Arthur’s gaze snapped to him. “Fear?”
“Indeed. Of feeling something again. Of risking the sort of foolishness Sophia taught you to avoid.” He stared at his friend, attempting to invoke a response. When none came, he continued. “You know, you could do a lot worse that Miss Abigail Darlington, old man, despite whatever gossip the ton purports to be true.”
Arthur said nothing. He was still considering James’s insinuation that this had to do with his fear.
The truth of it hung in the air like pipe smoke—lingering, acrid, inescapable.
James sighed and stood, setting his glass on the side table. “I only ever press you because I know there is more to you than this… shield of protection. And if there is a woman who might actually slip past your guard, I suspect Miss Darlington may be the one to do it.”
Arthur lifted his eyes slowly, expression cool. “You presume a great deal, James.”
James smiled, not unkindly. “Perhaps. But I’ve spent enough years listening to you wax cynical about society’s follies to recognize when your indifference is being tested. You’ve danced and spoken with a great many women, and yet it was only with her that you forgot to pretend you were bored.”
Arthur looked away, his gaze turning once more toward the flickering hearth.
“I merely suggest,” James went on, rising and adjusting the line of his coat with a practiced hand, “that if you continue to hide behind your disdain for emotional entanglements, you might one day look up and find yourself alone. And if that is your wish, I shall never mention it again. But I think it is not.”
He paused then, waiting. When no reply came, James reached for his gloves and hat resting atop the adjacent table.
“I’ll leave you to your solitude, then,” he said quietly. “But I will say this, Arthur: if you are not careful, someone else may have the wisdom to see her worth before you do. And that, I fear, would be the true tragedy.”
He inclined his head with the polite formality of a man departing a drawing room rather than a club chamber, his tone gently measured. “Good night, old friend.”
Arthur gave a slight nod in return. “Good night, James.”
James lingered only a second more. He offered a final, knowing glance before he turned and walked toward the oak double doors that led back into the hum of the main chamber, his footsteps muffled by the thick weave of the rug beneath their feet.
Arthur sat in silence.
He remained seated long after James had gone, watching the brandy in his glass catch and bend the firelight. How long he stayed there, he did not know, but he remained motionless. The room was quiet now, save for the soft crackle from the hearth and the faint murmur of voices in the adjacent room, dulled by distance and velvet curtains.
His expression was still, composed, unreadable—but the slight tapping of his fingers against the crystal betrayed a nervous energy.
He didn’t like to be challenged. And James, infuriatingly, had a way of doing it with surgical precision. Arthur hadn’t come to White’s to reflect on women or scandal. He’d come to forget the incident—Abigail’s voice, her weight in his arms, the feel of her breath catching just beneath his collarbone.
To forget the feel of Abigail’s breath against his throat as he lifted her from the cold stone street.
To forget the weight of her, so real and fragile in his arms.
To forget the look in her eyes—stunned, wounded, betrayed.
And yet…
Memory had its own cruel rhythms. It circled back, again and again, until it carved something permanent in the mind. James’s words, though irritatingly insightful, had merely reopened a door Arthur had been attempting, with increasing futility, to keep shut.
He did not want to be vulnerable again. He had no desire to return to that old wound. And yet, here he was—haunted by the sound of a single gasp, the whisper of silk, the sudden shattering of the world he’d thought so neatly arranged.
With a soft exhale, he set his empty glass down on the walnut table beside him and rose, smoothing a hand down his lapel. The fire hissed behind him. Somewhere in the club’s depths, a man laughed too loudly. Arthur crossed the room and exited into the soft, encroaching dusk of St. James’s.
The London streets were beginning to glow with lamplight, their golden halos blurring in the cool spring air. Carriages rattled past. A newspaper boy called out headlines near the corner. The city was winding down, not into silence, but into the deep, comforting murmur of evening.
Arthur turned up his collar and began the walk back to his townhouse.
He needed the air. Needed the movement. Anything to shake loose the persistent image of her face—Miss Abigail Darlington—tilted up toward him in the pale light of Covent Garden. There had been something unguarded in her gaze. Vulnerability, yes. But strength, too. And honesty. No artifice.
And that, perhaps, was what unsettled him most.
So many of the ladies he encountered wore expressions like carefully selected accessories—smiles practiced, laughter rehearsed, glances weighted for effect. But Abigail had not performed. She had simply existed in that moment—startled, disoriented, and entirely real.
