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It was a pity she hadn’t heard; no doubt she would have enjoyed the tale immensely.

“Is there to be no archery, then?” Lord Lindsey asked mildly. His expression was strangely thoughtful.

“Archery is dull, Edward. Try
napping”
Aunt Hester declared. She closed her eyes and proceeded to try it herself.

Constance recovered rapidly, as usual. “Since I am the only one to release an arrow, I think I shall declare myself the winner of the tournament,” she announced. “Unless someone else would like to fire an arrow?”

Resounding silence. Hump horror apparently had overcome them all. Gideon was fairly certain an objection would have shocked Constance to her bones anyway.

“Good,” Constance continued. “Now,
whom
shall I choose to accompany me on my stroll? Perhaps… perhaps I shall have all of you guess the number I am thinking, and the winner shall accompany me. Yes? Well… I am thinking of a number between one and ten.”

“Five!” shouted one of her handmaidens eagerly, clearly oblivious to Constance’s intent.

“Oh, I’m so sorry…” Constance feigned disappointment. “Care to try… Malcolm?” She turned to Jarvis.

“Three?” Jarvis hazarded.

“Oh, I’m afraid not,” she sympathized. “Gideon?” Her gray eyes pinned him.

His heartbeat began to accelerate oddly. Because Gideon knew it wouldn’t matter what he said: he’d been chosen. He was perversely tempted to shout “six and three quarters!”

“One,” he said, instead.

“Gideon! How lovely! You are absolutely correct. It shall be you, then.” Constance turned to Lily. “Miss Masters, I’m so sorry you did not get an opportunity to… choose.”

“Oh, please do not trouble yourself over it, Lady Clary. It was so very interesting watching you…
choose
.” Her tone was venom-laced honey.

Constance opened her mouth for a moment as if to reply, but then closed it again—tightly—and turned away. “Gideon?”

Gideon found he couldn’t look at Lily as he walked away at Constance’s triumphant side, his own heart thumping in anticipation of what was to come. He rehearsed the words in his head:
Constance, will you do me the honor of
…

“See? This is precisely what I mean, Gideon. These unruly American trees.” Constance gestured to a big oak, clustered with a number of other old spreading oaks. “Trees should be planted in lines, don’t you think? Neatly? To emphasize the borders of a property.”

Trees should be planted in
lines‘
! Gideon had never heard anything so ridiculous in his life. “I rather think they’re fine just the way they are, Constance,” he told her mildly.

He turned back and noticed Lily speaking to Kilmartin alone, somewhat apart from the group; Laurie’s head was down, his posture one of intent listening.

“Gideon?”

He was still looking toward Kilmartin and Lily. They seemed to be having rather a
long
conversation. Gideon began to feel absurdly jealous. Where was Lady Anne Clapham? Ah, he saw her now: she was being a good girl; she had engaged the baron in some sort of discussion, as Aunt Hester had her head thrown back, napping.

“Gideon?” Constance repeated.

“Yes, Constance?”

“Don’t you think it’s time we announced our engagement?”

It took a moment for Gideon to absorb what Constance had said. And then her words detonated, one by one, in his mind.

Gideon’s head swiveled toward her so quickly he nearly dislocated his neck. “It’s time we announced our
engagement
?”

“Oh, good. I’m
so
glad you agree.” Her smile was a brilliant thing; she was as pleased as if she had just watched her arrow cleanly pierce the red heart of a target.

He stared at her, momentarily dumbstruck. Imagine: Constance, with a little of her characteristic maneuvering, had done the work for him. He knew a moment of breathless admiration for the
strategy
of it all.

“And as we are engaged, Gideon, you may kiss me now.”

Gideon started at that, and stared at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. Constance’s pale brows curved as neatly as commas over her handsome gray eyes; her lips, a perfectly matched set that fit neatly one atop the other, were handsome, too. It was a face a portrait painter would love for its purity of line, a face that would look right at home in his uncle’s sculpture garden.

Perhaps this was why he felt that kissing her made about as much sense to him as kissing a statue.

She was going to be his wife. It was everything he’d always desired. Of
course
he wanted to kiss her.

Should he touch her? Put his arms around her? With Lily, he was guided by impulse; his hands knew precisely what they wanted to touch and when. But no such instinct emerged to guide him at the moment. He turned toward Kilmartin and Lily swiftly, to see whether either of them was watching. They were still absorbed in their conversation.

He turned back to Constance.

She was waiting expectantly. And if he left her waiting any longer, the moment would become irretrievable.

His hands discreetly at his sides, Gideon slowly moved his face down toward her. Her pores, the fine hairs in her nose, a hint of down on her upper lip came into view… these features would become as familiar to him as his own as the years went by. His
wife
. She would be his
wife
.

He applied enough pressure to ensure the contact could be considered a kiss and then straightened, and Constance looked briskly satisfied, as though she had accomplished something important, like ordering a new pelisse.

“Well,
fiancé”
she said brightly. “I shall begin planning our wedding immediately! Papa will be so pleased. It will be the largest event London has ever seen—short of a coronation.”

“But shouldn’t I speak to your father about this first? Ask his permission?” Gideon wondered why he was looking for reasons to delay his engagement.

“Oh, I suppose you may do it as a formality, if you wish. But Papa has already told me he wouldn’t mind a bit if you were to offer for me. He
is
fond of you.”

“So you’ve said,” Gideon said weakly.

“And I imagine me position in the Treasury is as good as yours now.”

“I count myself a fortunate man, Constance.” His head was spinning oddly.

“Shell we tell the others?” She looped her arm through his possessively. He heard the unspoken words:
particularly Miss Masters
.

“Perhaps not quite yet. Let’s allow it to be a secret between the two of us for now.” He smiled at her, with some difficulty. He really wanted to be alone with his thoughts at the moment, and that seemed all wrong. He’d just become
engaged
, for God’s sake. He should very much want to be alone with Constance.

Having a secret from all the others, thankfully, seemed to appeal to Constance. “All right,” she agreed.

“Perhaps, then, we shouldn’t walk arm in arm just yet.”

Constance withdrew her arm from his with apparent reluctance. Side by side they walked back to the others, and Constance talked and talked about the wedding she’d planned. Gideon suspected she’d had the details arranged in her mind for years, and had only needed to decide which man to insert into the picture next to her. And as Constance talked, Gideon waited for his sense of triumph to emerge.

Perhaps it would when this numb surprise was through with him.

As Constance and Gideon approached the group, everybody looked up to greet them. And at last, Lily looked at him, too, and now Gideon knew why she would not meet his eyes earlier.

Because everything was in her eyes: pain and pride and sheer joy in the fact that he simply…
was
. Herself laid bare. He knew it was foolish to stare, but he couldn’t seem to free his eyes from hers. Nor did he want to.

A well-bred young man does not marry his mistress.

The urge to bolt was suddenly overwhelming. He wanted time and space to think.

Too late, he noticed Constance watching him. And watching Lily.

And wearing an odd, tiny smile.

“Everybody, we have the most wonderful news,” she sang out. “Gideon and I are engaged.”

Gideon’s vision blurred.

“He’s
marrying
the big blonde girl?” Aunt Hester sounded positively astounded.

“It appears so,” Lord Lindsey soothed. “And she’s lovely and tall, yes.”

Gideon looked at Constance, stunned. She was smiling at him triumphantly and a trifle indulgently, as if she had just done something for his own good.

Perhaps she had.

They came at him: Kilmartin, the handmaidens, his uncle, even Aunt Hester. With patting hands and cheerful voices, saying the rote things one says when a suitable engagement is announced. But he only heard one of the voices. The low velvet one. He heard it like a voice in his own head.

“Congratulations, Gideon.” And he could have sworn she meant it.

It was decided—by Constance, of course—that a celebratory luncheon was in order. The crowd was moved indoors, the cook was alerted to the need to add a few festive elements to their midday repast—perhaps some special cakes or sauces—and the ladies went upstairs to change their clothing. Again.

Lily was grateful for her ironclad pride. Because she would never,
never
allow Lady Constance Clary to see that she viewed the news of her engagement to Gideon Cole as anything other than delightful. And as a matter of supreme indifference to her.

Ah
, she thought bitterly,
I am learning so much about love
. Specifically, she had just learned it was entirely possible to love a complete idiot. For only a complete idiot would consign himself to a lifetime with Lady Constance Clary, regardless of her money and beauty and position and—

Lily stopped her thoughts. Enumerating Constance’s assets was not a soothing pastime.

Jarvis had transferred his attentions wholeheartedly to Lily. She was tempted to swat his solicitous face away like a fly.

She was feeling a good deal of contempt for men as a species at the moment.

With the exception, perhaps, of Lord Kilmartin. For the second time in her life, she had asked for something—for coach fare and enough for ship’s passage to
anywhere
, if he could spare it—and wonder of wonders, Kilmartin had given it to her, with no questions, just kindness, his face sad but eloquent with understanding. And she’d asked him because she’d watched Gideon and Constance stroll away together and she’d known… she’d known.

I’m not
running
away
, she told herself.
I’m
leaving.
There’s a difference
.

Kilmartin had agreed to make the arrangements for her; he’d promptly sent word to the nearest coaching inn through a servant. Three hours from now, a coach would roll up behind the main house and a footman would carry a packed trunk down through the kitchen as a favor to Kilmartin. The girls would then board the coach and be whisked away.

All that was left was for Lily to plead a headache and return to her room to pack for herself and Alice.

She itched to move now, before all her feelings caught up to her in earnest. But she decided to linger and make pleasantries, if it killed her. For if she disappeared immediately, it would please Constance to no end. And if Constance were any more puffed and pleased with herself, Lily thought, she would explode and splatter the fine furniture in Aster Park’s drawing room.

Besides, there was something Lily needed to know before she left.

“Lady Clary.” She could hear the sweet, convincing concern in her own voice; she was glad. “Did you ever find your necklace?”

Constance turned her gray eyes toward Lily. Glittering things, cold as diamonds. “Oh, yes, Miss Masters. Thank you for asking. In an
um
, if you can imagine. It must have slipped from
me
into
it
.” She gave a tinkly little laugh. The handmaidens giggled, too.

Lily could feel Gideon’s eyes upon her; she couldn’t look at him. She could pretend very well that she was unaffected by his engagement, but it was too much to ask of her to look into his eyes and pretend.

A benign somnolence had descended upon the party after the luncheon, brought on by the abundance of sauces, no doubt. Lily pleaded a headache and disappeared upstairs; everyone else had gathered in the parlor to play cards, or read, as the sun lowered in the sky. His favorite time of day.
It gilds everything,
Lily had said.
Everything is allowed to be beautiful then.

Suddenly, Gideon’s cravat felt too tight. Or perhaps it was just that his trousers were chafing him. No… that wasn’t the problem, precisely, either. But he
did
feel as though he were suffocating. The cards were boring him, the conversation was boring him.

A stroll outside, maybe? With Constance?

No… somehow that didn’t sound like a good idea, either.

I’m engaged to be married
. Shouldn’t he be rejoicing? Shouldn’t he be savoring the moment, Constance’s every word, storing the images for review on some night twenty years hence, when he and Constance were old and gray? After all, he now stood at the very pinnacle of his Master Plan.

Love will come
, he told himself. As it had come for Uncle Edward. Shared joys and sorrows…

Meanwhile, he would share every moment possible with Lily. And there should be many of them, since his business was in London, and he’d decided he would find lodgings for her there. Would Lily take him in her arms tonight if he came to her? Perhaps he could ease her wounded feelings with kisses, soothe her aching head with a stroking hand, talk to her of where she might like to live in London, as his mistress. Plan the time they would spend together after he was wed to Constance. Laugh with her, talk of poetry… kiss her soft mouth… touch his tongue to her little, uptilted breasts…

Was it wrong to be growing hard over thoughts of his mistress while his fiancée sat across from him, pretending to be interested in the book she was reading but really wondering who might be watching and admiring her?