Chapter 2
Chapter Two
“What on earth are you doing here?”
He had not moved.
That was the first thing Caroline registered: that the Duke of Wynford was simply standing there in the mouth of the alley, his expression arranged into something impressively unhurried, as though he intercepted women tumbling out of underground boxing matches in stolen breeches every evening of the week.
Which, given his reputation, was perhaps not entirely outside the realm of possibility.
Of course, she knew him, but not very well.
She barely knew him at all, in truth: he had appeared at Grayston House a handful of times over the last few years, and on each occasion, they had exchanged no more than a few sentences.
Caroline knew from Lewis’s claims that he was her brother’s friend, his closest friend these past years.
She also knew that the Duke was the most notorious rake in London, according to the ton’s whispers.
She had no cause to know him better than that.
Caroline met his gaze now and found that she could say nothing… because there was absolutely nothing she could say.
“Well,” he said.
“Well,” she returned.
She was precisely aware that her hair was still down, splayed over the shoulders of a dead man’s coat. She quickly picked her hat up from the dirty London street and clutched it tightly against her stomach with both hands like a supplicant at chapel.
Then, she straightened her spine.
“You ought to have run faster,” he drawled, and she thought she saw the corner of his mouth tilt up into a smug smirk; the ghost of it annoyed her.
“You ought not to have been lurking,” she shot back, already feeling her cheeks warm up.
One brow rose fractionally. “I wasn’t lurking.” The unhurried nature of his tone annoyed her, too.
“You were standing in a dark alley past midnight, awaiting a woman you had already identified, but chosen not to immediately announce yourself to.” She met his gaze with as much composure as she could construct on short notice. “That is, by any reasonable definition, lurking.”
Anthony Keating, Duke of Wynford, regarded her for a moment with those insufferably steady green eyes, and she had the uncomfortable sense that he was quietly amused and declining to show it.
He took a step closer, which was unnecessary. The alley was not so narrow as to require it.
“I wanted to be certain I wasn’t mistaken,” he said. “I was giving you the benefit of the doubt.”
“How magnanimous.” She tried not to roll her eyes at him.
“I thought so.” He paused, tilting his head slightly. “You should go home, my lady.”
“I was going home,” she retorted, then wiped the dirt and dust off her hat.
Good God.
How was it that he was making her want to stomp her foot like a toddler throwing a tantrum?
“Before I stopped you, you were going in the wrong direction. Your carriage is two streets over, I assume. East, not west.” He tilted his head slightly. “The fact that you bolted south suggests either poor navigation or a great deal of panic.”
She hated that he was right. She set her jaw; her eyes narrowed at him. “You were following me,” she said.
“I was ensuring you were all right.” His voice sharpened on the last word.
“Which is a distinction that matters, regardless of whether you choose to acknowledge it. That man had fixed himself on you, and a tavern like this one is not the sort of place where things end neatly. I had no means of knowing that you were—”
He paused, and she could see him selecting his words with deliberate care.
“Who you were,” he continued. “I only meant to see you reach the street without further incident.”
“And yet here we are,” Caroline said. “Incident very much in progress.”
He looked at her for a beat. Something akin to irritation passed across his face before it was gone.
“You should not have been here,” he said. “Either of you.” His eyes flicked in the direction where Laura had run.
“But we were, and we survived intact. So perhaps the degree of danger has been somewhat overstated.”
“The degree of danger,” he said flatly, “nearly had a drunk dockworker put his fist through your face not five minutes ago. I would not call that overstated.”
Caroline’s spine locked, her bones going rigid. “You handled him perfectly well.”
“I shouldn’t have needed to.” He said it without heat, which somehow made it worse.
“This is not a place for you or your companion. The clientele is not the sort who will be deterred by a sharp word and a brave expression, Lady Caroline. You are a young woman, alone, in men’s clothes, in a district of London that does not trouble itself with your well-being. ”
The quality of his tone was not exactly scolding. It was more the tone of someone reading aloud from an unwelcome report, laying out the facts without embellishment.
She found, obscurely, that she preferred outright lecturing to this.
“I appreciate your concern,” she said. “You’ve now expressed it thoroughly. Good evening, Your Grace.”
She turned on her heel and started to walk.
He stepped into her path.
It was done without haste, without drama; he simply moved, and was there, and she pulled up short to avoid walking directly into his chest.
“Does your brother believe you’re at home tonight?” he asked.
Caroline met his gaze. “Where I am tonight,” she said, “is none of my brother’s business.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” His expression gave nothing away.
“You may take it however you like.” She kept her voice entirely level.
“What I suggest, Your Grace, is this: we agree that neither of us saw the other this evening, we go our separate ways, and we never speak of this again. It is a very simple arrangement and requires nothing whatsoever from either of us.”
She moved to step around him.
“Why were you here?”
She stopped. Not because the question arrested her, she told herself, but because answering it and being done with him was considerably more efficient than attempting to walk away a third time.
She tipped her head slightly and regarded him.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Why were you here?” he repeated. The green eyes were steady, without judgment that she could identify, which was somehow more difficult to deflect than censure would have been.
“Not the nearest assembly room, not a friend’s house, not anywhere within the considerable radius of places a woman of your position might spend an evening undetected.
Here. This particular tavern, in this particular district. Why?”
Caroline did not intend to tell him about her list. She’d rather die. “It’s personal.”
“Evidently.” He arched that brow again, and Caroline truly wanted to punch him.
“If I did not tell my brother I was coming here, I certainly will not share my motivations with you, and I suggest you do not press this issue further, Your Grace.” She managed in a saccharine tone that did not extend to her eyes.
“I’m not pressing. I’m waiting.” His green eyes were fixed. “There’s a difference.”
She looked at him and thought that he was categorically the most infuriating man she had encountered in a lifetime of encountering infuriating men. Her uncle had been infuriating through cruelty. Her brother was infuriated by excessive care.
And the Duke of Wynford was infuriating through sheer, composed, immovable patience, which was arguably the most aggravating variety.
“You wouldn’t understand,” she said.
“Try me.” He also did not intend to let this go, it seemed.
“You’re a man.” She heard the bite in her own voice and did not soften it.
“You go where you like. Tonight, tomorrow, five years from now… married or unmarried, it makes no difference to you and your ilk. No one will bar you from any room in London, or indeed in England, on the grounds of your sex alone. You may travel, you may spend an evening as you wish, and no one will call it reckless or improper or damaging to your prospects.”
She stopped. The words had come out sharper than was warranted.
After all, the Duke could not help it that he had been born a man, no more than she could answer for being a woman.
In the narrow alley, between one guttering lamp and the low sounds of the city beyond, her rebuke seemed to hang a little too candidly in the air.
Yet she persisted. “I have two years of my aunt’s improvements, a lifetime of other people’s expectations, and a Season that will end with me choosing between a set of perfectly adequate men who all want exactly the same, dull, stifling life.
And so yes, I came here tonight because I wished to, and it mattered to me, and the reasons are my own. ”
Blast it.
She had not meant to say so much, and she could only press her lips together now.
The Duke was quiet for a moment. The crispness in his expression had shifted into something she could not immediately name. She did not see pity there. She would have been mortified to see that expression. It was something quieter, and she suspected, more honestly felt.
But it was gone in an instant.
“The distinction you’ve named is real,” he said.
“I recognize that.” A beat. “And then I’ll also tell you that this district, this night, that particular man, and your lack of reinforcements could have brought dire consequences.
Consequences that no amount of personal significance would have softened. ”
“I already have a brother,” Caroline said.
“I’m aware.”
“Then you’ll understand that the position of unsolicited guardian is thoroughly filled, and I’ve no need of a second applicant.”
His mouth twitched. She was almost certain of it. It was barely there; the faintest suggestion of something that might, in a different light, be construed as wanting to become a smile, and it was gone before she could point to it with any confidence.
He was also standing too close. She had not moved, and neither had he. Somewhere in the course of the past couple of minutes, the distance between them had contracted into something that would have been entirely unremarkable in a ballroom—one could scarcely avoid proximity in a crush.
But here… it was considerably more noticeable.
Here, she could see the faint, wind-raised color along his jaw. She could see that he was scrutinizing every inch of her face with an intensity she had never seen before.
“How are you getting home?” he said at last.
“There is a carriage waiting.”
“Where?” He asked.
The confidence in his tone was another annoyance that lent an edge to her tone when she replied with, “Nearby.”
“Where.” It was not a question now; he was demanding.
She exhaled through her nose. “Two streets east. Exactly where you suggested it would be, which I notice you have not gloated about.”
“The night is young.” He stepped back, and the air between them returned to its ordinary character. “I’ll walk you to it.”
Caroline did not like the way her pulse skipped at his suggestion. She really did not want to spend any more time in his presence.
“That is entirely unnecessary.”
“Undoubtedly.” He gestured, briefly, toward the far end of the alley. “Shall we?”
“I said—”
“Lady Caroline,” he uttered, more persistently this time.
He looked at her, and there was something so completely settled in his expression, so entirely absent from negotiation, and she understood.
She could argue until the Thames froze, and he would simply continue to stand there waiting to escort her, on and on into eternity, with that aggravating, immovable patience of his.
She made a sound that was not quite a groan and put her hat back on. She tucked her hair up beneath it, jabbing the last loose strand under the brim with perhaps more force than was strictly required, and walked.
He followed, at what she was forced to concede was a discreet distance—five paces back, far enough to avoid any suggestion of accompaniment to any passing observer.
He is very good at this.
At the whole exercise of it. The management of appearances, the calibrated distance, the practiced invisibility. She supposed it was a skill one developed if they spent enough evenings in districts they were not supposed to be in.
She found the carriage without mishap.
Laura’s face appeared the moment she pulled the door open, white, relieved, and verging on the kind of panic that had already done all its work and was now tidying up after itself.
“You’re all right,” Laura breathed. “I could not leave without you. Even though you told me to go, I knew I should not leave you behind. Get in, get in—”
Caroline did as was requested. The carriage lurched forward the moment the door latched, and she sensibly did not look out the window as they pulled away from the curb.
Until she could not resist chancing a glance over her shoulder.
There he was, standing where she’d left him, a still figure against the dark street, hands in his coat pockets, watching the carriage go.
He didn’t raise his hand. He didn’t do anything at all. He simply watched, and then the carriage turned the corner, and he was gone.
“What did he say?” Laura demanded.
“He was insufferable.” Caroline turned away from the window.
“He lectured me about the neighborhood, called it a matter of personal safety rather than personal interest, you know, all the usual,” she said, shaking her head, pressing her back into the seat.
“But… he won’t say anything to my brother. I’m fairly certain.”
“Fairly certain.” Laura’s voice shook. “You are fairly certain.”
“He seemed more concerned with the principle of the thing than with any genuine intention to report us. If he wanted my brother to know, he would have said so plainly.” She paused.
“I imagine the Duke of Wynford knows a thing or two about helping young ladies make hasty departures. And, just as he would not want others to gossip about his clandestine meetings, I am sure he will keep our secret.”
Laura gave this the consideration it perhaps didn’t entirely deserve. “He’s terribly attractive,” she said finally, in a tone that suggested this was a reluctant admission.
“He is the most infuriating man I’ve met,” Caroline said.
And she meant it. She was quite sure she meant it.
And yet as the carriage rolled east through the dark and the lamplight tracked in slow repetition across the ceiling, she found herself replaying the exact distance at which he had been standing, the steady, unhurried green of his gaze…
She could not, no matter how firmly she directed her attention elsewhere, make herself stop.
She pressed her knuckle against her lips and looked out at the dark street beyond the window.
Infuriating, she told herself, as the carriage carried them home.