“If you wish to travel, I will arrange everything. A route. Letters of introduction for every city you wish to visit. Nell can accompany you.” He met her eyes. “You will want for nothing.”
“Except a husband.”
The words cut deeper than she could have known. Hugo held his expression steadily.
“I will ensure everything is arranged properly.”
Lily stared at him. He watched her search his face for something, anything. She found nothing.
“Fine,” she said. The word carried the finality of a door closing. “I will leave within the fortnight.”
She turned and walked out. Her footsteps faded down the corridor, and Hugo sat at his desk and listened to the silence she left behind.
He picked up his pen. He stared at the letter he had been writing and could not remember a single word of it.
He set the pen down and pressed his forehead against his hands.
This was for the best. She would travel. She would see the ruins she had dreamed about and swim in foreign seas and fill her brilliant mind with the experiences that a stammering Duke in a cold London townhouse could never provide. She would be free, the way he had promised her she would be, and the ache in his chest would fade eventually, because everything faded eventually.
And if it did not, then he would learn to carry it the way he carried everything else.
Quietly.
Alone.
The days passed in silence.
Lily ate breakfast with Nell for company and spent her afternoons with her family. She visited Sophia three times that week. She sat on the floor with Oliver and Leo and held baby Jane and let the warmth of her sister’s household fill the spaces that her own had emptied.
“How is Hugo?” Lady Brimsey asked during a visit to Brimsey House, her teacup poised, her eyes bright.
“Busy.” Lily stirred her tea. “He has a great deal of correspondence.”
“He always has correspondence. When does he not have correspondence?”
“He is a Duke, Mama. Dukes are busy.”
Lady Brimsey exchanged a glance with Lord Brimsey, who raised his newspaper higher and pretended to read.
At Heatherwell House, Sophia was less easily deflected.
“You have visited three times this week,” Sophia said, pouring tea while Leo built a fortress of wooden blocks at their feet. “You never visit three times in one week unless something is wrong.”
“Nothing is wrong. I enjoy your company.”
“You enjoy my company in measured doses. Three visits in five days suggest either devotion or desperation, and you have never been the devoted type.”
“Sophia.”
“Lily.”
“Everything is fine,” Lily said.
Sophia let it go. For now.
Aunt Margaret’s approach was different. She did not ask. She appeared at the townhouse on Thursday afternoon with a trunk of travel guides and a bottle of Italian wine. She sat in Lily’s parlor and opened the wine without being invited to do so.
“I brought you the guides I used when I traveled through Provence in ’09.” Margaret poured two glasses. “The roads have improved since then, but the inns have not. Bring your own sheets.”
