Chapter 21

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“ A shdown House!” Paulina looked up from cutting the loaf cheese for their nuncheon. “That big fancy house south the road from us?”

“Lord Craven is in residence for a while, on a respite from his duties to the King. He invited Leo and I to dine with him.” Lillian brushed dirt off the potsherd cradled in her work apron, trying to hide how nervous this invitation made her. At least she was working above ground again while Leo and Claudius delved the cave, clearing the rubble out of the second room, discussing what to do with the bones.

“That house was built by the first Earl Craven,” Reverend Woodfforde remarked. He sat on a blanket a short distance away, Hester seated beside him making a cat’s cradle with Temperance. A sunny day would have made for an ideal picnic, but, though cloudy, the day was warm and free of insects. A great tit called from a hazel some distance away, the sound rising and falling like a bubbling spring.

Faustina scampered over from the sarsen that sheltered the nest of eggs which the girls had been monitoring several times a day. “Bustard eggs still there,” she reported as she climbed onto the blanket, taking a biscuit from the plate. “Whose palace is Miss Lillian visiting?”

“One built for Elizabeth, the Queen of Bohemia,” the reverend said. “They called her the Winter Queen because she only reigned for a season. Craven loved her madly and built her a palace to match her beauty, but sadly, she died before she could ever take up residence.”

“The palace,” said Titus, darting in to nick a biscuit. “That’s as has the field with the sheep the magician Merlin turned into stones?” He grabbed a second biscuit and whisked back to his twin. The boys had conceded to help others tell them apart by their neck scarves; Titus wore a red cloth, and Tiberius blue. Lillian didn’t doubt they occasionally traded to mix everyone up, thrilled by their private joke.

“So they say.” Woodfforde smiled at Hester. “Should you like me to build you a palace, Hester?”

Hester looked up from her cat’s cradle, scanned the reverend’s face with a considering gaze, then went back to her weaving. “I like your cottage better,” she decided. “It’s large enough for me.”

“And you are welcome there whenever you wish. You shall be our own Hestia, goddess of the hearth.”

Lillian noted the affectionate, amused way the reverend’s gaze rested on her cousin. She told herself her guard was protectiveness, not jealousy. Woodfforde said that letting Hester go would tear the fabric of his and Temperance’s lives, but he had only known Hester a handful of weeks. How could such a speedy affection be true? Leo had been with Lillian weeks more, and he never spoke of how their parting might affect him.

Since the night of their dinner at Waringford Hall—the night she’d realized she loved him—she’d done her best to show him that, all else aside, she was a worthy match. It was as if her spirit wouldn’t accept what her mind told her, and she wanted him to see a way they could be together. They shared similar interests. They complemented the other’s strengths. They brought out each other’s best qualities and smoothed the other’s rough edges.

Yet the ground between them felt as fragile as one of these pots buried in the earth for a hundred years. It could crumble at a harsh word, a careless touch.

“I invited Craven to come here.” Leo folded himself to the ground beside Lillian, joining their conversation with ease.

A warm glow spread through the side of her body, as if she’d drawn close to a fire. Leo’s attention never failed to make her nerves hum melodies, like a music box.

Temperance, too, sat up straighter, flicked a lock of hair over her shoulder, fluttered a quick gaze Leo’s way. She wasn’t flirting so much as newly self-conscious. Leo Westrop entered a conversation, and a woman became more focused, more aware.

He'd been careful and courteous to Lillian in the fortnight since the family visit. Letters came from Sevenhampton, but Lillian didn’t see his replies. He treated her as if she were beaten gold, liable to dent or shatter at a forceful touch. His ardor hadn’t cooled, but he hadn’t spoken again of love. Or marriage.

But he’d been waiting for this: for Lord Craven’s approval to carry forward with his dig, to plan further work, a project lasting well into the next year. And he sought a sponsor to nominate him into the Society of Antiquaries. He might be waiting until he knew what his future might look like before he could speak to Lillian as if she were more to him than stolen pleasure, a clasp of passion. As if she might truly become a partner for his life, a companion for his future, no matter what his family or the world might think.

“Doesn’t William want to see the cave?” Lillian asked.

“He suggested we catch him up on our progress first. Perhaps your Wim Wim is hoping to impress you with his lavish house and fine table.”

“The lord fancies Miss Lillian?” Faustina peered into a basket beside her and pulled out a slender green stem with a spike of flowers, the petals shaped like butterfly wings. “This one.”

“Ooh, green-winged orchid. This specimen has white flowers—I’m accustomed to seeing purple. You must show me where you found it.” Lillian passed her potsherd to Augustus, who laid it on the cloth with the other fragments and fell to the task of attempting to piece the shards together. Faustina handed her the flower, and Lillian pulled her sketchbook out of the bag lying on the grass beside her.

“You shall have a second florilegium after this summer, Miss Gower,” Leo remarked. “I wonder how Mr. Karim is doing on your book?”

“He confirms that the plates turned out beautifully and are ready for me to color, and Aunt Giles writes to say that he is cluttering up her drawing room with his packages and pages. I am eager to begin.”

“But not eager to leave us, I hope,” Leo said.

She paused her crayon to risk a glance at him. Always that strange warmth at the sight of him, as if she were melted wax and his nearness made an impression on her, every time.

“Or at least not leaving until after her sketches for us are complete.” Claudius seated himself beside his wife and pulled back the shawl draped over the little bundle resting on the blanket beside her. His entire face softened at the sight of his young son, sleeping soundly, and his paternal pride sent a needle of sensation plunging into Lillian’s chest.

She hurt at the very thought of leaving. She had come here with Hester and within scant weeks this group had become her circle, the Caesars accepting her at once, the Woodffordes slowly endearing themselves. Hester had blossomed with more people to love her, and Lillian had, too.

For the first time in memory, she’d been among people who took her exactly as she was and didn’t dole out their affection or attention according to her usefulness to them. They allowed her to be entirely herself. And with that approval, she could be herself in greater measure, her mind expanding, her interests nourished. She laughed at least three times a day. She felt fulfilled, body and soul.

And she had done it all under the veil of a lie. These people, her new friends, this magical circle, all of it had come about because she was pretending she would marry Leo.

What if there were a way she could have him in truth?

Paulina tilted her head to the side. “Must Miss Lillian leave at all?”

“To the palace, you mean?” Hester looked around.

“I must return home sometime,” Lillian said. The pang lacing her middle wasn’t hunger at the sharp, rich smell of the cheese. Where was home now—Gower House, in London, with her uncle’s library and glasshouse and garden? Gileston, the drafty manor her Aunt Giles managed with the attention of a keen-eyed kite? The tidy cottage in St. Athan where she’d been raised, but which felt small to her now, so remote and confining?

She was of an age to have a proper home of her own. And she didn’t.

Home was how she felt with Leo. The sense of comfort and connection, like sliding on a house slipper that had taken on the exact conformation of her feet. That sense of unshakeable presence and belonging.

And she couldn’t have it. Not unless she knew he felt the same.

Her skin prickled. She laid aside her sketchbook, with the flower upon it, and rose. “Is someone approaching?”

“That will be Octavia with the cart and the rest of our nuncheon,” Paulina said. “And she should have a package for you, Miss Lillian.”

Octavia pulled the horse to a halt and broke into a smile as Lillian stepped forward to meet her. “I brought it, Miss Lillian.”

“What, to be opened upon the dust and dirt of the cave?” Lillian said lightly. “I can wait until we’re back at the manor.”

“But Miss Woodfforde will want to see it.” It was Temperance who’d gifted the gown to Lillian—not loaned this time, but gifted—and Lillian didn’t know how to begin to return her largesse. For one thing, she’d never owned anything so fine.

“I want to see it, too.” Faustina pressed forward, basket forgotten.

Temperance watched with her benign, beaming smile as Octavia opened the box and drew back the tissue paper, revealing the alterations she’d made. Ribbons of gold satin twined the sleeves and hemmed the edges of the netted cotton tunic that fell away in a small train from the taffeta round gown beneath, the dark yellow of juniper flowers. More ribbons decorated the simple bodice, cut into an alluring V above the high waist.

The shopping excursion to Wantage to secure the ribbon had been another revelation, the women all going together, Hester engaged by the sights and sounds of the market, clinging more to Temperance than to Lillian as they wandered the festive stalls and shops spilling forth their small treasures. It was the first time Lillian had enjoyed an unabashedly feminine pursuit, and the company made it so.

“Take care his lordship don’t steal her from you, Mr. Westrop,” Paulina said, inspecting Octavia’s stitchery and nodding her approval. “He’ll see what a prize she is.”

“I intend to do my best, Mrs. Caesar, though that gown, combined with Craven’s advantages, will make me exert myself to the utmost, I fear.”

If only it would, Lillian thought. She hadn’t chosen the gown to enchant Craven. Dinner at Waringford Hall had been a disaster, his family determined to show Leo every reason Lillian didn’t suit. But if he saw her in a new place, dining at a lord’s table, accepted in circles as high as his—perhaps everything could be different.

Perhaps. Lillian lifted her hand away from the gown, afraid she might crush the fabric. It was meant for a delicate woman, thin and lovely, graceful, well-born, accomplished. Someone worthy of being courted by a lord.

Not someone who would give her virtue away on a false promise, bartering her future for a handful of stars.

“If his lordship does spirit you off, Miss Gower, you’ll leave Hester with us, eh?” the reverend said with a wink at Hester.

It was too much, suddenly, the pretense, the uncertainty. Lillian’s insides twisted and her mouth tingled, as if she’d chewed on sneezeweed. She reminded herself that her role here as the excavation’s artist, as part of Leo’s crew, was as true as anything. The friendships she’d built were as true as her bond with Hester.

It was only everything else that was a lie.

“That is the hill where King Alfred assembled his troops before the Battle of Ashdown, where he fought back the Danes.” Leo pointed to the large rampart of banked earth in the distance as he turned down the lane leading to Ashdown House. “And these scattered stones, these are the sheep bespelled by Merlin, according to local legend. Some say Wayland made the sword Excalibur for King Arthur.”

Lillian’s nerves were strung as tight as the tangled cat’s cradle Hester had made, and she wondered if Leo’s chatter disguised nerves as well. So much was riding on how Craven received their find. He could be outraged that they had desecrated an ancient grave and demand they cease at once. He could order Leo to change his tactics, and as it was Craven’s land and monument, Leo would have to comply. He could decide to take a closer interest in the dig, and Leo would chafe at having to answer to another.

Or Craven could simply decide to bring in other workers who wouldn’t follow Leo’s careful methods, and who would take all the credit, in the end, for his discoveries.

She fingered the headdress of flowers that Faustina had woven for her, culled from the gardens clustered about the manor. Yellow hawkbit, corn marigold, and fleabane, with a few scarlet pimpernels added for color. She’d made herself as splendid as she could, wanting to fit the part of Leo Westrop’s intended, even if no one felt she deserved that role.

As if she could, somehow, manage the leap from being an antiquarian’s daughter to the wife of a marquess’s heir.

As if she could be Leo’s wife, in truth and surety. Not just a woman with whom he was temporarily amusing himself until the more pressing concerns of his work and his family called him away.

They drove the reverend’s chaise and horse, and once again, Hester had let herself be deposited at Watercress Cottage for the evening. Hester seemed to regard the reverend’s rented home as if it were already her own. Knowing how difficult Hester found it to adjust to new places, and how much familiarity meant to her, Lillian dreaded the hysterics bound to ensue when she took Hex away from Ashbury and her new friends.

“Just think if you could claim Wayland’s cave was Arthur’s tomb,” Lillian said. “That you have discovered the bones of Arthur, Guinevere, and Mordred.”

“And rival Glastonbury Abbey for that honor?” Leo replied. “Your Wim Wim might not appreciate the boost of traffic on his lands. Unless there were a way to make money from the visitors, more than the odd coin stuck into the stones as an offering to Wayland.”

“He is not my Wim Wim,” Lillian bristled. “Don’t be absurd.”

“I would imagine he’s in line for an elevation of title, given his service to the king. You could have a sure bet instead of my doubtful future as a marquess.”

So he had heard her vaunt to her mother weeks ago about putting a shackle on a marquess, and he returned it to her with a new layer of bitterness. Surely, by now, Leo must know her better than that. She turned her face toward the field dotted with stones, which truly looked as if they might have been grazing sheep, no discernible pattern to their distribution.

“You have not reconciled with your family, I take it?”

“If ever. You cannot have forgotten how rude they were to you.”

“To protect you from a match they find unworthy of you, as you well know.”

“That is the part I cannot forgive,” Leo said. “My family’s opinion of me is carved in stone, at this point. There is little I might do to redeem myself. But they did not even give you an opportunity to display all the reasons they might love you. They decided against you from the first.”

Lillian swallowed against the burning sensation that suddenly throttled her. He was speaking once again of love . “Save for Lady Melina,” she said. “I shall send her a copy of my florilegium, as promised, and we shall be great friends. She can teach me everything she knows about orchids.”

The burning sensation crept downward, snaking through her belly. She couldn’t contemplate the hole that would open in her life if she had to leave Leo. If there were any way to win his family’s approval of her, surely winning over Lord Craven would be one step.

She’d lose, too, the esteem of the friends she’d made in Ashbury if they parted. The Caesars would take Leo’s part, as his employees and friends. The Woodffordes would no doubt align themselves with the Westrops. And in London, why, she’d be cut by any number of acquaintances were she to jilt such a promising match as Leo Westrop. She would no longer be on the fringes of polite society; she’d be entirely cast out.

But if he wanted her to stay, what terms would he offer? What if their bond didn’t mean to him what it meant to her?

The burning squeezed her heart, as if she’d taken foxglove. What if he didn’t see the future for them that was beginning to take shape before her eyes?

Ashdown stood before them, a tall, narrow mansion in the Dutch fashion with its flanking lodges looming like a very elaborate gate. Behind it, the downs rose in gentle folds, here and there lined with trees, their rich green canopies catching the bronze light of the setting sun. Leo pulled the horse to a stop on the gravel drive.

He turned to her, his face with an expression she hadn’t seen. “Lillian. I want you to know?—”

The narrow front door opened and a tall man in a dark tailcoat and white breeches strode down the steps, the powerful lord at ease in his domain.

“Westrop!” he boomed. “Don’t dally out here with your lady. I want to hear what news you two bring me. Peaty says you’ve found bones.”

William, Baron Craven, had no lady for his table, but his mother had, as he put it, trotted up the road from Benham Park for a visit. “And my sister Maria would like to meet you as well, Miss Gower, but she didn’t want to leave the baby, Charles, who has developed a summer sniffle. Look her up when you’re in town next, and she’ll issue you vouchers to Almack’s, if you want them.”

As she followed him through the lovely, empty rooms of the house, marveling at the opulence, Lillian took a moment to understand: William’s sister Maria, now married to the Earl of Sefton, was one of the patronesses of Almack’s Assembly Rooms. Even Lillian knew the social cachet that a voucher at Almack’s granted one. The King’s court being considered too fusty, debutantes wanted to be seen at Almack’s to be launched into hopes of an advantageous match.

“Aunt Giles will be overcome at the very notion,” Lillian murmured, subdued by the haughty glowers from portraits lining the hallways.

William laughed. “The voucher is for you, my dear. Your aunt will be lucky to get a Stranger’s Ticket. She’s assumed quite a few airs over your putting the shackle on Westrop here. Behaves as if you lower yourself to marry into the family of a marquess. She told my sister Georgiana she would have thought you worthy of a royal duke, not an uninspired mister. You can imagine how well that went over, since my sister Elizabeth married an uninspiring mister and is happily raising a daughter with him in Kent.”

“I am glad to hear of Elizabeth’s happiness,” Lillian answered. “I enjoyed meeting your sisters that summer, though you never let Georgiana play with us, and Elizabeth never wanted to. What can my aunt be thinking about royal dukes? They are exclusively interested in wedding widows and keeping mistresses.”

William chuckled as they arrived at another tall, narrow door, which a butler opened to admit them into a formal drawing room. “You’ll get on famously with Mother. You never met her that summer. She was already running around Europe with Alexander.”

“Your brother?” Leo asked.

William raised an amused brow. “Her lover, whom she ran away with while my father was alive, and we were all quite young. Charles Alexander, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach. He’s not here—back at Benham, is he, madam?”

“Back in Hammersmith, fitting out Brandenburg House for my opera, The Princess of Georgia .”

A woman in a purple silk robe with long sleeves and elaborate trimmings sat on a damask sofa. She had a narrow nose, pinched lips, and bright, lively eyes that raked Lillian with an assessing gaze. Her hair was powder gray without, Lillian suspected, the use of powder, and the skin of her decolletage was smooth and lustrous with seeming youth. She looked formidable, and exactly the woman Lillian wanted to be at the same age.

“My Alexander has built a theatre for me attached to our house—can you imagine? He indulges me in every way.” She held out a slender hand to Leo. “I’ll answer to Lady Craven, but you may call me Margravine—everyone else does.” She gave an airy laugh. “Until Francis grants me the title of Princess, which he’s been hinting he might do.”

“Francis II, the Holy Roman Emperor?” Lillian asked, awed.

“The same. William, we ought to go in at once. My chef was in spasms already at the state of your kitchens, and he’ll fly into the boughs if we’re late and ruin his meal. I don’t know why you don’t keep a staff here and visit more often.”

“It’s rather small,” William said blandly. “A nice little hunting box, though not a great deal of hunting around here, I’ve found. Of course, it depends what you’re looking for.”

He winked as he took Lillian’s arm and they processed into the dining parlor behind her ladyship, who had possessed herself of Leo. Craven’s touch didn’t inspire the same thrum of pleasure and awareness that Leo’s did. Nor did his scent of citrus twine into her middle as did Leo’s, though they wore the same Eau de Cologne.

Lillian made a point not to gape at the grandness of the room as they seated themselves at a mahogany dining table shimmering with porcelain and crystal. Where the dining parlor at Waringford Hall had been blood-orange, the scene of carnage, Ashdown was cool and clear as ice, and the conversation was as sharp and scintillating as the dishes were impressive. She was really here, Lillian reminded herself; that great and mysterious designer of life had arranged for her to have exactly this, dinner in what amounted to a palace with a woman the equivalent of a princess, a lord who had the ear of the king, and the heir to a powerful peer who was himself making unparalleled historical discoveries.

This was her life now , that seductive voice whispered in her ear. She could have this.

Yet the small cap sleeves of her splendid gown chafed her shoulders as she lifted a bit of salmon to her mouth, reminding her she sat in a gifted gown and she lived on borrowed time, a vivid respite carved from the mundane demands of her life. She was engaged in an elaborate performance, as staged and mannered as one of her ladyship’s plays.

Lillian caught Leo’s look and he smiled at her, his eyes crinkling. He was nervous, too, and the shared gaze seemed a relief to him. Warmth rushed through her then, confirming what she had come to suspect. It was only Leo Westrop who could move her, warm her. It was Leo who had cast snares around her heart.

It was Leo she wanted to be bound to. And she had no idea what came next for them.

“I’m not the least bit qualified to make an assessment about what you’ve found,” William said sometime during the second course, after Leo gave a full accounting of the work at Wayland Smith’s Cave. “But I’ll recommend you to the Society of Antiquaries, if you haven’t a patron already. I imagine unearthing old bones will make quite a stir in some circles. Perhaps I’ll be able to raise the rents on the Chapel Manor if you make the area a famous site, like Stonehenge.”

Leo looked every inch like a man who had just been handed his dearest dream, and looked wary of accepting it, as he knew full well the gods could be capricious. “Than—thank you, sir. I would be most appreciative of your support.”

Craven nodded in Lillian’s direction. “You made a smart choice procuring a Gower to help you. Lillian will have had plenty of experience, being raised on digs and all.”

“That was purely coincidental,” Lillian said, taking a slice of breast of veal in ragout. The chef had turned out a wonderful meal, and since none of her companions were monitoring her portions as Aunt Giles tended to do, Lillian meant to enjoy it. “Leo proposed to me quite on the spot, and out of the blue, you might say.”

“A romantic story to tell others, but you can be honest with me.” Craven snorted. “I ran into your friend, Westrop—the Methodist minister’s grandson, Daniel Rowland. Been telling me about the Dilettanti, boasting of his collection.”

“I had heard one of the pursuits of the Dilettanti is collecting erotic literature,” Lady Craven remarked. “And art as well. I’m told they make a great show of viewing and comparing collections.”

Leo’s lips went tight. “That is a hobby for many, I understand. I myself have been led to collect different kinds of artifacts.”

“There’s no shame in a healthy interest in the erotic,” Lady Craven said. “And a lady can benefit from a man’s knowledge, if he applies it correctly.” She winked at Lillian, who promptly found that foxglove feeling returning.

“Mother, let us attempt to engage in our guests’ interests, and not our own.” Craven turned toward Lillian. “Certainly, Westrop’s been benefiting from your knowledge. Your sketches are superb—feel like I’m there. And Rowland’s right. It makes perfect sense Westrop would go after the daughter of antiquarians to help prop up his own reputation. A sensible match in all respects.” He winked at her, the gesture oddly echoing his mother.

“If only the other Westrops felt so,” Lillian said, but her response was perfunctory, her voice pushed across a great distance. Her mind was suddenly far away, back in the library of Westrop House and that very first meeting, when Leo Westrop, in the magnificent flesh, had been a spectacle she couldn’t tear her eyes from.

One of those Gowers?

She’d thought he enjoined her to wait for him in the reception rooms because he’d been enjoying their conversation as much as she had. Of course, he had asked questions later about her parents, but it had never occurred to her that his interest in her had been due to them . She’d simply, naively believed that, as he cast his desperate eye about the drawing room of Westrop House, looking for a way to evade his mother’s trap, his eye lit on Lillian as a likely deliverer because of their sudden if brief connection in the library.

When all along, he’d merely wanted access to her parents.

Not just her parents. To be fair, he’d also made use of Lillian’s skills. After she had all but thrown herself upon him, because she’d longed so desperately to spend more time together. Offering herself, wholly, like an orchid unfurling its petals, a tender young shoot turning eagerly toward the sun.

How convenient for him.

She tried to catch Leo’s gaze. It didn’t matter why he’d first singled her out, did it? Not if what he felt now was sincere. If their time together had blossomed into something true and lasting that could bear fruit year after year. Not simply a showy annual that bloomed for a short season and then faded away.

He didn’t seek her gaze in return, but looked at his dish and his slice of ox palate.

Suddenly Lillian hated nothing so much in all the world as she hated ox palate. She had the sudden nonsensical urge to shove her entire place setting to the floor.

But of course she didn’t. She ate her meal, though it all tasted of stewed greens, and not the tasty kind but the bitter, overcooked variety. After dessert was concluded, which tasted like wet parchment to her, Lillian allowed herself to be led to one of the formal parlors and regaled with Lady Craven’s with tales of the Continent, of life in Hammersmith now that she and her margrave had removed to England, of the musicians they had supported back in Ansbach and the reception of her various songs, pantomimes, and farces, though recently she had decided to enlarge her oeuvre and reach a different register with the opera of a troubled princess. Lillian smiled and nodded, nodded and smiled, and sipped her tea as if she were enjoying herself immensely and didn’t feel like a pot left too long in the kiln, scorched to brittleness, ready to shatter at a strong touch.

Lady Craven set down her china cup and regarded Lillian as if she were studying a painting by an unknown.

“He is besotted with you, of course.”

For one awful moment, blood draining from her fingers, Lillian thought she meant Craven. Her own cup rattled in its dish. “I—that is?—”

“Westrop.” Her ladyship tilted her head. “All the signs of it. He cannot look anywhere but at you. He seeks your approval of everything he says. He is entranced.”

Lillian carefully set down her dish on the table inlaid with a veined marble matching the fireplace. The gilt-edged mirror above the hearth reflected her own face back to her, pale and bewildered. She in her shades of yellow looked out of place in the room, toned in sea-foam blue and pale silver. She was a sturdy flower of the meadow popping up uninvited on a stately manicured lawn.

“Leo—Westrop and I are…we have not made firm plans about our future.”

“You are engaged to be married, are you not?”

Lillian couldn’t say what mad urge compelled her to confide in her ladyship. Perhaps she’d been addled of late by having female companionship, Paulina and Octavia and Temperance and Hex, when for too long she’d been without the ability to confide in or be guided by older women, save for the odd moments her mother spared her attention or her aunt set aside time to enumerate Lillian’s long list of faults that required correction.

“In truth our betrothal was unexpected. Generated to extricate Westrop from being compelled to marry another young lady he had no affection for. Our agreement, from the beginning, is that I will cry off when things have run their course.”

“But they haven’t yet,” Lady Craven said softly, her bright gaze roving every inch of Lillian’s face. “Things have charted a new path. For you.”

Lillian nodded. The tea burned on her tongue. “I cannot say if that is true for him also.”

Her ladyship reclaimed her teacup, fingers pinched around the delicate handle. She regarded the room as if it were unfamiliar to her, as if she’d had no part in its furbishing and no stake in its continued welfare.

“I saw my future plotted out for me when I married William’s father,” she said. “I was sixteen and threw passionate fits, which my parents of course ignored. I am an earl’s daughter, and he, though the son of a Shropshire vicar, was certain to inherit the title and estates from his uncle, which he did. I managed his homes and I gave him children, but there was no affection.”

Lillian concerned herself with her own beverage, now cooling. What could she say? It was not her place to console, and Lady Craven only described what was true of the majority of aristocratic marriages, alliances of bloodline made to consolidate wealth and position.

That was precisely why the other Westrops objected so passionately to Lillian’s attempting to enter their family. She had no lineage, no breeding, no fortune. She brought nothing to this alliance but a knowledge of various antiquarian practices and the features of assorted plants.

Her ladyship smiled, lost in a pleasant memory. “So I sought affection elsewhere. Many times. Do you know Charles Greville?”

Lillian blinked in surprise. “I have made his acquaintance. He invited me to view his gardens.”

A bark of laughter met this confession. “He’ll not have lost his eye for a shapely female, not at his age. He dropped me as soon as he laid eyes on that Emma Hart, or so she styled herself then—she’s Emma Hamilton now. But then I met Alexander.” Her eyes softened, her lips curving in a fond smile. “He built a villa on his property for me.”

Lillian waited, trying to parse out the lesson in the story, if there was one. That she might find another after Leo lost interest? That arranged aristocratic marriages were destined not to be happy?

“I found love,” her ladyship said simply. “I’d had many affairs, and he’d had many mistresses, but we found one another. And that has been worth everything. Worth him giving up his principality to move to England with me so I might see what has become of my children. Worth a snub from Marie Antoinette, though she paid the price for her arrogance, didn’t she. George won’t have me at court, not the rigid moralist he is, but we are happy. Free to live as we wish, Alexander with his horses, me with my plays. Did I tell you he built me a theatre at Brandenburg House?”

Lillian nodded. “A true sign of esteem.”

“So love redeems all.” Her ladyship dipped her chin decisively. “It seems excessively romantic to say it, but of all the things one might live for, love is the best among them.”

The wet paper of dessert had, Lillian found, formed a great clump in her throat. She couldn’t swallow around it.

She loved Leo Westrop. A love she would harbor always.

Surely, surely that was enough of a foundation upon which to build a life together.

Her ladyship glanced around again. “The men will have left the dining parlor by now—William doesn’t like to linger at table. He’ll have taken his port, and no doubt your young man, into the library. Go along and join them, dear, and I’ll be in presently. I’ve a need to visit the retiring room first.”

A footman stood outside the parlor, as if he waited on her ladyship, and this saved Lillian the trouble of asking the direction of the library. This room was done up in browns and golds, and Craven and Leo stood before the fireplace, another massive marble frontage, but instead of a mirror, which would have reflected her to them, this mantelpiece held a series of plaster busts, carved in Classical style.

Lillian’s heart lifted at the sight of Leo in his evening gear, his shoulders so broad beneath the wide lapels of his green velvet coat, his back firm and strong. How intimately she knew every muscle of that back, and of the buttocks tucked beneath the long tails of his coat, and the muscled thighs in his buff pantaloons. How generous, how careful he was with that strength when they lay in bed together, and how much she drew from the solid surety of his presence when they drove together, or worked side by side at the cave, or dined or—everything, really.

She loved him, and she couldn’t wait to tell him. He was the most rare, the most precious, the most beautiful thing that ever existed. She wanted the privilege of leaning on Leo Westrop, looking at Leo Westrop, holding Leo Westrop, every day and every night of the rest of her life.

The air seemed filled with colored light, like bubbles of soap floating in the air. With them came the words of the men’s conversation, as clear as cut glass.

“—but not marriage,” Craven said, lifting a brow.

Leo drank deeply from the glass he held, a glimmer of red and amber. “I’m afraid my family will have made that impossible.”

“Does she know?”

“She agreed to our arrangement from the beginning. And about its end.”

“But you don’t wish to end it.”

“I don’t.”

Lillian’s heart beat in her ears, so loudly she could barely hear. Foolish heart. She wanted very much to hear, to savor the words that came next. Leo loved her too. They had found it together, that fairy tale land of mutual adoration, that realm so unreachable for so many mortal lives. She almost giggled, buoyed by the airy delight rising inside her. That she, Lillian Gower, would have been blessed with this gift, this man?—

“Will she agree to being your mistress?”

Leo inspected his glass, swirling the liquid with a heavy wrist. “I hope so. I can’t offer anything else.”

Her heart pounded, deep and slow. Then slower still, as if it might stop altogether.

“What happens when you do wed? She’s a proud one, despite everything.”

Leo shrugged, one shoulder rising then falling like the executioner’s axe. “My mother’s backed me into a corner. I never intended to marry, not in my position. But what else can I do?”

Craven nodded, his mouth lifting on one side. “She’s a lush one, if that’s your taste. You’ve already got the slip on her shoulder. You’d be a fool to let her go now.”

Leo nodded, the side of his face tense. “Exactly.”

“Westrop.”

Lillian’s voice cracked out of her. She was breaking, just as she’d feared might happen back in the dining parlor, or the sitting room. His words were the tap at her crown that was taking the whole careful edifice apart, and if she had not gone to pieces at Waringford Hall under the combined assault of the Westrop family, she could not, would not crumble here. Not simply because Craven had made Leo define what he really wanted from her: a continued affair.

That wasn’t a bond of hearts and minds. That wasn’t a future. That wasn’t something she could take to bed at night and wake up beside in the morning.

“I am ready to go,” she said.

Leo’s head shot up, and the expression of horror on his face was almost comical, the exaggeration of a pantomime.

“Lil.” He visibly recoiled. She saw the leap of his mind, trying to calculate how long she’d been standing there. “We were just?—”

“I heard.” She kept her tone very tight. She kept her fingers curled tightly too. Kept everything in her close together, held hard, as if she were the anchor on a balloon full of hot air and would lose the whole thing if she didn’t keep a tight grip.

“I think it’s time to end this. Don’t you?”

“Of course. We should get back. There’s not as much light tonight, and the Caesars are waiting.”

He offered courtesies to Craven, the polite and customary noises about their gratitude for dinner and his continued patronage. Of course he must curry Craven’s favor. Lillian needed to be out of this room, out of this house, before she shattered, because the pieces would not fall into a quiet heap: they would explode like the eruption of Mount Vesuvius so long ago, burying everything around her in hot lava and burning ash.

A groom brought their carriage to the gravel drive, lamps lit against the falling night. The moon that had seemed so lovely and magical outside her window now was a cold will-o’-the-wisp, laughing at her. Had it only been last night she’d held Leo in her arms and gazed out the window at that moon, making a wish on its potent magic?

So much for wishes.

Leo tried to take her arm to help her into the carriage, and she pulled away. He could not touch her. She would not allow him to touch her ever again.

She wrapped her arms around herself as they set into motion, the chaise rolling up the road toward Ashbury. Toward her bed that was no longer her refuge. Toward the lie that had come apart. She pulled her shawl around her shoulders, but nothing could shield her from the cold slicing her apart on the inside.

She’d known, hadn’t she? She’d known all along. And yet, like a complete widgeon, she’d kept hoping for something different.

“This is what I’ve been waiting for, Lil,” Leo said, his voice a low murmur in the shadows of the night, only the lamp on the carriage and a hazy half moon their guide. “Craven promised to support me. I have a patron, and an in with the Society of Antiquaries. People will read my publications. They will support my work. I have a future now.”

“Then it is time to bring our agreement to an end,” she said.

“Lillian. What you heard?—”

“Doesn’t matter.” It did, it did, but she couldn’t bear to hear him say again that what she had imagined as a deep affection between them, the kind of connection that could weather years of trials and only grow stronger, fonder, had been nothing but pleasure of the body for him. He wanted her as a mistress, but not a companion for life. She grasped at the edges of her fleeing control and pulled them to her, hard, as if she could stop flower petals from scattering on the breeze.

“You’ve achieved what you wanted. I held up my end of the bargain.” More than her end. She’d given him everything. “I need to get back to London. My parents—my uncle—Hex.” She couldn’t seem to string words together. “My life is with them.”

“ Lillian ,” he said raggedly. “I need you?—”

“Faustina can keep records for you. I’ve taught her a few things. And Augustus can draw, come to that. You don’t need me, not anymore.” She drew a deep breath, hauling in air as if that could stop the cold, could tamp the gathering eruption. Hot or cold—what was she? She barely knew. Every sense was cauterized with agony.

She’d been wrong. So wrong.

“What do you need, Lillian?”

The question nearly severed her tight hold on everything, sent her sailing off into the dark. That he could ask that, think about what she needed, but not love her—that it was all passion and lust and convenience—and a chance to learn tricks of the trade from her parents, God help her?—

She needed for this, all of this, to have been real. To have meant something. Not a pleasant diversion during a summer dig, but real .

“My florilegium is waiting for me,” she said unsteadily. And her own life. Her empty, quiet life, which would be a vast cave of loneliness without him. She couldn’t think of it now. She’d begin shrieking and howling, like some mythical spirit, and she might never recover her wits.

“My parents will need my help. My uncle can use my assistance.” Aunt Giles wouldn’t welcome her return. She wouldn’t think of that, either. “And I think it is time I got Hex away from here.”

He nodded. “Very well. I can pause the operation for a week or two, or put Claudius in charge. I can bring you to London, set things in order, check on your florilegium?—”

“I do not think that is necessary, Westrop.”

Dear heaven, something in that tea had left her lips numb. She could barely move them. “We agreed from the beginning that this would end, didn’t we? And now it is time. Things have run their course.”

He turned to her, his face full of shadows, and she caught only the downward curve of his lip. “Have they?”

“We agreed I would be the one to jilt you. Because you couldn’t do it and be a gentleman .”

He hadn’t been a gentleman when he’d kissed her and stolen her sense away. He hadn’t been a gentleman all those nights in her bed when he’d introduced her to a pleasure that had seared her bones, a pleasure she would never forget, never be free of. Damn him.

“So, this is it. My jilting.”

She lifted her chin. Her mouth trembled. “I won’t be your mistress, Leo.” She would, in an instant, if she had only herself to think about. “My family might be lower than yours, but I won’t shame them. Their reputation matters.” Her reputation mattered. She wouldn’t be allowed into the Linnean Society if she were a known courtesan. “As for marriage…” Her heart clenched, stopping her air. “That was never a real possibility. We knew that from the beginning, too.”

His voice was as tight as hers, his face as solid and impassive as a sarsen stone in profile. “This is the end of it, then.”

“Yes,” she said, and managed to keep her voice from breaking as her heart fell into thick pieces, cleaved through. “I’m afraid it is.”