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“Is that what the English call the desire for symphonic concerts at all hours of the day with someone?”

She reached for the cold tea he’d poured and drank it. “You are English yourself. You know very well that is indeed what we call it.”

“All right, then. I have formed an attachment to you that has lasted beyond all reasonable expectations to the contrary. It is extraordinarily unruly and bothersome. Have you any advice on how this condition may be ameliorated?”

She didn’t want it ameliorated. “Why didn’t you come to me sooner?”

“When I thought that you’d have more interest in a bosom friend than a man?”

“You are not very careful in choosing to whom you form your attachments, are you, Mr. Marsden?”

“Attachments are what they are. We but find reasons to justify them.”

“What was your reason, then, all the while you still thought that I was a follower of Sappho?”

“That Madame Belleau could be wrong.”

“Why didn’t you ask me?”

“I didn’t want to find out that she was right. But then, when it seemed that you might marry Mr. Somerset, I couldn’t stop myself—an impulse I’ve regretted very much since.”

She looked up sharply. “Why? You wanted her to be wrong. You know now that she was wrong.”

“Yes, but it would have been easier to accept your marriage to Mr. Somerset had I believed otherwise.”

“So that’s why you declared yourself at last. Because you could no longer stand the thought of my marrying Mr. Somerset.”

He picked up a coconut biscuit and then set it down again. A fraction of a second later he was standing before her, as close as if they were about to start a waltz—which was far too close for any kind of normal interaction. But she did not move away.

Instead she studied his silver stick pin, which she’d first thought entirely plain, but which at this proximity resolved itself to be hammered in the shape of a tulip. She was beginning to like the way he dressed, with little fancies and eccentricities. Or sometimes with a big splash of whimsy, like the sail-rigged airships on his wallpaper.

He touched a thumb to her cheek, the sensation like that of coming into contact with a creature of the wilderness—a stag perhaps—nothing fearful, but unfamiliar and unpredictable. “Does your presence here mean what I think it means?”

His hand slid down, and now nestled next to her lips, as if waiting for her to speak to feel the vibration. Her breath came in shallower.

“I’m not sure what you think it means. I came to find out about the flowers.”

“For that you could have sent me a note. You needn’t risk coming here by yourself.”

His other hand settled behind her neck, warm and strong and intent.

“It’s not that risky coming here,” she said, her voice reduced to a whisper.

“No?”

At last he kissed her.

The moment their lips touched she suddenly had a better understanding of attachment, of what it meant to desire symphonic concerts at all hours of the day with someone. It wasn’t his hunger that surprised her—she’d sensed it all along, she supposed—but her own. She had enjoyed the intimate act with Henry, but she had never wanted it to this extent. She wanted Mr. Marsden—Will. She wanted to yank out his beautiful antique silver stick pin and toss it across the room because it was in the way. She wanted to use him, to astonish him, to own him.

She pulled away.

“I can’t do this to Mr. Somerset.”

“Then tell him you cannot marry him.”

“And then what? Marry you?”

“It would be a challenge—you are not the easiest of women, as I’m sure you know. But I’m game.”

“
You
are game?” she cried. “You’ve nothing to lose. I don’t want poverty to be my lot. My pride may not survive it.”

“Then you must do what’s best for your pride.”

She was startled. “Pardon?”

“I won’t always be a secretary, but most likely I will not have a country seat in this lifetime. And I may not ever have a house in Belgravia. So if your pride is the most important thing to you, you should marry Mr. Somerset and enjoy everything that he can give you,” he said, his tone perfectly serious.

“You are supposed to persuade me to see things from
your
perspective.”

“I don’t want you to be persuaded. I want the decision to come from you and you alone.”

She walked away to the far corner of the room—not very far—and turned around before her knees hit a canterbury full of books and periodicals. “You understand that my other choice is to do nothing: I only need to follow the course that has already been laid out and paid for.”

He smiled slightly. “I was there planning your wedding, if you’ll recall. It promises to be exceptional. Much time, effort, and money would be wasted were you to walk away from it. Moreover, Mr. Somerset could very well become prime minister someday: There will be women lined up to take your place, should you choose to vacate it.”

Her hands lifted in a gesture of futility. “You are not helping at all.”

“I’m not helping
me
at all. I’m helping you as well as I know how.” He approached her in her corner and traced her eyebrow with the tip of a finger, a touch that shocked her with its intimacy. “You are a hardheaded woman, Lizzy. You want all that glitters. You want London at your feet. And yet in here,” he rested the back of his hand briefly against her heart, “are the inconvenient desires of a romantic.”

“I thought I was a cynic.”

“As am I. And there is no worse fate than for a cynic to fall in love and realize that while cynicism is a fine shield against shallower emotions, it is no use at all against love.”

“I don’t know that I’m capable of such love,” she said mutinously.

“I don’t know that you are either, which makes me worried for myself.”

She gasped. “That is a very fine thing to say to the woman you love.”

“It’s not an insult. Marrying down goes against the instinct of most women of our class. I cannot promise you perfect happiness: It doesn’t exist. We’ll find each other and our life together unsatisfactory at times. There will be days when you’ll envy the new Mrs. Somerset and wish you’d chosen differently. And I don’t know whether you’ve depth and wisdom enough to get past the inevitable second thoughts that will arise—possibly again and again.”

She shook her head in exasperation. “You are literally pushing me back into the arms of my fiancé. Do you have anything to say for yourself, any enticement for me at all? Would it be nothing but doom and gloom if I were to marry you?”

“Enticements: Hmm.” His thumb indented her lower lip. “Well, many symphonic concerts, to start. And that is something you will not get from Mr. Somerset—I don’t think his mind leans much toward matters of the flesh.”

“Perhaps mine does not either, after Henry Franklin.”

He tilted his head toward her and licked her where his thumb had been, and it felt like a lick between her thighs. Her exhalation was startled—and plainly pleasured.

“Are you sure about that?” he murmured.

She chuckled, to let out some of the tension building in her body. “Perhaps not. But I don’t think a marriage can be based on carnal desires alone. What else do you have to offer me?”

He kissed her on the lips. “A respect for your mind.” He kissed her again. “As much freedom as I would give myself.” He kissed her one more time. “And a surpassing interest in the lovely, fascinating old woman you will become one day.”

Her heart shook at both his kisses and his words. She was suddenly afraid that she might tell him right this moment that she’d forsake all for him. She turned around and left running.

Stuart drank steadily. He hadn’t moved since she left, except to replenish his glass again and again.

He’d always disdained the numbness that came from a bottle—his mother in a drunken stupor in Torquay had been one of his least cherished memories—but today that numbness couldn’t come fast enough. How many glasses had he downed? Five? Seven? Why, then, when he breathed, did it still feel as if his lungs had been punctured?

The doorbell rang. The glass slipped from his hand and broke at his feet.

How long had she been gone? How did one keep track of time in Hell? He might have been in the study for days already, drinking himself into a state. But his servants hadn’t returned to gaze aghast upon him yet, so it couldn’t have been too long.

He reached for another glass and poured it half full. The doorbell rang again. He almost dropped the glass again.

Was it her? And what would he do if it was her? Banishing her once had cost him everything he had. He had not honor, righteousness, or strength enough to do it again. He had not even enough rage left—the bleakness in his head had drained him of the mental vigor required for the care and feeding of anger.

He raised the glass and tossed back its contents. He wouldn’t answer the door. She needed to understand that it wasn’t some passing consternation on his part that had led to her exile, but a carefully considered decision of principle. There was no place for her in his life. There had never been any place for her in his life. Why couldn’t she see it? Why couldn’t she leave him alone so that his insides could die in peace?

He crossed the room, tripping and nearly falling on the shard-strewn carpet, to stare at the clock on the mantel—he could no longer make out the hands on his watch. The second hand of the mantel clock moved at the speed of a crippled snail. It crawled. It shuffled. He could swear at one point it took a nap. Bright-eyed infants could have grown up, married, and aged into witless dotards in the time it took to circumnavigate the clock; hell, dynasties could have risen and collapsed.

There now, he made it through one minute without rushing out to open the door for her—he no longer needed to grip the mantel so tightly. He’d make it through another minute, and then another. She would get the point eventually, that his mind was firmly made up, that nothing could dissuade him from his set course.

The bell clanged again. His heart seized. He spun around—and fell, onto a splinter of agony. He got to his feet, pulled a piece of glass from his knee, and ran. He banged his shoulder on the doorjamb of the study, banged his other shoulder on the longcase clock, and almost smacked his face into the door.

Just remember, close the door before you kiss her.

He yanked open the door, then slammed it shut in the next instant, his heart as shattered as the broken glasses in his study.

It was not her, but Mrs. Abercromby, who must have forgotten her keys. And he had just put the lie to all his principles, every last one of them.

Chapter Twenty

V
erity found Michael smoking on the front stoop of the gamekeeper’s cottage. He wore an old tweed jacket that was both too loose and too short for him, mud-splattered boots, and a wool cap that rode low on his brow. He smoked not with a gentleman’s elegance, but with a laborer’s impatience, the cigarette pinched between his thumb and index finger, its tip reddening with each restless inhalation.

Michael usually returned to Fairleigh Park by the middle of December. But this time he had been invited to a classmate’s home for a week after the end of term. And had arrived only the evening before.