“He left her in my care,” Dominic said.
“He left you to assist. Lady Rosenhall is her chaperone.”
“He wrote to me.” He set two fingers on the arm of his chair. “Not Lady Rosenhall. Me. His best friend. He trusts me to look out for her.”
“And?”
“And I have been doing the opposite.” He looked at the note. “Chesham. Fenwick. Pemberton. Every man who approached her this season, I found a reason.”
“They all had their problems.”
“Some of them had their problems. The rest I disliked on no grounds I could defend.” He left that alone for a moment. Outside, a second cart went past, and the window glass shivered faintly. “I need to write back tonight.”
Miles studied him with the expression Dominic had once thought of as friendly and now found simply exhausting. “What will you say?”
“That the Season is progressing. That she is well and in good spirits.” He folded the note and put it in his inside pocket. “Harcroft is hosting this evening. I intend to attend and behave like a man with no stake in the matter. Hartwell has expressed interest—he’s solvent, she seemed to find him agreeable—I intend to leave them to it.”
Miles crossed one knee over the other. He did not say anything.
“What?” Dominic asked.
“Nothing at all,” Miles said pleasantly. “I admire a well-stated intention. I find them highly enjoyable just before they are abandoned.”
Dominic got to his feet. “It ends tonight.”
“Of course it does.”
“I mean it.”
“I know you mean it.” Miles set his glass down. He tilted his head slightly and looked at Dominic. “I have been trying to speak some sense into you. And failed. Either way, here it is: she’s more than your obligation towards Lucien. More than that. I can see it. I hope you will too. Before it’s too late.” He picked up his hat from the chair arm beside him. “Harcroft’s at nine. I’ll see you there.”
He went out.
Dominic stood in the empty room with Lucien’s note in his pocket and said nothing to no one, which was the honest position he was in.
The carriage set them down before Harcroft House at a quarter past eight, and the door opened into warmth and candlelight and the sound of an already-crowded room.
Annabelle was aware, from the moment she stepped through the entrance, of the way attention moved. She had learned to manage it this season: she looked interested rather than aware, which was useful and also mostly genuine, as she was generally always looking at something.
She was looking at the Flemish oil above the mantle and thinking it was either genuine or an excellent imitation, and she was not thinking about the man forty feet to her right.
She did not need to look at him to know he was there. She had known it when the doorman’s eyes moved over her shoulder.
“There,” Helena said at her left ear. “I told you about the gown.”
“You tell me about every gown.”
“Yes, and I am right.”
Lady Rosenhall arrived at Annabelle’s other elbow and said something about the flower arrangements, and Annabelle made an appropriate observation, and they went further into the room.
Her first two conversations of the evening were pleasant and unmemorable in equal measure. The third was Lord Hartwell.
She had received his card at two separate events without a conversation to go with it. He approached her at the refreshments table with a measured confidence she found more agreeable than aggressive, and introduced himself without flourish.
“I believe we were introduced briefly at the Davenport card party,” he said. “I had the better of that exchange, as you were occupied with someone far more interesting.”
She looked at him. “You are either honest or strategically self-deprecating.”
