She Was Invited to Tea, Never Imagining It Was a Blind Date With the Duke—Until She Found Three Cups on the Table, His Mother Missing, and the Most Eligible Man in England Waiting for Her Alone

PART 3

Theodore stood in the entrance hall long after the carriage had gone from the drive.

He had held her cloak. That was the last thing he had done — taken it from the footman and held it while she put her arms into it, which was not a thing he ordinarily did, and which he had done without deciding to.

“Despite the deception,” he had said, “I enjoyed our conversation.”

“So did I.”

A small silence had followed. Not dangerous because either of them understood what it meant. Dangerous because neither did.

Then she had smiled and said good afternoon, and he had said good afternoon, and she had gone.

When he returned to the drawing room his mother was pouring herself fresh tea.

“No.”

Constance looked up. “I have said nothing.”

“You need not.”

“I merely invited a pleasant young woman to tea and then failed to attend.”

“You were detained in a garden during the rain.”

“Do not become tedious, Theodore.”

He stared at her. She took a sip.

“Well?”

“There is no well.”

“Did you like her?”

“I will not dignify this with an answer.”

“You stayed two hours.”

“I was being polite.”

“My dear boy, I raised you. I know precisely how long your politeness lasts.”

Theodore walked to the window. Behind him, Constance did not ask again.

She did not need to.

He had spent the three days following refusing to think about Evelyn Pembroke with such discipline that he thought about her repeatedly.

It was therefore a considerable relief — he told himself — to encounter her at Mrs. Harborough’s musical, which had not been arranged by his mother at all.

She was standing beside the piano speaking with an elderly gentleman, in pale green, her copper hair catching the candlelight. He saw her before she saw him, and that fact irritated him more than it should have.

She turned. Their eyes met across the room. She smiled.

He crossed to her.

“Miss Pembroke.”

“Your grace.” She glanced around the room theatrically. “Is my mother hiding somewhere?”

He laughed before he could stop it. “I checked behind the curtains.”

“Then we are safe.”

Twenty feet away, Lady Arabella Vain heard the sound.

She had known Theodore Langford for nearly four years. She knew his habits, his friends, his preferences, and — more to the point — she knew the expectations attached to his name. She had never, in four years, heard him laugh quite like that with an unmarried woman.

Over the following weeks they met at dinners, at assemblies, at a bookshop on the Strand where Evelyn found him holding a volume she had recommended during their first tea and pretending to consider the price.

“You bought it.”

“I considered stealing it. The bookseller seemed attentive.”

“You disliked the first chapter.”

“I did. And continued. You promised the second was better.”

“Was I right?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Why unfortunately?”

“I prefer being correct myself.”

He bought the book. Then, after a pause, he bought another — a slender volume of essays she had picked up twice and put back on the shelf, because the price was higher than she wished to pay.

Her expression changed. “I cannot accept this.”

“It is a book, Evelyn. Not an estate.”

They had not agreed that he might call her Evelyn. Both of them noticed. Neither corrected it.

“I can purchase my own books.”

“I know.”

“Then why?”

“Because you wanted it.”

“That is not a reason.”

“It seemed an excellent one when I bought it.”

She almost refused again. Then she saw that he genuinely did not understand why the gesture troubled her, and she took the book, and thanked him, and he smiled.

That evening she thought about the exchange for a long while. It had been a small thing. A kind thing. And it had shown her something. When Theodore Langford saw a want, his instinct was to answer it — quickly, generously, and without first asking whether the person wanted to be answered.

At the time, she set it down as a difference between them.

Later it would matter.

Their friendship established itself before either of them named it.

Theodore learned that Evelyn did not raise her voice when she was angry. She went quiet.

Evelyn learned that Theodore rubbed his thumb along the edge of his cuff when he was considering an answer he did not want to give.

He learned that she loved pears and could not abide violets. She learned that he hated being thanked at length for ordinary decency. He learned that she read the last page of a novel when she became anxious about its characters, and she denied this until the day he caught her at it.

“You have ruined the entire purpose of reading.”

“I have protected myself from unnecessary distress.”

“That is cowardice.”

“That is efficiency.”

He met her parents on a wet Tuesday, and was received by Jonathan Pembroke with impeccable courtesy for as long as Marianne was in the room.

The moment she left it, Jonathan said, “So you were the gentleman behind the curtain.”

Theodore stared at him. Then he laughed so loudly that Evelyn heard it from the corridor.