Page 31 of Courting the Wrong Duke

“But compassion has a curious habit of becoming something rather more personal if one is not paying attention.”

Their eyes met.

“You believe that is what this is?”

“I believe you have thought about Lady Rosalind a great deal in the last twenty-four hours.”

William let out a quiet breath and looked back through the carriage window. Ladies in bright summer gowns crossed the street ahead of them while gentlemen escorted them toward the exhibition, utterly unaware that somewhere among them walked a family whose entire world had been overturned.

“She accused me of helping conceal her father's disappearance,” he said after a long moment. “I cannot seem to forget the look on her face when she said it.”

His mother's expression softened. “Because she wounded you?”

William considered the question. “No.” He shook his head. “Because she truly believed it.”

He remembered the anger in Rosalind's voice, but it was not the accusation itself that lingered. It was the hurt beneath it. The desperation of someone grasping at the nearest explanation because the alternative was too terrible to contemplate.

“She was frightened,” she said quietly.

“I know.”

“Yet you are still troubled.”

William frowned slightly.

That, perhaps, was the question he had been avoiding himself.

Rosalind's accusation should not have lingered as it had. She had spoken in grief and fear, grasping for someone to blame when the world had suddenly ceased to make sense. He understood that.

What unsettled him was not that she had accused him. It was that she had believed him capable of doing so.

Somewhere between childhood and now, he had become a gentleman she thought capable of turning his back on her family when they most needed kindness.

The thought sat uneasily with him.

He found himself wanting to prove her wrong. He simply could not understand why it mattered so much.

The carriage slowed as the exhibition had come into view.

The broad stone steps of the British Institution were already crowded by the time William's carriage arrived.

Ladies in silks and gentlemen in dark evening coats ascended beneath the great portico while servants hurried to collect cloaks and announce arrivals. Candlelight spilled through the tall windows overlooking Pall Mall, illuminating galleries that housed works borrowed from some of the finest private collections in Britain.

William stepped down first before offering his mother his hand.

“Try not to look quite so apprehensive,” his mother murmured as they mounted the steps. “People will assume I have been lecturing you.”

“You have.”

“I have barely begun.”

He smiled despite himself.

The entrance hall hummed with conversation as guests drifted between marble columns toward the exhibition galleries beyond. William recognized several paintings from Aldermere immediately.

Their late father had insisted that art was meant to be admired rather than hidden away in country houses, and each year a generous portion of the family's collection was lent to the Institution. Algernon had faithfully continued the tradition.

William had scarcely begun greeting familiar faces before Algernon approached, Augusta beside him.