The morning air was cool and sharp as Ines, with the help of a footman, stepped up into the Clifford family’s heavy traveling carriage. The shadows inside were deep, and for a moment, she thought she was alone.
Then he moved.
Carcel was already inside, slumped in the far corner, a dark, brooding, and profoundly rumpled shape. He was staring out the window, his jaw tight, his entire posture one of rigid, weary misery. He looked as if he had not slept. He looked, Ines thought with a small, secret, vicious thrill, exactly as he had at breakfast: haunted.
The carriage door slammed shut, leaving them in the dim, upholstered silence.
Outside, she could hear the muffled, cheerful sounds of Rowan and Weston bidding each other a loud, friendly, and very long farewell.
She sat opposite him, arranging her deep green traveling skirts. The space between them felt tiny. It was not a carriage; it was a cage. The air was thick with the memory of what had happened, with the scent of his soap, with the unspoken, undeniable fact of yesterday afternoon.
He had to speak first. She knew he would. The guilt was rolling off him in waves.
He finally turned his head. His eyes exhausted, met hers.
"How are you feeling?" he asked. His voice was a low, rough rasp, the sound of a man who had spent the night with a bottle of whiskey and his own, personal demons.
She could have sworn, beneath the exhaustion, she heard a note of real, genuine worry.
"I’m better," she replied, her own voice cool, clear, and infuriatingly steady.
He looked at her. At her face. At her neatly pinned hair. At the calm, composed, healthy woman sitting before him. There was no trace of the pale, fragile, collapsing girl from yesterday. There was no trace of the wild, whimpering, shattered creature from the library.
This... this was somehow worse.
He had to end this. He had to stop this madness before it destroyed all three of them. He had almost killed her. The doctor had said it. Emotional stress. And he, Carcel, was the source of it.
He leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees, his gaze dropping to the floor. "Ines," he began, his voice low and strained. "About... about what happened. About the ’lessons.’ About... everything. We must... Let’s end..."
"We are meeting today, right?"
Her voice cut through his words like a bright, cold, silver knife.
His head snapped up. He stared at her, his mind, which was already a fog of whiskey and guilt, coming to a complete, screeching halt.
"What?" he choked out.
"Our lesson," she said, as if she were discussing the weather. She was calm. She was bright. She was serious. "We are meeting today, right? Same time. Same place."
He just stared at him, his mouth literally open. He was, for the first time in his adult life, completely and utterly speechless.
She... she fainted. She collapsed. Because of me. Because I rejected her. And she is... she is... asking for the next lesson?
"You haven’t finished teaching me," she continued, a small, logical, reasonable frown appearing between her brows. It was the look of a student whose tutor had failed to complete the syllabus. "I know there’s more to it. I... I have been thinking. And I know there is more to learn."
She crossed her arms over her chest, a new, shockingly confident gesture. She looked out the window, as if she were suddenly bored with his confusion.
"Besides," she said, her voice cool, "I still have a lot of questions you haven’t answered."
He finally found his voice. It was a strangled, disbelieving sound. "Questions? Ines... you fainted. The doctor... your heart. What we did... what I did... it was reckless. It was... it was a mistake."
She finally turned her gaze back to him. Her eyes were not the dreamy, dazed orbs of the night before. They were sharp. Clear. And, to his absolute terror, they were amused.
"It was not a mistake, Carcel. It was research," she corrected him, as if he were a slow-witted child. "And my heart is fine. The doctor said so. It was ’emotional stress,’ not like I’m dying. It’s not the first time I’m having an emotional stress. Rowan gives me emotional stress when he’s pressuring me into marriage or when Aunt Eleonora keeps forcing me to be the best, well behaved lady in all of London."
She was, he realized, dismissing the entire, life-altering event as a minor side-effect.
"But..." he tried, his mind scrambling. He needed her to see. "Ines, I am... I am Rowan’s friend. I am... I am not..."
"Just see me as a friend," she interrupted, her voice suddenly soft, persuasive. "Not as Rowan’s sister. You are helping a friend who is... stuck."
This was his chance. He had to say no. He had to be the adult. He had to be the honorable one.
"I can’t," he said, his voice a low groan. He was being honest. "I can’t be... ’just a friend.’ Not after... Ines, I shouldn’t touch a friend in that manner. If we... we shouldn’t..."
She was, he realized, a danger he had no defense against.
Her expression changed. The soft, persuasive look was gone. She was... frustrated. He was, it seemed, being a very poor, very cowardly teacher.
"Carcel!"
She said his name. She did not whisper it. She did not sigh it. She said it, a sharp, loud, impatient sound that cracked through the carriage like a whip.
Carcel flinched. He physically recoiled, as if she had slapped him.
Outside, the sound of Rowan’s cheerful baritone, which had been rattling on to Weston, stopped. Mid-sentence.
The carriage door, which was still open, felt like a gaping, accusing eye. Rowan’s head turned, his gaze narrowing on the dark interior of the coach. "Ines? Is everything alright in there?"
Ines’s transformation was immediate. It was breathtaking.
The frustrated, demanding woman vanished. She leaned forward, her face appearing in the bright, morning light of the doorway. She was a vision of innocence, her eyes wide, her lips curved in a brilliant, beautiful, and utterly false smile.
"Perfectly, Rowan!" she called, her voice a trill of pure, girlish sweetness. "Just wondering if you are quite finished with your goodbyes! I am suddenly very eager to get home!"