The butler held the tall front door open and stared, mustache twitching. He couldn’t place her, rumpled and weary, half in shadow, and so Lavinia straightened her spine, stepped forward into the light, and announced herself.
“The Duchess of Cranbrook,” she declared, yanking off her gloves as she strode past him into the entrance hall.
She paused beneath the chandelier. It felt as though years had passed since she’d crossed the threshold of Harcott House, a white-knuckled bride with a frozen smile.
Belatedly, the butler reached for her gloves, head retracted on his wrinkled neck. Before she could ask for Mrs. Yardley, she heard a cry from above.
Her mother stood on the second-floor landing, her mouth a perfect O of astonishment. She was dressed for going out, in her gray silk with the panels of brocade. The heron plumes mounted thickly on her hat bobbed as she started forward. Lavinia came to meet her, and they hesitated, face-to-face, at the base of the marble stair. Lavinia closed her eyes as her mother’s familiar floral-amber perfume—Bouquet Suave—flooded her. She could be a child again, brought from the nursery to receive her mother’s kiss.
Then she found her mother’s gaze, the blue eyes a faded version of her own.
Those eyes were wide, not with shock, as Lavinia had supposed, but with horror.
“Your skin,” her mother breathed. “What have you done? What were you thinking, running off? You worried me to half to death.”
“You hide it beautifully.” Bitterness twisted Lavinia lips. Her mother looked sleek, well nourished, and well rested. She’d darkened her eyebrows, put in her pearl tassel earrings.
We’re together, that’s all that matters.
As the train had sped through the countryside, Lavinia had imagined her mother saying those words, folding her into her arms. She’d imagined touching her mother’s smooth hair, gone white with fear.
Thank God, you’re safe.
“Don’t let me keep you from your engagement.” She stood aside, feeling a small, mean thrill as her mother flinched.
“It’s a bit late for the theater,” she continued in the same harsh tone. “You’re going to a ball, then? How lovely that we could meet. Now your worry won’t prevent you from enjoying it.”
Her mother’s gaze slid to the butler. She’d always hated scenes. Had always tried to make Lavinia quieter, softer, paler, sweeter. Unlike Papa, she’d never doted on Lavinia when she stormed and wept. She would withdraw coldly.
Lavinia wanted to cry now, if only to punish her. To rage in front of this slow-blinking turtle of a butler.
But her mother spun on her heel.
“Irving, I don’t need the carriage after all,” she said, already sweeping down the hall. “The duchess and I will take refreshment in the yellow sitting room.”
In the yellow sitting room, Lavinia ignored the settees and walked to one of the three windows that looked out on the dark garden.
“You are fortunate your husband has kept this quiet.”
She didn’t turn at her mother’s voice, only narrowed her eyes, trying to distinguish the statues from the topiary, the covered pavilion from the colonnade.
“You are fortunate,” she replied. Cold air was leaking through the glass, and she suppressed a shiver. “Did Lady Chatwick invite you out this evening? Lady Sambourn? They didn’t want you anywhere near their parties when you were the wife of a criminal. But now that you are the mother of a duchess, the old friendships have rekindled. It warms the heart.”
“Lavinia.”
Lavinia heard the rustle of her mother’s skirts. Slowly, she turned from the window. Her mother had crossed the room.
“What in heaven’s name has come over you?” She stood beside a round table topped with a Sèvres vase, finger trailing up and down the gilt handle. Her frown etched her face with sharp lines, aging her.
Lavinia used to feel her spirits rise and fall with the curve of her mother’s lips. Her smiles were rewards, her frowns punishments. They allowed her to gauge her own successes and failures.
“Your marriage to the Duke of Cranbrook brought good fortune to each of us.” Her mother tilted her head and the heron feathers swayed. “It is the perfect match. Exactly the kind of match I always expected for you.”
“How can it be perfect?” Lavinia hugged herself, voice rising. “How can it be perfect if I loathe him?”
Her mother’s frown lines deepened. She assumed the pained, disappointed expression Lavinia had so often provoked in the past, whenever she behaved unreasonably.
She was being unreasonable. When circumstances demanded, daughters married for titles, for money, for social acceptance, for the honor of their families, for a host of reasons other than love, or happiness.
Her circumstances spoke for themselves. She and her mother needed a proper roof over their heads. They needed to be allowed back into Society, however false their friends. It was the air they breathed.
So what if she loathed Cranbrook?
Her mother must have seen her sudden turmoil. Her face smoothed.
“I do hold the duke responsible for traveling with you too soon,” she said, gentling her voice. “You needed more time to recover from your fever. You must have been delirious when you got off the train. That’s what happened, is it not? You wandered off, in delirium. You collapsed and some passerby bundled you away to a doctor.”
Despite the softness of her speech, her mother’s tension was palpable. Her fingers had closed around the handle.
She didn’t want to know how Lavinia had spent the week.
She wanted to know that Lavinia could recite the right story, a story that might convince Cranbrook that she hadn’t bolted, humiliated him on the eve of his honeymoon.
She would act as Lavinia’s accomplice, but only on behalf of the marriage.
Lavinia felt herself trembling. Her emotions were so many tight and tangled strings, and her mother had the knack for strumming them all at once. Guilt. Anger. Dread. Shame. Panic. They jangled together. She couldn’t divide one from the other.
Even if she succeeded in explaining away her disappearance, there was no explaining away the underlying reason for it.
“I didn’t have a fever,” she whispered. “After the wedding . . . it wasn’t . . .”
She hugged herself tighter so she wouldn’t shake apart.
“What are you talking about?” Her mother’s eyes went wide again. “I feared scarlet fever. You were red all over. You did seem better in the morning, but perhaps Dr. Barth was wrong. Perhaps it was scarlet fever, or something like. The strain of travel overcame you. You weren’t yourself. The duke will understand, if we present it in the—”
Lavinia interrupted. “I ate the strawberries. At the wedding breakfast. I ate as many as I could.”
She and her mother both startled as the Sèvres vase toppled. It rolled on the carpet, unbroken. Her mother’s hands flew up, pressed her mouth. Her face was as white as her gloves.
“Maman.” Lavinia stepped closer, stepped into the range of an embrace.
“They make you sick.” Her mother spoke wonderingly, lowering her arms. She didn’t reach out. She blinked at the vase. Blinked at Lavinia. Suddenly, she did look worried, cheeks hollowing as though she were gnawed from within.
Perhaps she was remembering that long-ago day, the fright of it, Lavinia struggling to breathe.
Will it leave pocks? That was what she’d asked the doctor in the hall outside the bedchamber.
Perhaps she understood, for the first time, the extent of Lavinia’s desperation.
“Why? Why would you do such a thing?” She backed up until she bumped a sofa and sat down hard. “Why would you hurt yourself?”
“I was already hurt.” Lavinia looked down at her. In the weeks leading up to the wedding, she’d been silent on the subject of hurt. Now she erupted.
“You hurt me,” she said. “Papa hurt me.”
“Hurt you? We gave you everything you ever wanted. Princesses have been raised with less.” Her mother’s voice throbbed. “And have been more grateful for it.”
“You gave me everything you wanted me to want.” Lavinia’s heart pounded harder. “It’s not the same thing.”
All those years, she’d tried to meet impossible conditions.
“Is my dress perfect?” whispered Lavinia. “Is my posture perfect? Is my skin perfect? Will I be loved if I get too plump or too thin or if my hair won’t hold a curl? I never had a chance to want anything besides meaningless perfection. Does it matter if your smile is pretty when you’re dying inside?”
She smiled at her mother as tears slipped down her cheeks. “Maybe I could have been someone completely different. Someone I would have liked more.”
“You do have a fever.” Her mother turned her face to the painted ceiling, inhaling deeply. Lavinia watched the feathers on her hat trace a broad curve.
“Herons are incredible,” she said softly. “Have you ever watched one fish? Or fly?”
Her mother didn’t answer.
Lavinia’s smile faded. “I feared my wedding night more than I feared sickness.”
At that, her mother breathed in through her nose. As her nostrils pinched, her gaze remained fixed on the ceiling. She looked acutely uncomfortable.
“Brides are always nervous,” she said. “It was my intention to tell you something of what to expect. But I didn’t find the opportunity.” Her head swung down and she sighed. “Really, Lavinia, is that what this is about?”
“No.” Lavinia felt herself flush. “Yes. I was nervous, but . . . because I knew what to expect.”
For a moment, her mother looked blankly. Then understanding sparked behind her eyes. She rose with a jerky motion.
“I thought of him as my husband.” Lavinia’s ears began to ring. Darkness streaked the edges of her vision. Her mother’s face was her focal point. Her mother’s white, frozen face.
“He was going to marry me. He promised he would marry me.”
“Who?” Her mother’s lips didn’t move.
Lavinia gulped the air. “George. I loved him. I would have—”
The force of the slap made her stagger. Pain spread down from her cheekbone, a stinging sensation riding upon a deep ache that made her want to sneeze.
“The Marquess of Stowe.” Her mother trembled. Her mouth made several ugly shapes.
“That family,” she gasped. “That cursed family. They left me nothing. Nothing untouched by their vileness.”
Lavinia stared, pressing her fingertips to her cheek. “Papa robbed them.”
“Because he was obsessed with that madwoman!” Her mother spat the words. “That slut. She started it all.”
Lavinia had never seen her mother’s face twist with such violence.
George’s mother, the Duchess of Weston, had been mad, famously so. George had refused to speak of her. Lavinia had sometimes wondered if she should have spoken, told him that she remembered his mother, remembered her standing in her glasshouse, picking fragrant, glowing fruit. Told him that, in her memory, his mother was beautiful and kind. Not mad. Magical.
Her papa had never spoken of her either.
“I was happy when she went to the asylum, when she died there.” Hectic spots of color mottled her mother’s face. “But it didn’t end. Twenty years on and she’s still blighting my life.”
Slowly, Lavinia bent to pick up the vase, the porcelain cool against her palms.
She’d wanted to tell her mother the truth.
She hadn’t thought what truths her mother might tell her in exchange.
Her papa . . . and the duchess. God above. A wave of horror crested inside her. Had Papa played a role in locking her away, as he had with Effie?
The close friendship between her family and George’s family—a friendship that had predated her birth and lasted until her father’s thefts came to light—it had been rotten from the beginning.
Her papa’s love had been rotten. Had always been rotten.
Or maybe it hadn’t been love at all.
She considered hurling the vase against the marble fireplace, then set it gently on the table.
Everything was different, but nothing was different.
How tired she felt.
She linked her hands at her waist. Managed to regard her mother calmly.
The older woman breathed strangely, as though sobbing without tears.
“I was happy, too, when you were engaged to Anthony.” She broke off to draw more air. Continued. “My daughter, the new Duchess of Weston, banishing the old to hell. But he proved to be entirely his mother’s spawn. And now I learn that you . . .” Her hands clenched into fists. “You played the whore to the other son.”
It hit harder than the slap. Lavinia’s mouth curved reflexively. Tears stung but didn’t fall.
“Well then.” She whispered through her ghastly smile. “We’ve both learned something.”
She owed them nothing. Her mother. Her father. Nothing.
At that moment, the door flew open.
The maid who entered with the tray kept her head down. A pretty girl with a light step. She deposited the tray and skipped back to the door, disappearing with a twitch of her hips.
Beth. No, Nan. That was her name. The chit she’d dressed down on the platform in Bodmin. Lavinia stared after her.
“Darling.”
She felt the air stir, and her mother was beside her.
“Forgive me.” She took Lavinia’s hands. “Darling, I . . .” She broke off with a soft cry, lifting Lavinia’s hands higher.
A pause during which they both examined her rough knuckles, the dirt beneath her fingernails. Lavinia broke her mother’s grip.
“Put these on.” Her mother spoke urgently, tugging off her gloves.
“Why?” Lavinia took the gloves, tossed them on a love seat. She saw Nan again in her mind’s eye. The girl should be in Cornwall, in Fowey. With Cranbrook.
Suddenly, Lavinia’s body turned to lead. She watched as her mother sat, poured out two cups of tea.
“Sit,” her mother urged. “Let’s talk more calmly.” She patted the cushion beside her.
“He’s here,” said Lavinia.
“Of course not.” Her mother tsked. She added sugar to one of the cups and held it out.
Lavinia noticed how she cut her eyes at the door. What a liar she was. Like her papa. Like everyone. Except perhaps Neal. But with Neal, she’d lied enough for the both of them.
She wouldn’t think of it.
“Sit,” her mother said again, too sweetly.
“Cranbrook is back.” Lavinia swallowed hard. “He’s in London.”
Her mother’s laughter struck a false note. “Oh. Well, yes, he’s in London.” She returned the cup to the tray. “But he’s not at home. He’s at his club.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I thought you knew. Isn’t that why you came? To reconcile?”
“I came to find you.” Lavinia looked at the door. At any moment, it might open, reveal her disgusting groom. “I believed him in Fowey.”
“He returned to London at once.” Her mother frowned. “To hire police detectives. He fears foul play. Kidnapping. It breaks my heart to see him. He is terribly concerned.”
Now it was Lavinia’s turn to laugh. “Poor man.”
“He’s not a man.” Her mother struck the table with her bare hand and the service rattled. “He is a duke. He is your husband.”
Lavinia looked at the pale, slender fingers, the gleam of the wedding ring, the soft glow of the polished nails.
“He won’t be,” she said, surprised by the strength of her relief.
“Darling.”
Lavinia met her mother’s eyes.
Darling.
Whore.
Neither word could reach her.
“It’s not too late,” her mother said, rising. “A man gauges his wife’s innocence by her demeanor. It is 1883, after all. Wedding nights are not biblical. If you seem chaste, docile, timid . . . he need never suspect.”
Lavinia realized she was shaking her head. “No.”
“Come now.” Her mother’s voice lowered, became a hiss. “The appearance of modesty is not beyond you. You learned the trappings at that French finishing school, did you not?”
Lavinia laughed again, the sound deranged to her own ears. “Someday I’ll tell you what I learned about modesty at Le Manoir.” She heaved a breath. “Divorcée has a nice ring in French. Divorcée.”
Her mother’s eyes were slits. “You have no grounds to sue for divorce.”
“He does, though.” Lavinia stepped around her mother, started for the door.
“He is friends with the lord chancellor. He has promised to appeal to him for your father’s release. If he divorces you, your father will rot in jail.” Her mother hurled the words at her back. “I’ll be turned out into the street. And you? What will you do?”
When she reached the door, Lavinia turned. A mistake.
Her mother’s face was livid. “Will you join the ranks of common prostitutes?” Her shoulders slumped but her eyes glittered. “The Marquess of Stowe preferred the company of prostitutes. Perhaps you should have done it sooner.”
“I should have done any number of things sooner.” Lavinia touched the door handle. “Goodbye, Mother,” she said, but her mother started forward, walking with her down the hall, whispering frantically.
The whisper slithered after her even as she outpaced her mother, fled the house, climbed into the waiting cab. It burrowed deep into her brain.
He might not divorce you, though. He might prefer to keep you. It’s within his right. And it will go worse for you than you can imagine.
Lavinia leaned back against the seat, breath shuddering.
She had always been very good at imagining. And she was getting better at imagining the worst.
Thick night pressed all around. Where could she go?
The glasshouse twinkled in her mind, the tiny suns glowing amid green boughs.
Finally, she gave the cabman an address.
She kept her eyes open as they rolled into the dark.
For the second time in one night, Lavinia found herself shoving her way into a ducal mansion. Thank God Anthony had sacked Collins. This new butler hadn’t the same iron in his soul. He suggested, mildly, that the Duke of Weston wasn’t to be disturbed, then surrendered the floor.
The third door she rapped on after mounting the stair swung open.
“Lucy, I’m—” Anthony began, and stopped short.
“Your Grace,” he finished, a smile lifting the corner of his mouth. He leaned one shoulder on the doorframe and folded his arms, muscles swelling the white cotton of his nightshirt. It was short as nightshirts went, ending above the knee.
He wore no trousers.
Another man would look silly, disadvantaged, surprised in his pajamas.
Anthony looked like Achilles.
She hated him and George, hated them for their beauty, their money, their power, the devasting impact they’d had on her life.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of a midnight call from the illustrious Duchess of Cranbrook?” Anthony’s drawling coldness was the opposite of Neal’s frank, rough warmth. How enticing she had once found such aristocratic airs. How hard to fathom now.
“Don’t call me that.” She glared. “I think I shall murder a duke before I’m done, and it might as well be you.”
“You’ve come to murder me?” Anthony sighed with mock resignation, as though people were often turning up at his house on such desperate missions.
Perhaps they were. Never so dissolute as George, Anthony possessed nonetheless his brother’s knack for making enemies.
“Be quick about it, then, or Lucy will beat you to it.” He looked down his nose at her. “We were having a bit of a row, and she’s run off for a kitchen knife.”
Lavinia blinked. He didn’t seem upset about the row. His wife, Lucy, was a prickly, outspoken East Ender, poor and not in the least pretty or obliging, an artist with an inveterate streak of bohemianism.
Now that she was Duchess of Weston, she probably quarreled with her soft-boiled eggs. Anthony probably enjoyed it.
“I’m surprised she doesn’t carry a knife,” muttered Lavinia. “I remember her lugging a bag that could have supplied sixteen junk shops. There must be artillery clattering around between the vials of acid.”
When first they’d met, Lucy had produced such a vial from her bag and deliberately stained Lavinia’s gown. She’d done it for Lavinia’s good, proving thereby that the green silk was dyed with arsenic. Still—a barbarous act of sartorial defacement.
Anthony laughed. He did enjoy his wife’s eccentricity. She’d never seen such a light in his eyes.
He stretched, threw an arm up on the doorframe, and regarded her with better humor. They used to joke together, the three of them, she, Effie, and Anthony.
“Lavinia,” he said, and it sounded so normal she almost sagged to the ground.
Duchess.
Darling.
Whore.
He hesitated. “I will not apologize for my actions as regards your father.”
“I didn’t expect you would.” She spoke with difficulty. “Revenge is sweet, as they say. It suits you.”
He’d shorn his hair since she’d seen him last. The severe style emphasized the boldness and harmony of his Grecian features. And his green eyes, touched with that dreamy light.
His smile had faded. “Marriage suits me.”
She snorted her incredulity, but it was so plainly true. Anthony had found happiness with his odd duck of a wife.
“As for revenge,” he added. “If I could have spared you and your mother, I would have.”
Despite herself, she didn’t doubt it. Anthony had always tried to treat her decently, even during their farcical engagement. She wanted to hate him but she couldn’t, not really.
God, though, she resented him. His good fortune.
He was waiting for some reply. She spread her hands wide. His prosecution of her father had completed her ruin. It didn’t matter that the damage was incidental to the main objective.
“What is that worth?” she asked.
“Nothing, I suppose.” He shrugged, expression hardening. “But, as you said, one duke is the same as another. I never thought you cared much for Cranbrook. Well played, Your Grace.” He flashed white teeth. “You always land on your feet.”
“My feet?” She laughed shrilly. “My feet are bleeding.”
Anthony straightened, seeming to take in her ravaged shoes and bedraggled dress for the first time.
“Aren’t they, though.” He said it slowly, letting his arms drop. A frown creased his brow. “Yes, in fact.” Her blisters had rubbed open. She shifted her weight miserably, panic lancing through her as she imagined walking back out into the night.
“Lavinia.” Anthony’s voice was soft. “Why are you really here?”
“Destiny.” She didn’t look at him, tried to sneer, but her chin puckered. “I read it in the stars as a girl that I’d end up in Weston Hall.”
“I don’t believe it.” Now his voice was flat. “I broke our engagement. But you won’t convince me I broke your heart.”
“Not you.” She drew a ragged breath. “Your brother.”
Perhaps Anthony, too, would call her a whore. She forced herself to meet his eyes. Their blaze almost frightened her.
“The stars were wrong,” she said. “Or maybe my reading was wrong. Maybe you’re meant to read the dark patches between the stars. The night before George died we met in the library at Lady Lytton’s ball.”
Anthony’s face had become a mask.
“I thought I might be with child,” she said, lifting her chin high, holding herself straight and tall against the shame of it. “He told me not to worry. We’d be married so soon the doctor himself wouldn’t look askance at the dates. The next day he stole that yacht and drowned.”
“Christ God.” Anthony swore. He hit the doorframe hard with his fist. If she wasn’t so light-headed, she would have jumped. She simply stared at him, motionless.
“The child?” he asked.
She shook her head, saw flashes at the corners of her vision. “A false alarm.”
Anthony’s look was dark, his beautiful mouth curving down sharply.
“Blind,” he murmured, pressing his knuckles into his brow. “Christ, I was blind.” She realized with a start that his disdain was for himself.
“What could you have seen?” She shrugged. “You were off rattling your saber.”
Anthony had spent years soldiering, a few of them in the East, far from the intrigues hatched in London’s ballrooms, the gnarled, clandestine goings-on that even the gossips nearest to hand inevitably got wrong.
“No one knew,” she added.
“Your husband?” Anthony was still frowning, searching her face.
A shudder went through her before she could steel herself. Anthony’s breath hissed.
She could see that he was already piecing the story together.
“Least of all him.” She lowered her voice, as though to speak of Cranbrook might be to summon him. “He knows nothing of me. He doesn’t even know where I am. I realized marriage doesn’t suit me halfway through the wedding breakfast.”
The muscles around Anthony’s eyes and nose had contracted.
“There was no . . .” She fisted her hands. “Consummation. I ran off. It turns out, I’m still running.” Her fingernails bit into the soft flesh of her palms. “Perhaps I can get an annulment.”
“Does he want to be quit of you?” Anthony’s tone was strained. “Badly enough that he would attest to his own permanent impotence?”
Lord, she was trembling. She could hear Cranbrook again, laughing away Lord Browning’s tonic.
No need.
The old goat prided himself on his virility.
“Because if not . . .” Anthony shook his head. “You’re the one in flagrant breach of your marriage contract. Your husband has his conjugal rights, and you have your conjugal duties. You can’t withdraw your consent on a whim. That’s how the court will see it.”
“Surely your lawyers are good for something besides jailing my father.” She summoned all her fear, all her dread, pushed with her eyes. “You will help me.”
Waiting for his response was agony.
“Help you?” He pulled back slightly. “Legally, it all depends on your husband. There’s nothing to be done.”
“Nonsense. There’s always something to be done,” someone said in a husky voice, not a little bit reproving.
Lucy. The Duchess of Weston.
She stalked around Lavinia and stood glaring at Anthony, hair a loose tangle, cat clutched to her breast.
“But you won’t figure it out tonight. Look at her. She’s practically extinguished. Another minute and she’ll topple over.” She turned her sharp eyes on Lavinia. Many women—most women; all women that Lavinia had ever known—would unleash hell’s furies if their husband’s former fiancée showed up to his bedchamber in the dead of night. This one had jumped to defend the interloper.
Maybe she remembered that, not long ago, she’d been the interloper herself.
Or maybe she plotted her attack.
Suspicion made Lavinia bristle. “I’m hardly extinguished.”
Lucy struggled as the cat turned a circle in her arms. “I’ve half a mind to extinguish this monster if he won’t behave himself.” She lifted him away but his claws caught in the embroidery on her silk wrapper. She sighed, working the claws free.
“What I meant to say is I’ve gone without food and rest myself. I can tell when someone’s hungry and tired. Ouch.” She gave a tug and bent her knees to let the cat leap the short distance to the floor. Straightening, she focused on Lavinia. “You need hot soup and a good night’s sleep.”
“Hmph.” Lavinia pursed her lips. Hot soup. To her mortification her stomach rumbled audibly. She clasped her hands at her waist and stood straighter. Lucy was watching her, watching her without pity or gratification. Simply waiting for Lavinia to agree with the obvious.
Lavinia exhaled. Why make things harder? If Lucy found it in herself to offer hospitality, then she would find it in herself to accept it.
“I could do with a little supper.” She nodded stiffly.
Accept it graciously.
“Thank you,” she added.
“Excellent.” Lucy smiled a wide, utterly disarming smile that made her almost pretty. “Hot soup. And hotter water. I’ll have a bath drawn. Anthony, tell Mrs. Perkins to prepare a room.”
“Also . . .” Lavinia hesitated. But she was beyond embarrassment. She plunged on. “The cabman is waiting in the courtyard. He has my trunk. It seems I lacked the money for the fare.”
Anthony was frowning. Lucy gave a short nod and settled her hands on her hips.
“You heard her,” she said, turning to Anthony. “Go pay the cabman. And have the soup sent up. And tea.”
Slowly, Anthony shook his head. Lavinia felt her heart plunge, but he wasn’t refusing his wife’s command. He was conceding, a bemused expression on his face.
“Unbelievable,” he murmured, a hint of a growl in his low voice. “You are unbelievable.” The glance he and Lucy exchanged made Lavinia drop her eyes.
The lump that rose in her throat was formed of equal parts relief and envy.
After a long moment, Anthony heaved a dramatic sign. “Let me put on my britches at least.”
“Why?” Lavinia pulled a face as she looked up. “Everyone in London has already gotten an eyeful.”
Lucy snorted. The year before, she had painted a nude portrait of Anthony that caused a stampede at the Royal Academy of Art’s summer exhibition. The public couldn’t get enough of it.
The cabman was likely to whip out his own print reproduction and ask for a signature.
Anthony opened his mouth, then closed it with a pop. He glanced between Lucy and Lavinia, then shrugged and strolled, bare-legged, for the stairs.
“He doesn’t need much encouragement,” Lucy murmured, looking after him, and it was Lavinia’s turn to snort.
Surely it was giddiness after a long, emotionally harrowing day that made her flood with warmth. Not fellow feeling. And yet . . . she and Lucy together in the hallway, shoulder to shoulder . . . it seemed something like camaraderie.
“He never did,” Lavinia agreed, and a wave of tiredness caught her around the knees so she thought she really might topple.
An hour later, when she climbed into the soft, wide bed, she meant to write in her notebook. Instead, her weighted limbs carried her down, down into sleep.
She dreamed she was at Weston Hall, but not now, decades ago. A warm summer day. Both of her parents sat in the garden, taking tea with the duke and duchess, and George was there too, lounging by the fountain, and Anthony and Effie chased each other through the hedges.
She was peering down at them all from a secret perch in the trees, giggling as the game began.
Where’s Lavinia? Have you seen her? All of them, up and roaming, calling out. Lavinia! My Vinnie! Lavinia!
She woke briefly when sun streamed through the gap in the curtains, but then, as no roosters crowed, she drifted off again and slept without dreams.