Chapter 20
“Ihave been thinking about what you said at dinner.” Wilfrey’s voice carried from the morning room through the half-open door.
Hugo stopped in the corridor with his coffee cup raised halfway to his mouth.
He should keep walking. A gentleman did not eavesdrop. A gentleman continued to the breakfast room, ate his toast, read his correspondence, and did not stand in a corridor straining to hear a conversation between his fake fiancée and the man he was helping her catch.
Hugo did not keep walking.
“Which part?” Lily’s voice held the warm, measured tone he had taught her, the one that invited a man to continue without pressing him.
“Your observation about the moth. That perhaps it preferred its freedom rather than being caught. I found it remarkably perceptive. I had not considered the pursuit from the specimen’s perspective before.”
“You are kind, Lord Wilfrey.”
“I am honest. It is a perspective I had not previously considered, and I have thought about it at some length.” A pause.
Hugo heard the soft clink of a teacup against a saucer.
“I must confess, Lady Lily, that I have found our recent conversations to be among the most stimulating I have had this Season. You have a quality of mind that I find increasingly compelling.”
Hugo’s fingers tightened around his coffee cup. The porcelain creaked.
Compelling.
Wilfrey found Lily compelling. Wilfrey, who had walked away from her at the Fenwick ball without a backward glance, who had sent a cold note canceling his call, now found her compelling because she had learned to soften her edges and tilt her head and let his mistakes pass uncorrected.
The jealousy coiled in Hugo’s gut, hot and corrosive and profoundly unwelcome. He set his jaw and swallowed it.
This was the plan. Wilfrey’s growing interest was evidence that the plan was working, that the lessons had achieved their purpose, and that the house party was delivering exactly the result Hugo had designed it to produce.
He should be satisfied. He should be relieved.
He felt neither.
He took a sip of coffee, turned on his heel, and walked to the breakfast room before he heard anything else that would ruin his morning.
The afternoon brought a Pall Mall tournament on the south lawn.
Hugo had arranged it because Pall Mall required no particular skill, accommodated any number of players, and provided a leisurely, conversational environment that allowed guests to mingle freely without the rigid structure of a dinner or a ball.
It also kept everyone outdoors and visible, which reduced the opportunities for the private conversations he had just spent the morning trying not to overhear.
The course wound through a series of iron hoops set into the grass between the rose garden and the lake, with a turning post at the far end and a return path that curved past the terrace where the non-players could observe from the shade.
Mallets and balls had been laid out in a rainbow of colors on a table near the starting position, and a footman stood by with a tray of lemonade and champagne.
The guests assembled with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Sir Philip selected the largest mallet with the confidence of a man who believed that force compensated for accuracy.
Mrs. Thorne examined the hoops with the puzzled concentration of someone who had never played.
Lord Ashton was already drinking champagne.
Edward picked up a mallet with the quiet focus that meant he intended to win, and Sophia stood beside him and offered strategic advice that suggested she was the more competitive of the pair.
Lady Stapleton settled into a chair on the terrace with a glass of lemonade and an expression that conveyed her belief that physical activity was something other people did while she watched and drew conclusions.
Miss Beatrice Stapleton, however, joined the players, selecting a pale blue ball and positioning herself near Lord Wilfrey with the seamless precision of a woman who had been taught to occupy strategic ground without appearing to try.
Wilfrey stood beside Lily.
Hugo watched them from across the lawn as he took his position at the starting line.
Lily held her mallet with comfortable familiarity, and the emerald crepe she wore caught the afternoon light as she leaned down to place her ball.
Wilfrey stood close, closer than he had at any point during the Season, his body angled toward hers, his words tumbling out with an eagerness he would never have permitted himself in a London ballroom.
Hugo could not hear the words. He did not need to.
He could read the body language from fifty paces.
Wilfrey’s posture was open, his shoulders angled toward Lily, his head inclined in a gesture of focused attention that Hugo recognized because he had taught Lily that exact technique three weeks ago.
She was using it on Wilfrey, and now Wilfrey was unconsciously mirroring it back.
The tournament began. Hugo played with the distracted competence of a man whose mind was elsewhere, clearing the first three hoops with clean strokes while his attention tracked Lily and Wilfrey around the course. They walked together between turns, their conversation animated.
At some point, Hugo noticed Wilfrey’s hand hovering near the small of Lily’s back, but he withdrew it quickly. Thankfully, he wasn’t a total fool.
At the fourth hoop, Hugo’s ball struck Lily’s and knocked it off course. She looked up at him.
“Apologies, my betrothed.” He offered her a smile that was all charm and no apology. “The angle was unfortunate.”
“The angle was deliberate.”
“You wound me. I would never sabotage my own fiancée.”
“You would absolutely sabotage your own fiancée. You are competitive by nature and incapable of losing at anything.”
“That is a gross exaggeration. I lose at things constantly.” He paused. “I simply choose not to remember them.”
Her mouth twitched. She fought it, pressed her lips together, and lost. The smile broke through, quick and real and directed entirely at him, and for one second the rest of the lawn, the guests, the mallets, the carefully maintained fiction of their engagement, all of it fell away, and there was only Lily smiling at him in the afternoon sun with grass stains on her gloves and her green eyes bright with the particular warmth she reserved for moments when she forgot to guard herself.
Wilfrey appeared at Lily’s elbow.
“Shall I help you reposition your ball, Lady Lily? The angle from here is tricky, but if you aim for the inside edge of the hoop, the curve of the ground will carry it through.”
Hugo’s smile did not waver. He stepped forward and placed his hand on the small of Lily’s back, the gesture easy, possessive, and perfectly calibrated to remind every person on this lawn that she was his.
“Excellent advice, Wilfrey. My betrothed is fortunate to have such attentive friends.” He looked down at Lily. “But I suspect she can manage the angle on her own. She has a remarkable eye.”
Lily sent him a look that carried an entire conversation in a single glance.
What are you doing? Stop it. You are being territorial, and it is transparent.
Hugo received the look and responded with a slight widening of his smile that communicated, with equal clarity:
I know. I do not care.
She turned back to her ball and struck it with a clean, precise swing that sent it sailing through the hoop and halfway to the next one.
Wilfrey made a sound of admiration. Hugo felt a spike of pride so fierce it bordered on absurd, because Lily did not need help with angles, and watching her prove it in front of the man who had offered to assist gave him more satisfaction than any bullseye ever had.
The tournament continued. Hugo played well enough to stay competitive without dominating, a restraint that cost him more than he would have admitted. His attention kept drifting to Lily and Wilfrey, who had resumed their conversation between turns as though the rest of the lawn did not exist.
“You have a natural swing, Lady Lily.” Wilfrey positioned his ball at the sixth hoop. “Have you played before?”
“My aunt taught me in the gardens at Oldbarrow.” Lily stepped up to take her turn. “She is ruthlessly competitive.”
“I heard that,” Margaret called from her chair beneath the awning.
“You were meant to, Aunt Margaret.”
Edward cleared the final hoop with a stroke so clean it barely disturbed the grass. He straightened and handed his mallet to a footman without a word.
“Show-off,” Hugo muttered as he passed.
“Strategy,” Edward corrected. “Sophia suggested I aim for the left side of the hoop. The ground slopes.”
“You are taking tactical advice from your wife in a lawn game.”
“I take tactical advice from my wife in everything. It is why I win.”
Sophia applauded from the sidelines with the contained enthusiasm of a woman whose strategic advice had proven decisive. Sir Philip finished last. He examined his mallet with the betrayed expression of a man searching for someone to blame.
“Faulty equipment,” he announced to no one in particular. “The balance is off.”
“The balance is fine, Edmund,” Lady Hale said. “You simply cannot aim.”
“That is a matter of opinion.”
“It is a matter of geometry, darling.”
As the guests drifted toward the terrace for refreshments, Hugo fell into step beside Lily and Wilfrey. He inserted himself into their conversation about Roman aqueducts with the practiced ease of a man who had spent his life joining conversations uninvited and making himself indispensable.
“The engineering is extraordinary, of course,” Wilfrey was saying. “The gradient calculations alone required a mathematical sophistication that we often underestimate.”
“Agreed.” Hugo nodded. “Though I have always thought the most impressive aspect was not the engineering but the political will. Convincing an empire to fund infrastructure that would outlast its builders by two thousand years. That requires a vision most men lack.”
Wilfrey considered this. “A valid point, Your Grace. I had not thought of it in those terms.”
“His Grace has a gift for seeing the human element in things,” Lily said.
Hugo glanced at her. She did not meet his gaze.
Wilfrey nodded thoughtfully and excused himself to join Sir Philip at the refreshment table.
Hugo walked beside Lily in silence for several steps. The afternoon sun was warm on his shoulders, and the lawn stretched green and peaceful around them, and he carried the sound of her words in his chest like a held breath.
His Grace has a gift for seeing the human element in things.
She had defended him. Not strategically, not as part of the performance, but instinctively, the way a person defends someone they care about without thinking about it first.
He filed it away beside every other small, impossible, indescribable thing she had given him since this arrangement began.
He was running out of places to put them.