Chapter 12
“Again, Auntie Lily. Again!”
Oliver launched himself off the settee and onto Lily’s back with the fearless abandon of a seven-year-old who had not yet learned that his legs were now long enough to knock the wind out of an unsuspecting aunt.
Lily caught him under the arms and swung him around until his laughter filled the Heatherwell drawing room like church bells.
“You are going to break your aunt,” Sophia called from the armchair by the window, where baby Jane dozed against her shoulder in a warm bundle of white linen and milk-scented skin. “Oliver, let her breathe.”
“I want to fly!”
“You flew three times. It is Leo’s turn.”
Leo sat on the carpet beside the fire with a wooden horse clutched in each fist, watching his older brother with the patient, watchful expression of a child who had learned early that waiting produced better results than demanding.
He was almost three, dark-haired like his father, and possessed the same quiet intensity that Edward brought to everything.
Lily set Oliver on his feet and crouched beside Leo. “Shall we fly, little one?”
Leo considered this with the gravity of a magistrate weighing evidence. Then he held up one of the wooden horses.
“Horsy fly.”
“The horse wants to fly? Well then.” Lily took the horse and swooped it through the air in wide arcs while Leo tracked its path with enormous brown eyes and a smile that broke across his face like the sunrise.
The drawing room door opened. Edward appeared in shirtsleeves, his cravat loosened, a stack of correspondence tucked under one arm.
He surveyed the scene with the composed amusement of a man who had learned that the transition from Duke to father required nothing more complicated than removing his coat and sitting on the floor.
“Papa!” Oliver charged across the room and collided with Edward’s knees.
Edward caught him without dropping the correspondence, which spoke to either excellent reflexes or extensive practice. He set the letters on the side table and lowered himself on the carpet beside Leo.
“Has the horse learned to fly?”
“Horsy fly,” Leo confirmed and handed Edward the second horse with the solemn generosity of a child sharing his most prized possession.
Edward flew the horse. Oliver climbed onto his back. Leo produced a third horse from somewhere behind the settee, and within minutes, Edward was conducting an aerial cavalry exercise across the drawing room carpet with the focused determination he normally reserved for parliamentary debates.
Lily watched them and felt the ache that always accompanied time with Sophia’s family. Not envy. Something gentler. The quiet recognition that this was what a life could look like when it was built on something real.
She settled into the chair beside Sophia and smoothed her skirts. Jane stirred against Sophia’s shoulder, made a soft sound, and settled again.
“She has your temperament,” Lily said. “Nothing disturbs her.”
“She has Edward’s temperament. I am disturbed by everything. I simply hide it better.” Sophia shifted the baby to her other shoulder and turned her attention to Lily with the focused precision that had made her the most feared gossip columnist in London. “What is the matter?”
“Nothing is the matter.”
“Something is the matter. You have been odd all morning.”
“I have not been odd.”
“You have been odd.” Sophia’s voice was gentle but immovable.
“You arrived an hour early. You have played with the children without stopping, which you normally do when you are avoiding thinking about something. And you have not mentioned Hugo once, which means you are thinking about him constantly.”
Lily opened her mouth to protest and then closed it. There was no point in lying to Sophia. There had never been any point in lying to Sophia. Her sister read people the way other women read novels, and she had been reading Lily since the day she was born.
“The opera,” Lily said.
Sophia waited.
“He was… attentive.” Lily chose the word with care. “We sat together in his box. The proximity was… notable.”
“Notable.”
“He made comments. About my restlessness. About my posture. He was observing me in that way he does, as though he is cataloging every detail for future use.”
“And this bothered you?”
“It unsettled me. There is a difference.” Lily smoothed a crease in her skirt that did not exist. “He has a way of making me feel as though I am being studied. Not judged. Studied. As though he is trying to understand something about me that I have not yet understood about myself.”
Sophia said nothing for a long moment. Jane shifted and sighed. On the carpet, Oliver had recruited Edward into building a fortress out of sofa cushions, and Leo was methodically dismantling it from the other side with the quiet satisfaction of a born strategist.
“Lily.” Sophia’s voice was careful now. “Are you developing feelings for the Duke?”
“No.” The word came too fast. She softened it. “No. This is an arrangement. He is helping me restore my reputation so that I can secure a suitable match. That is all.”
Sophia studied her with an expression that said she believed none of this but would press the point.
It was worse than an interrogation. An interrogation could be deflected. Sophia’s patience was a trap that closed around Lily while she was busy congratulating herself on her escape.
“The investigation is progressing,” Sophia said, changing course with the strategic grace of a woman who knew when to retreat and when to advance. “Edward spoke with Mr. Colborne yesterday. The Bow Street Runner Hugo hired has traced the ink to a Continental printshop. German, apparently.”
“Hugo mentioned something similar.” Lily seized the new subject with both hands. “Someone with resources and connections abroad. Someone who understands the ton well enough to weaponize Lady Fairhart’s name.”
“Which narrows the field considerably.” Sophia’s brow furrowed. “Edward and I have been compiling a list of people with both the motive and the means. It is shorter than you might think.”
“How short?”
“Short enough to be concerning.” Sophia pressed a kiss on Jane’s downy head. “We will discuss it soon. For now, focus on the engagement and the performance. Hugo seems to manage it well.”
“He manages everything well.” Lily heard the admiration in her own voice and wished she could retrieve it. “He is more capable than I expected.”
Sophia’s mouth curved. She said nothing, which was, as always, worse.
The following morning, a knock came at Brimsey House at half-past eleven.
Lily was in the morning room, reading a volume of Herodotus that she had been attempting to finish for three days and that she kept abandoning because her mind refused to remain on the page.
Every time she settled into a passage about Persian customs or Greek naval strategy, her thoughts slid sideways to the balcony, to the lamplight, to the taste of champagne on someone else’s mouth.
She closed the book when the footman appeared.
“The Duke of Thornwaite, my lady. He is asking to see the family.”
Lily’s stomach tightened. She had not seen Hugo since the opera.
Two days of silence that had felt like two weeks, during which she had composed and discarded fourteen different versions of what she would say to him when they next spoke.
None of them had been adequate. Most of them had involved the word boundaries.
She found Hugo in the parlor with her parents and Aunt Margaret. He stood near the mantel in a coat of deep green that made his amber eyes warm… warmer than the Mediterranean sun. His fair hair was neatly combed, his cravat tied with precision.
He was just as composed as ever.
He met her eyes when she entered. The contact lasted half a second, and in that half second, something passed between them that was neither acknowledgment nor apology.
It was a question, asked and answered in silence.
We are not going to discuss it.
No. We are not.
“Lady Lily.” He bowed. “I was just telling your parents that the weather is uncommonly fine this morning and suggested a carriage ride through Hyde Park.”
“A carriage ride,” Lily repeated.
“The fresh air would do us all good, I think.” He turned to Lady Brimsey with the warm, disarming smile that Lily recognized as his most effective social instrument. “I would be honored to have your family join me.”
Lady Brimsey brightened. Lord Brimsey looked as though he would have preferred to remain in his study with his newspaper, but he knew it was a battle he could not win.
Aunt Margaret regarded Hugo from her chair with the unblinking assessment of a woman who had not yet lowered her guard and did not intend to.
“A ride through Hyde Park.” Margaret’s tone was neutral, but her eyes were sharp. “How very wholesome, Your Grace.”
“I have my moments, Lady Oldbarrow.”
Margaret’s brow twitched. Lily suspected it was the closest thing to amusement her aunt had allowed herself in Hugo’s presence.
They departed within the hour. Hugo’s open carriage was handsome, drawn by a matched pair of bays, and large enough to accommodate the family without crowding.
The drive to Hyde Park was pleasant, the sunshine warm on Lily’s shoulders, and the streets full of the languid bustle of a London morning in full bloom.
When they reached the park, Hugo handed the ladies down from the carriage and turned to Lord Brimsey.
“Would you permit me to walk with Lady Lily? With your party behind us, of course. I have some matters regarding the engagement I should like to discuss with her.”
Lord Brimsey glanced at his wife. Lady Brimsey gave a small nod. Margaret’s expression did not change, which meant she was thinking a great deal.
“Of course, Your Grace.” Lord Brimsey gestured ahead. “We shall be right behind you.”