“It may be a while before I can return.” Conall took her hand. “So, before I go, thank you, Percy.”
She forced a smile, annoyed with herself for feeling so abruptly melancholy. “Thank you as well.” It was all so formal, polite. She hated it. “I will call off the engagement once you’ve gone, as agreed.”
“Will you, now?” She couldn’t read his tone or his eyes, it was a confusing mix of fondness and exasperation and something harder.
“Of course. I’m hardly suited to be a marchioness.”
“What rot.”
A knock sounded behind him and Basil bowed. “The constable has arrived, my lord.”
“Thank you, Basil.”
She searched his face, but the mask had already fallen, that charming gallant smile, the twinkle in his pale eyes blinding to anything else lurking beneath the surface. She wanted to memorize him nonetheless, the leanness of him, the strength, the quiet calm that he carried everywhere. She already missed him, and he was standing right in front of her.
He lifted her hand and kissed it, mouth grazing her knuckles softly. “Goodbye, Lady Persephone.”
Persephone tried torest but it was impossible. She kept bouncing from the feel of her ballgown as she raced across the fields, to the pistol against her neck, Conall’s blood smeared over the column. It helped to focus on little tasks: changing her dress, petting Chartreuse when her grandmother barrelled into Persephone’s bedroom to assure herself her granddaughter had suffered no serious ill effects. She prescribed cupcakes and canary wine and a handsome fiancé.
Her grandmother was more upset about the broken betrothal than she was about having dined with a traitor.
Meanwhile, the festival went on. Word got out that there had been some excitement and murmurs followed her wherever she went. She barely noticed now. It wasn’t important. Lady Culpepper found her in the village the next day and embraced her right there in the middle of the street. She didn’t speak but her eyes glittered, and she patted Persephone’s shoulder with such feeling that Persephone was nearly propelled into a display of Roman statuary. They rattled alarmingly but regained their balance. Persephone chose to see it as a sign. She too would regain her balance.
She saw to her duties, attended lectures and dinner parties with a smile but inside she longed for the solitude of her hermitage. For Conall. He hadn’t written to her, had only sent a brief word to the duke assuring everyone that the War Office had everything in hand. She missed him. It made her morose and then annoyed that she was morose. She was a woman grown. She had had no illusions. She had hoped that would protect her from heartache somewhat better.
Henry had not yet come out of hiding, or at least not into the public eye. The newspapers devoted pages and pages to his story. Etchings and cartoons were sold in London shops painting him as a war hero. On the third day, she couldn’t go three feet without someone stopping her to ask her about him. Tamsin was particularly put out about the whole thing and was spectacularly rude, even for a duke’s daughter.
And then, after an especially long day packed with lectures, Persephone begged off the formal dinner and borrowed a carriage. All she wanted was to go home, to eat Cook’s custard tarts, and not have to wear a practiced, borrowed smile. Not to be stared at with that knowing smug look that said they had all known the engagement couldn’t last. That Conall would see sense soon enough. That, of course, there had to be extraordinary circumstances. They’d all known it from the start.
The tension started to melt as soon they turned onto the familiar drive, with its oak trees and rose bushes. She had always found strength here. By the time the horses pulled to a stop and the coachman opened the carriage door, she already felt miles better. She was a founding member of the Cinderella Society, after all. They’d chased a traitor across a field and bound him with dress ribbons. They could do anything.
She alighted from the carriage as the last of the setting sun nestled behind the trees. Oil lamps cast a warm glow on the gardens. She was home.
So was Henry.
He stepped out of the shadows of the recessed doorway, grinning like a fool. She knew exactly what kind of foolish grin he wore because she wore it too. “Henry!”
The coachman scrambled back a step to avoid being run over by either of them. Henry caught her around the waist and swung her around like he had countless times when they were children. She laughed when her feet left the ground. He finally set her back down and they held each other up, still grinning. “I’ve missed you, Cleopatra,” he said, falling back on her old nickname.
She noticed the shadows under his eyes, the gauntness and hardness of his frame. He was still handsome, even with that new edge. He’d left a boy, barely a young man, and now returned a new version of himself. She wondered if he had trouble with certain sounds and memories the way Conall did. Now was not the time to ask. Now was a time to celebrate. “I wager Cook has some of those lemon biscuits you used to love so much.”
He ran a hand over his head, his dark hair cropped too short. “I could eat a crate of them.”
They went inside where Mrs. Bell greeted them with a shriek of welcome. She dabbed at her eyes. “Welcome home, my lord. We feared you were gone forever.”
“I didn’t,” Cook barked, having run up the stairs with a butcher knife to investigate the fuss. “No one could take down our lad, certainly not the French.”
“It was an Englishman who nearly did,” he said wryly. “The French only wondered what we were all doing in those muddy fields, same as we did.”
“Hmph. You need lemon biscuits.”
Persephone laughed. “That he does.”
They sat in the drawing room and drank tea and ate sweets until dinner was laid out for them. There was a new stillness to Henry, a wariness in his movements, the way he seemed to hear every sound, saw every shadow. “Have you seen your grandmother?”
“I have. You are suddenly her favorite person. All that terrible gossip about you couldn’t possibly be true.”
“But alas, it is.”