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But like all stations in life, widowhood brought with it certain benefits, particular challenges. Loneliness was one such challenge.
The
challenge. She’d been lonely for as long as she could remember, but this kind of loneliness was new, and enormous, and eviscerating.

Thirty-three

Brook Street, Hanover Square

That Night

T
he light in Caroline’s window dimmed, and then went out altogether.

Sidled up at his perch beside the wrought iron gate, Henry tossed aside the smooth-edged pebble he’d been rolling between his thumb and forefinger. He let out a sigh.

Caroline was safe, for one more night, at least.

And now she was asleep.

It was late, somewhere between one and two in the morning. He wondered what had kept her up. News about Violet, the French Blue? That dreadful book she’d been reading?

Henry knew it was foolish to wish he was the one to keep her awake. Why would Caroline waste her time thinking about him?

Still he wished it. With his whole being, he wished it. Knowing she was thinking about Henry made his own sleeplessness, the incessant winding of his thoughts over and around and about her, less pitiful. Less painful.

He took one last sweep of Harclay’s property. No sign of
Woodstock, thank God. Lake knew he would come to collect what he’d asked for, soon. He prayed he would have the French Blue to give him. Henry and Moon had torn apart London in the twelve or so hours since the duel, searching for it. With increasing panic, Henry realized seeking out the diamond would prove a far more formidable task than he anticipated.

Digging a hand into the hair at the nape of his neck, Henry gritted his teeth against the heaviness in his chest.

He missed her. He craved her.

He had to see her, if only to make sure she was all right.

He turned back to the window.

*   *   *

H
er eyes, sticky with grief and sleep, fluttered open at the soft thud that sounded by the window, then fluttered back shut.

Caroline drew a breath, inhaling a bit of drool along with the air. The carpet felt prickly and hard against her cheek. Her neck hurt, her mouth was unpleasantly dry and thick. He entire body ached; she felt like she’d been beaten from the inside out.

She didn’t remember falling asleep on the floor.

There was a quiet rush somewhere above her head, and then she was being lifted into her bed, the ropes groaning in protest as she landed softly on the mattress. She moaned; the bedclothes felt deliciously cool against her skin.

Again her eyes opened. She could not see much; only an enormous shadow, the otherworldly luminescence of a single pale eye that pierced the darkness like a moon in miniature.

“Henry,” she whispered.

He pressed a kiss into her cheek. “Go back to sleep, love,” he said.

“Stay with me,” she whispered.

She struggled to keep her eyes open; she was weary with exhaustion. She turned onto her side, eyes closing once more. Above her came the breathy sigh of a sheet, and a moment later it drifted down upon her, its touch light, lingering.

The mattress dipped; she heard Henry’s boots fall to the floor, quietly. A rustle of bedclothes beside her, the sound of him letting a long breath out through his nose.

And then he was gathering her to him, curling her body
into the warm curve of his own. His arm wrapped about her waist and his nose grazed the back of her neck, breath warm on her skin. She relaxed against him, falling further from consciousness with each beat of his heart against her back.

She smelled lemon, and laundry, spice.

She fell asleep.

*   *   *

W
hen she woke, the light streaming through her window was pale gray, soft with the first hint of sun. The air inside the room was already warm; she felt sticky at her temples and about the nape of her neck.

Caroline opened her eyes, looked across the room.

Henry was there by the window, leaning against the wall. His shirt was undone, revealing a deep V of skin and freckles and muscle. She’d never seen his chest in the light. So many freckles. She liked them, and wanted to trace their pattern with the tips of her fingers.

She was awake, suddenly.

His arms were crossed about his chest and his good leg was bent at the knee, the sole of his stockinged foot pressed to the wall. She recognized this posture from their fateful afternoon stroll through Hyde Park, just before they’d gone for that swim in the Serpentine. With a little thrill, she realized it was one of the many things that made Henry
Henry
, much like the way he dug his fingers into the hair at the back of his neck, or hooked stray strands behind his ears; like that half smile, the one he used liberally, knowing it laid waste to every female in a fifty-foot vicinity.

She was beginning to know him all over again.

In that moment she felt, strangely, as if they’d never been apart. She understood the romance of it, of knowing someone so well, of that someone knowing you.

She wanted, badly, to get lost in the romance, to allow herself to feel the heady loveliness of all this
knowing
. She met Henry’s eye. He was looking at her the way he was always looking at her. Softly, with feeling.

Caroline looked away.

“How is Lady Violet?” Henry asked. “And your brother?”

“Not well,” Caroline bit her lip. “And not well.”

From the corner of her eye, she watched Henry lean forward. “They need your help more than I do, Caroline. Go to William. He needs you, especially if—”

A beat of uncomfortable silence settled between them. Caroline didn’t want to think about what would happen if Violet died. William would never forgive himself; there was no telling what he’d do.

Henry was looking at her, face hard, eyes soft, color creeping over his unshaven jaw. The stubble was dark in this light; it matched the purple thumbprint beneath his eye. He was exhausted.

She ran her tongue over her teeth. She wished she had some water.

“You aimed wide,” she said. “You were going to let William win. You were going to let him kill you.”

He returned her gaze steadily. “Doesn’t matter now, does it?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Henry. You’re no martyr. Of course it matters. What about the lives of all those men you’re meant to save? What about the jewel? What about our plot to defeat Woodstock? We couldn’t do any of it without you.”

“I wasn’t going to kill your brother, no matter how much I wanted to. You love him. Losing him would destroy you, I know it would. And I’ve already destroyed you once. I’m not going to do it again.”

Swallowing for what felt like the hundredth time, Caroline resisted the impulse to dash across the room and leap into his lap and kiss him until tomorrow.

He’s not yours, she reminded herself. You refused him; you have your widowhood, and your scalawag brother, and your gardens. You made your choice. You cannot go back now
.

Caroline plucked at a furred thread in the sheet spread out across her lap, watching as she made a big hole out of a tiny one. Henry sat on the edge of the bed; the mattress ducked and jolted as he tugged a boot up his leg. She snuck a glance; the fabric of his shirt stretched across his shoulders. Enormous shoulders.

“You stayed,” she said after a beat.

He stilled. “You asked.”

“I didn’t ask you to come up,” she said.

His foot fell with a muted clap to the floor. He placed his
hands on his thighs, thumbs pointing toward his hips with arms akimbo.

Hanging his head, Henry said, “Can’t exactly trust a man like Woodstock to keep his word. He’d touch you just to spite me. So I had to see that you were all right up here. Alone.”

“Besides the usual visit from my lover, he usually comes once a week—”

Henry’s head shot up.

“Joking! Just a joke.”

“Not funny.” Henry turned to look at her. “What do you want me to say, Caroline? That yes, I meant to ensure your safety, but mostly I just wanted to see you? That after the duel I knew I wouldn’t sleep, and I was looking for comfort, and I didn’t know where else to go?” He scoffed. “That man—the man who would say these things—I don’t want you to pity him.”

I don’t pity him, she wanted to say. I love him
.

I love him.

But she didn’t say those words. She couldn’t get them past the tightness in her throat, the fear that shot through her.

Oh, God, she thought
.
It’s happened, the thing I swore never would. I’m in love with Henry Beaton Lake. Again.

His gaze was earnest, and lovely. She couldn’t bear it; she looked away. She looked down at his legs.

“Here,” she said, sliding across the bed. “Let me help you with the other boot. It’s your bad leg, isn’t it?”

Henry stiffened as Caroline sat beside him. She was aware, suddenly, just how transparent her chemise was. She pulled the neckline up, toward her chin.

“Does it hurt today?”

“Yes,” he said. “It was getting better, and then . . . well.”

“You’ll let me know if I need to stop?”

Henry dipped his head, a nod. She leaned over him and reached for the boot, its leather stiff, as if it had learned to stand at attention from the solider who wore it.

Henry set his hands on the mattress behind him. As he lifted his leg he drew a small, short breath through his teeth. Caroline guided the boot over his foot and up his calf. The muscles there were taut, flexing against his plain cotton stockings. She resisted the urge to run her thumb along the ridge between his shin bone and muscle.

Caroline grasped the top of the boot with both hands and gave it one last tug.

“There,” she said. “All right?”

Her hands lingered on the lip of his boot, right below his knee. She shouldn’t be touching him like this; in fact, she should be running for the proverbial hills, to the safety and comfort of her uneventful widowhood.

Instead her fingers slipped into the bottom hem of his breeches. She had to know, suddenly. She wanted to know all of him. The good, the bad, the scarred parts, and the whole ones.

“Caroline,” he said.

“Tell me if I need to stop,” she repeated.

She hooked her thumb into the brass buttons that fastened the outer seam of his breeches, working each one free.

“Caroline,” he said again, a warning. But he did not stop her. She braced herself for what she was about to see.

She slid the fabric up, revealing the ball of his knee. The skin was intimately pale there, there were no freckles, and a smattering of wiry red hair sprung out from beneath the edge of his breeches.

There was no scar. No misshapen bones, or gruesome contortions. Just a knee—an enormous knee, she wouldn’t be able to cover it with both hands—the flesh stretched smoothly over the pear of his kneecap.

Caroline inched the breeches farther up his thigh. They wouldn’t go far; the muscles there were monstrous. Still no scars, no signs of the injury he’d suffered a decade ago.

Maybe time had been kind to him, for once, and erased the physical evidence. Maybe the damage was internal, a fracture or sprain that never healed properly.

Maybe it was none of those things. She couldn’t begin to guess how Henry bore his grief, his relentless regret, all these years. If she’d learned anything, Caroline understood everyone had his own way of coping. She had her garden; perhaps Henry had his knee.

She looked up to his eye patch; the leather thong dug into the skin of his temple. She met his eye. It appeared small with hurt, an edge of fear. A little wet.

“Caroline.” He was pleading now.

Leaning over him, she held back his breeches and pressed her lips to his knee, gently.

After a moment, she straightened and rolled the fabric back down to the top of his shin, coaxing each button through its embroidered hole. She tucked the breeches into his boots.

“I hope it feels better,” she said.

He inhaled, mouth opening as if he were about to speak.

She leaned in and kissed him on the lips. The ache in her chest heightened. Henry kissed her back, watching her watching him. It was chaste, this kiss, compared to the others they’d shared. His eyelashes fluttered against hers. They did not close their eyes.

He was the one to pull away. He stood and walked softly toward the window. Caroline followed him.

“Thank you,” he said, holding his mouth in his hand.

They both turned to the window.

There, far below, a familiar face looked up to them, mouth curled evilly into a smile.

“Good morning, lovers,” the Marquess of Woodstock drawled. “Such luck, Mr. Lake, that you are here to see me claim my prize!”

A figure, cloaked in black, struggled in the circle of Woodstock’s arm. Caroline narrowed her eyes to get a better look, but in that moment, Woodstock pulled back the figure’s hood, revealing a tumble of vibrantly red hair.

Fake hair.

A wig.

“Come down now, the both of you,” Woodstock said, holding a pistol to the figure’s head. “I would so hate to harm your friend Mr. Moon.”