreeable?”
“Yes, miss.”
No inquiry. No curiosity. Not even the smallest glance sharpened by judgment.
He inclined his head and withdrew, the latch clicking softly behind him.
Lydia remained where she was and looked at the tray.
The toast had been cut with fussy precision. The cup’s handle had been turned toward her right hand.
Such tiny considerations ought not to matter. Yet they did. Thoughtfulness had become so rare in her life of late that when it appeared, it felt extravagant.
She rose and crossed the room. The floor gave almost no sound beneath her slippers.
Tea first. Then sense.
She poured. Steam curled up against her face. The tea was strong, unsweetened, and hot enough to force her into the present. After two swallows she set down the cup and went to the door.
The bolt was on her side.
She slid it back and opened the door an inch.
The corridor stood empty. No guard. No looming servant instructed to prevent her escape. The back stair curved downward into shadow, open to her if she chose it.
She could leave.
The realization unsettled her more than a lock might have done. Edward had arranged her safety, not her confinement. No one had given her that distinction since her father died.
Her hand tightened on the edge of the door.
For one reckless instant she imagined taking the stair, slipping into the street, and putting as many miles as possible between herself and this beautiful, dangerous absurdity.
She could find some cheaper lodging in a different quarter.
Change her name for a few days. Start again.
Pretend the events in Hyde Park had been a fevered interlude.
But the thought collapsed almost as soon as it formed.
Start again with what money? Under what protection? With Finchley still holding the forged note and now, perhaps, wondering how desperate she had become if she had run straight into the keeping of a man like Edward Hallworth?
No. Running had ceased to be movement. It had become a more exhausting form of waiting.
She shut the door again and stood with her hand still on the latch.
Then she returned to the desk, drank the rest of the tea, forced herself to eat one piece of toast and then another, tried with limited success to smooth the worst of the wrinkles from her skirt, and sat to wait.
Time passed strangely in unfamiliar rooms. Long enough for the tea to cool in the pot.
Long enough for Lydia to consider leaving three separate times and remain where she was for three separate reasons: once because prudence urged it, once because fear did, and once because when she pictured the door opening, she found she wanted—against all sound judgment—to know whether Mr. Hallworth would look at her in daylight and remain the same man he had been in the dark.
That last reason was the most unsettling of all.
When at last footsteps sounded in the corridor beyond, she knew them at once by the measured lack of hurry.
Edward paused outside her door and smoothed one hand down the front of his coat, more from habit than necessity.
He had not slept. The mirror in his dressing room had already informed him that his eyes looked darker for it, though the glass had been less forthcoming regarding why he had spent half the night drafting letters and the other half considering Miss Lydia Ashby’s expression when she had discovered the bolt on the inside of her own door.
He knocked twice.
Neither demand nor apology. Merely enough to announce himself.
“Come in,” she said.
Her voice carried more steadiness than it had the previous evening.
He entered and took in the room in one glance. The cup stood empty. The toast mostly gone. Miss Ashby had abandoned the bed for the chair beside the writing desk, as if she had chosen the most defensible position available and intended to keep it.
The blue dress was creased from a night spent in it. Her hair had been put back up, but quickly. One loose strand had escaped near her temple. She looked composed in the way a soldier might look composed after binding a wound tightly enough to stand.
The image irritated him, because she ought not to have been compelled to such composure in the first place.