Them, rather.
He had positioned Miss Whitcombe near one of the taller palms flanking the terrace doors—far enough from the center of the room to suggest privacy, close enough to appear innocent.
At the same time, Lark caught sight of Lady Theodosia, drifting dangerously away from her mother, and hesitated.
“Go,” Beatrice murmured. “I’ll see to Miss Whitcombe.”
Lark searched her face only a moment before nodding and slipping back to her charge, while Beatrice backed into the wall and simply… watched.
Hatherleigh’s posture remained easy. His smile attentive. He listened with exaggerated care as Miss Whitcombe spoke, nodding as though each word were a revelation.
Then he glanced up.
For the briefest second, Beatrice thought his gaze met hers. A flicker… of annoyance?
But no—his attention drifted smoothly back to the girl, and he lifted two glasses from a passing tray.
Champagne.
Miss Whitcombe laughed—a little too loudly—as he placed it into her hand.
Beatrice fisted her hands at her side.
She could interrupt now. Invent a summons. Draw the girl away before Hatherleigh tested anything further.
Only… Miss Whitcombe appeared far too flattered by the attention. More than content. And the last thing Beatrice wished was to create was a scene.
So she continued to watch, and just as she expected, when supper was announced, Mr. Hatherleigh did not lead the younger woman into the dining room, but toward the nearest exit.
Miss Whitcombe hesitated in that uncertain way of girls not yet practiced in refusing gentlemen, and then she went with him.
Beatrice adjusted the fall of her skirts and took chase—slipping through the thinning crowd and out the terrace doors a breath behind them. And although her pulse remained steady, for half a second, Lark’s words from earlier almost made her hesitate. “What if he doesn’t withdraw?”
He will. Of course he will.
Beatrice followed more purposefully, and almost as though he followed a script, Hatherleigh led the girl into the gardens.
He moved with quiet efficiency, and whatever he had murmured to Miss Whitcombe was persuasive enough to hasten her steps as well.
Beatrice increased her own pace to match.
The lantern light thinned as they moved deeper into the gardens, and the music from the ballroom dulled to a distant pulse. A folly stood ahead, its stone columns half-swallowed by ivy.
Hatherleigh’s destination, of course.
Beneath the dome, there was only darkness. Shadows.
Beatrice watched as he guided the girl inside, pulling against a small amount of resistance now, Miss Whitcombe’s glove crinkling around his clawlike fingers.
“I—I’m not sure if I?—”
But Mr. Hatherleigh interrupted the breathless protest. “Oh, come now, surely you knew what you were doing.”
Beatrice slowed to catch her breath before stepping nearer, and then intentionally let the gravel shift beneath her slipper when she moved into the threshold of the folly.
Her eyes adjusted quickly to the low light.
To the left—a movement. The dark line of Hatherleigh’s coat.
