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“Of course you are.” Westcott did not stir from the fire. He only lifted his cup an inch. “My regards to Wimpole Street.”

* * *

Lady Holt’s drawing-room had a good fire built up against the gray of the morning, and a pot of chocolate stood going cold upon the small table. Rosalind was at the window when he was shown in, and she did not move toward any task or occupation. She only turned, and her whole face warmed, and the warmth of it reached him across the room.

“Lord Dover,” said Lady Holt, without rising. “You are very prompt. I had a wager with myself that you would not last until noon, and I have lost it handsomely.”

“What had you wagered, Lady Holt?”

“A shilling, and my good opinion of my own judgment. The shilling I shall recover.” She bent to her work. “Go and stand at the window with her. The light is better there, and I shall be exactly as deaf as the occasion requires.”

He went and stood at the window with her. Outside, the snow lay along the area railings and the sills of the houses opposite, and a boy was sweeping a crossing down the street with a great deal of effort and very little result.

“You have heard from somebody this morning,” Rosalind said quietly. “I can see it in your face. Somebody has struck a line through you.”

“Lady Renton. I am no longer wanted at her Twelfth Night rout.”

“Oh, James.”

“I shall bear it. I never liked her wine.”

“You liked her consequence well enough, I am sure.”

“I liked being asked. There is a difference, though I have only this morning come to see it.” He glanced at her. “You are not to be sorry for me. It is a very small wound, and I mean to enjoy it.”

“Enjoy it!”

“I do not mind it half so much as I ought. That is the strange part. Half of those doors I never once liked going through.”

She laughed at that, though her eyes stayed grave, and she searched his face. “How bad is it, truly? Do not soften it. I shall know if you soften it, and I shall mind that more than the news.”

“Bad. Westcott brought me the size of it with my coffee.” He would not dress it up. Neither of them had any use for that. “It did not clear, Rosalind. The whisper is loose, and it is going to stay loose.”

“Lady Pelham?”

“Will not look round again. Not next week, and not next year. The doors she shuts stay shut, and she has shut a good many.”

Rosalind closed her eyes, only for a breath, and opened them again with her chin where it belonged.

“No,” she said. “I did not think it would clear. Augusta told me on Tuesday that it might not, and I have had several days to make my peace with her being right.”

“And have you made it?”

“I have been cut, James. It is true, and I shall not pretend it away.” Her voice trembled on the next words, though she did not look aside. “A door I valued is shut, and the woman who shut it was kind to me once. That is the part which will sting the longest.”

“I know it. I would take it from you if I could.”

“You cannot, and you are not to try.” She lifted her eyes to his. “I shall not sit waiting for the room to change its mind. It will not change it, and I have stopped asking it to.”

“I know you have. I watched you stop.” He was quiet a moment. “It is partly why I am here.”

“Then say the rest of it.”

“I have a place in Shropshire,” he said. “Wrenfield. It was my father’s before me, and his father’s before that.”

“You have never spoken of it. Not once, in a whole Season.”

“Because for ten years I have thought of it only as the place I go to be safe from rooms like the Stamfords’. A retreat.” He shook his head slowly. “I do not want it as a retreat any longer. I want it as a life.”