“He told you so.”
“He did not promise me otherwise. I agreed.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It is the same enough,” Christine said.
The admission loosened something in her chest that had been bound tight as a drum. Her voice went hoarse with relief and grief together.
“I told myself I did not care. That a pretense that fed the poor and quieted the village was better than a truth that starved us both. I let myself…” She stopped, because the next word was love, and she was not yet brave enough to say it in a public place behind a plate of beef and toasted bread.
“Let yourself be happy,” Blanche supplied gently, “half-happy.”
Christine pressed her lips together and nodded.
Blanche’s gaze went to the window, thoughtful. “Does he know? That you are…” she waggled her hand at the air, unable to name the shape. “Invested.”
“He knows enough to be kind and not enough to be cruel,” Christine said. “Which is a cruelty of its own.”
Blanche exhaled, long and low. “When this is done,” she said, “if he does not marry you, I shall write a play about him and have him booed at Drury Lane for a season.”
“You cannot put a duke on a stage,” Christine whispered, laughing in spite of the ache, “he would ruin the receipts by glaring.”
“Then I shall put a wolf on the stage,” Blanche said briskly, “and the world shall praise my zoological genius.”
No, I do not wish him to be humiliated, not even in a fantasy.
Christine wiped her eyes with the corner of her handkerchief and only then realized that the table on her left had gone quiet. A woman in lavender silk, the sort of shade that looked expensive, had turned her head to inspect the street. In the mirror behind the counter, the angle gave Christine a clean view of the profile she least wanted to see.
Lady Martha.
Lady Martha’s mouth wore its usual composure; only the minute tightening near the eye betrayed that she had heard. She did not look at Christine; she regarded the rain. But her companion, a thin-lipped aunt with a cap like a frilled pie, leaned in and said something that made Martha’s shoulders lift in delight.
Christine kept her hand steady on the cane. “Do not turn,” she whispered, “we shall finish the list and return to Duskwood at once.”
“The list is done,” Blanche said, “and we are leaving now because I refuse to give Lady Martha the luxury of watching you tremble.”
“I am not trembling,” Christine lied.
“Then we shall buy more,” Blanche said, rising, “and if Lady Martha stops us, I shall discover an urgent need to spill anchovy oil on her hem.”
They stood. Martha stood at the same moment, too smoothly to be accidental. She laid her glove on the edge of the table and turned at last with a smile that a man might mistake for pity.
“My dear Miss Davidson,” she said pleasantly, “do forgive me—Lady Christine, is it not? I never quite know what to call people who change so swiftly.”
Christine stepped forward.
“Lady Martha,” she said, “how unexpected. One usually hears you coming.”
“I see the walking stick has caught on.” Martha’s gaze dipped, then rose, alight with an interest she did not bother to feign away, “so useful, when one’s balance is uncertain.”
“Good morning,” she said. “If you will excuse us.”
“But of course,” Martha said, moving the smallest distance necessary to make room and the exact amount sufficient to make the passing awkward.
As Christine eased by, the stick clicked on the floor; the sound seemed to surprise Martha with joy.
“How brave you are,” she murmured, too low for the aunt and just loud enough for Christine, “how very brave.”
