“She had no business saying anything like that to you.” His words sounded quiet in his own ears. But that could have been because there was suddenly a strange, high-pitched whining sound in them.
She made an irritated, dismissive sound.
“So you and Lady Pilcher were lovers.” Her voice was so flat. “Or are lovers.”
Needles driven beneath his nails. Manacles clamped to his ankles. A catharine wheel, splitting his bones apart. A rainfall of boiling oil. He could think of a dozen things he’d prefer experiencing than this conversation.
He was flailing in the dark in a windstorm. Furious and ungrounded accusations from jealous mistresses he could field. He’d never had a conversation quite like this.
So he’d never learned any strategies with which to maneuver it. That left him feeling naked and alone with the truth so that was what he gave her.
“Yes, we were for a time,” he said. “Five years ago. Briefly.”
She turned to him. He withstood her thoughtful, searching gaze. But the light had gone out of it. He could not feel it, and it terrified him.
“Well. You were certainly correct about the crocodiles,” she said dryly. Remotely.
“Do you love her?”
“That never had anything to do with the nature of our relationship.”
“Of course not,” she said sardonically. Almost gently. “Silly me.”
“Lady Pilcher,” he began carefully, his voice scraped raw, “made an ambitious marriage that seems tremendously successful on the surface but was unhappy from the first. Which is a shame, but a common enough story. She and her husband essentially live separate lives. She is a lonely person. Tonight I suppose she saw you looking... radiant...” The word was soft. He couldn’t help it. “Your future hopeful... and probably sought to retrieve a little of her power by diminishing yours. And I’m sorrier than I can adequately say if she used my name to hurt you, or to make you feel foolish.”
And it was also troubling. He’d kept his distance from Keating in public since that waltz. But crocodiles knew how to lie in wait.
“I suppose I really am a success if the barbs have progressed beyond my sleeves.”
He said nothing because it was regrettably true. True and perhaps inevitable.
He felt, for a moment, that he might actually be sinking into a hole in the ground.
She said, “Does that mean the whole of the ton knows about you and—”
“No. Because it’s not a thing anyone is actually proud of, myself included. Lady Pilcher is usually much more discreet. Her husband doesn’t mind what he doesn’t hear about. He has his own affairs.”
“I suppose it’s what men do,” she said dully.
“No. Not all men,” he said at once. His voice was somewhat frayed. “Please do not think that of all men.”
“So only men like you?”
Whatever that meant. She was trying to goad him. It was working. He could feel a furious defensivenesswarring with guilt, neither of which he was obliged to feel. And yet. “When confronted with a need, with the desire, and the opportunity, some will. It’s not uncommon in the ton. Among men or women.”
“I expect it’s the very height of worldliness,” she said ironically. “Quite the done thing. Unlike sleeves with mancherons.”
He didn’t reply.
She cleared her throat. “So was I an ‘opportunity’?”
It was an attempt at insouciance, but the question was shot all through with pain. She sounded as if she genuinely wanted to know.
He knew this was the question tormenting her. This was at the core of why she was out here in the dark alone.
It made him want to cut his own throat out of self-loathing.
“No.” His voice was hoarse.