Through the glass, he saw her.
She was sitting on a crate with a book on her knees, and she was laughing.
He had never heard her laugh. He could not hear it now, not through the glass and the distance, but he could see it, the way her shoulders shook and her head tipped back and her hand went up to her mouth. He could see the man across from her, too, tall, broad, in a gardener's coat, standing with his arms folded and an expression of such quiet warmth that the Earl felt it like a blow.
Lucian Hartley sat very still on his horse.
She laughs for him, he thought. She has been in my house for eighteen months and she has never once laughed for me.
It was a stupid thought. He knew it was a stupid thought even as he thought it. But there is a kind of pain that does not wait for reason, and he felt it go through him now, hot and sour, and settle behind his ribs like a swallowed stone.
He turned the grey horse and rode back to the stables without a sound.
Chapter Three: A Cousin's Concern
"Lucian! My dear fellow, you are home!"
Gerard Hartley came down the great staircase with both hands outstretched, and the Earl, who had changed his coat and washed the road from his face, allowed himself to be embraced.
Gerard was his father's brother's son, thirty-eight, pleasant, plump, and perpetually in debt. He had lived at Wyncombe Park on and off for ten years, in the east wing, ostensibly to help manage the estate's accounts. He had a smooth round face, a ready laugh, and a way of standing very close that Lucian had never quite liked and had never quite been able to object to.
"I had not expected you for another fortnight," Gerard said. "Nothing amiss, I hope?"
"Nothing at all. The business finished early."
"Capital, capital. Shall we take breakfast? I will have Finch lay a place in the morning room. Lady Cecilia has gone out, as she does, but I daresay she will be back before the eggs are cold."
Something in the way he said as she does made Lucian turn his head.
"As she does?"
"Oh," Gerard said, and his round face took on a look of mild, regretful innocence. "Forgive me. I assumed you knew. Her ladyship has been very much occupied of late. She takes the air in the grounds. The glasshouse, chiefly. She has taken an interest in botany."
"My mother was fond of botany."
"So she was, so she was. And I am sure it is the very same pursuit, entirely innocent. Only…" Gerard paused, and spread his hands. "Only one would not wish the servants to talk."