Lady Harriet watched him go, then turned sharply to her daughter. “You must take greater care, Abigail. The market is no place to wander off unattended—this is precisely the kind of attention we wish to avoid.”
Abigail knew it would make no difference to remind her mother that she’d agreed that they would meet in fifteen minutes. It was obviously allherfault. Never Lady Darlington’s.
“He rescued me, Mother. This was hardly planned.”
“That man is far too practiced in politeness,” Harriet muttered. “And you were far too close to him for far too long.”
“Mama—I was shocked. It was a case of—”
“No, Abigail,” Harriet said firmly. “You know how people talk. What they make of such scenes. We are fortunate this did not end worse.”
Abigail nodded, but didn’t reply. Her gaze lingered in the direction where Arthur had vanished into the Covent Garden crowds. Her heart, which had finally begun to slow, skipped again with a strange, restless energy.
She felt a strange mixture of relief and embarrassment.
But she also felt something else entirely. Something warm, inviting, and inexplicably stirring.
Something entirely new.
Chapter Four
The late afternoon light slanted through the tall, frosted windows of White’s Gentlemen’s Club, filtering in like misted gold and casting long shadows across the room’s timeworn carpet and gleaming mahogany floorboards. Outside, the bustle of St. James’s Street echoed faintly through the thick glass panes—carriage wheels, iron-shod hooves, the occasional call of a street hawker—yet within these walls, the world felt suspended. Time moved differently here, slowed to the pace of a drawn match and a long pour of brandy.
The club was a sanctuary of masculine indulgence, steeped in the scent of pipe smoke, aged spirits, and the faintest whisper of cologne—blended into a heady perfume that spoke of centuries of privilege and exclusivity.
The walls were paneled in dark walnut, so highly polished that the dancing flames of the marble hearth reflected faintly in their surface. Above them, gilt-framed oil portraits of dead men stared solemnly down. Former members, dignitaries, and dukes, watched over the club’s distinguished members, their expressions fixed in studied superiority. Between them hung hunting scenes and military engagements, chosen as much for their patriotic tenor as their decorative appeal.
The furniture was solid and severe—deep leather armchairs softened by age and countless occupants, their arms worn smooth, their backs permanently indented in the shape of lounging aristocracy. Rugs of muted burgundy and navy softened the echo of footsteps, though few men walked quickly here. A sense of unhurried permanence clung to every corner.
At one end of the room, beneath a high ceiling molded in pale ivory and trimmed with gold leaf, a group of older gentlemen gathered in silence around a circular table beneath the great hanging clock. Their heads bent solemnly over the day’s paper, or more likely, over the betting book— White’s famed ledger of wagers, containing everything from the outcomes of horse races to the likelihood of a politician’s disgrace. Some bets, so absurdly specific, had acquired a legend of their own. No gentleman ever spoke of them aloud, but their existence was common knowledge, whispered about in corners over cards and whiskey.
The clientele of White’s varied in detail, but not in kind. There were titled aristocrats and younger heirs, army men on leave and members of parliament in their frock coats, all of them bound together by birth, wealth, or affiliation with the old families of England. It was not merely a club but a citadel of the elite, a place where influence passed not through speeches but through glances, where alliances were formed in silence over a drink, and reputations unmade with a sigh and a shrug.
A pair of junior members—young, eager, perhaps a touch too well-groomed—conversed in low tones near the fire, clearly hoping to catch the eye of a peer of consequence. Nearby, a gray-haired Viscount leafed slowly throughThe Times, his monocle gleaming briefly in the firelight as he paused to grunt at some political nonsense or another. The conversation was sparse but civilized. Murmured comments about foreign affairs, trade, the state of the Navy, and the fortunes—or misfortunes—of mutual acquaintances.
Waitstaff in subdued livery moved like ghosts through the haze, their presence discreet, their service nearly invisible unless summoned. One gentleman lifted a single finger, and moments later, a crystal tumbler was refreshed, the amber liquid catching the light like bottled fire.
It was into this rarefied atmosphere that Arthur Beaumont stepped, his presence barely acknowledged save for a courteous incline of a head here and there from older members who remembered his father. He moved with practiced ease, a man neither posing nor posturing, but belonging—at least outwardly. The heaviness of the air—the mingled scents, the closeness of the fire, the subdued murmur of old voices—was familiar, almost comforting.
And yet, on this particular afternoon, the comfort did not reach him.
Arthur Beaumont, Viscount of Westbrook, sat deep in a high-backed leather armchair in one of the club’s quieter corners, swirling his tawny-brown brandy in a heavy crystal glass. Across from him, Sir James Fitzwilliam—friend, confidant, and occasional tormentor—regarded him over the rim of his own glass with an expression that was both wry and amused.
“Well?” James prompted after a pause; his tone mild. “You’ve been brooding into that drink for five solid minutes. Out with it, then. What has put such a thundercloud over your brow?”
Arthur gave a noncommittal grunt, tapping a finger along the glass’s rim.
“It was nothing,” he said, with the carefully measured boredom of a man who very much wished to believe his own words. “An overturned cart, some ill-balanced crates. Miss Darlington happened to be in the path of destruction. I was nearby. I reacted. I would have done the same for anyone.”
“Word on the grapevine suggests you made quite the rescue,” James’s eyebrows rose. “Heroically, one hears.”
Arthur shot him a look. “There was nothing heroic about it. It was purely instinct.”
James tilted his head, amusement dancing in his eyes. “Most instincts, I find, are telling.”
Arthur ignored the not-so-subtle barbed comments. He stared into his brandy, the comforting scent rising warm and sharp. The club around them hummed with familiar ritual—discussions of racing odds, political posturing, someone expounding on the state of affairs in Vienna—but he felt distantly removed from it all, his mind looping back against his will to a particular moment frozen in time.
The moment he caught her.
