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brocade.’
    ‘Very good, Your Grace.’
    He forced himself to be still, to let Grey take his coat off, instead of the mad frenzy his body wanted. The man was too close, the coat was too close, and he forced himself to be still.
    ‘My little dumpling,’ he murmured, when Lydia appeared in the doorway. ‘You light up the night.’
    ‘I hear dreadful rumours, darling,’ she said, draping her shawl over a chair. ‘You and I are no longer lovers. I do so hate it when the gossips know these things before I do.’
    He walked over to where she stood, lifted her fingers and kissed them. He had given her this poise that did not bend. He let her hand fall and traced his fingers lightly up her arm, his head on an angle, watching her. There was a kind of oblivion for them in each other’s arms. Even now he felt the pull of it. He could press her to him until they dissolved into each other and disappeared. Cold, distant, made in his own image – perhaps Lydia was the one person who knew him as he was. Something deep in his stomach responded, sick and unexpected like the last muscular movement of a fish corpse.
    He let her go and sat back in his chair.
    ‘Are you really leaving me, then?’ she asked, and he found the poise he had taught her was imperfect, after all. When he said nothing she walked over to the window. She moved a porcelain dish to the corner of the windowsill then back again, and took her time turning to him. He wondered what other emotion her smile was concealing.
    ‘What will you do?’
    ‘I had considered travelling abroad for a while,’ he said. He couldn’t stay in London, he was beginning to see that. London was killing him. ‘Give your husband time to calm down before we meet again in public.’
    ‘Oh no, we can’t have you causing riots on the continent with that face.’
    She said it casually, but Darlington quelled a sudden tenderness. He wished he loved her. He would take her away to the continent with him and spoil her until the Princess of Wales looked like a pauper in comparison. He wished he could touch her face, so that she could let her guard down for just a moment before taking it up again.
    He knew if he touched her face she would not let her guard down. There was nothing in the world he could say to her, because he was not the one man she wanted. He wasn’t that man to anyone.
    ‘You are quite the most beautiful woman I know,’ he said. ‘But we have come as far as we can together, darling.’
    ‘You will make my sister very happy,’ she said.
    Her sister.
    Inexplicably, the mere mention of her sister was a shock in his flesh.
    ‘You amaze me,’ he said. ‘Do you intend to give me to her?’
    Lydia did the very last thing he would have expected of her. She gave a loud, involuntary snort of laughter, and her face lit for a moment with unabashed amusement. It transformed her in ways he couldn’t even begin to parse, and he thought, There. That woman would be worth facing a whole brace of angry Scottish earls . She quickly regained control, though a blush bloomed around her neck. Nothing like her cool poise, that blotchy red. Darlington wondered whether her husband knew these small, intimate inconsistencies of his wife.
    ‘Forgive me,’ she said, and her careful lips broke into another smile. ‘That was the furthest thing from my mind. I meant only that my sister’s longing for our separation matches yours. Your leaving me will make her happy.’
    ‘Does she disapprove of me?’ He knew her disapproval, felt it still. What an ugly thing truth was.
    Light had begun to draw fine lines around the sitting room’s curtains. Another night ended. And yet one part of the night had not fallen away, would not fall away: Miss Sutherland, looking at him and seeing him clearly.
    Something sharp and alien made itself some space in his chest.
    ‘I believe my sister hasn’t thought of you at all,’ Lydia said, ‘except that she does not want you to break up my marriage. She holds it