She navigated the stairs and hallways of the hotel as quickly as the heavy satchel on her hip allowed, keen to avoid any unexpected encounters with her mother or Cecily, who had indeed set up home here for the summer.

Annabelle looked pleased to see her despite the spontaneous nature of the call. She ushered Lucie into the drawing room, and into the most comfortable armchair next to the fireplace, and fussed when she heard her stomach growl—would she be interested in some of the hotel kitchen food, chicken breast in lemon sauce with a side of roasted potatoes?

“A brandy sounds even more interesting,” Lucie said, uncertain whether the spirit would ease or compound her headache.

“I have sherry,” Annabelle offered. She started toward the elegantly curved liquor cabinet below an equally elegant landscape painting. She hummed softly while selecting a bottle and pouring a glass, looking serene in the muted light filtering through the rose-colored curtains. Lucie’s fingers absently drummed on the chair’s armrest while something inside her grated against the room’s rosy, tidy surfaces and plush upholsteries and the lingering fragrances of jasmine perfume and linen starch. Easy contentment floated up from every corner, underlined by the sedate ticks of the clock, and she vaguely felt like an intruder.

Annabelle handed her the sherry glass. “How was your day in London?”

Frustrating.

“It’s a flurry of activities,” she said instead. “There’s the refurbishment, and I have scheduled interviews for tomorrow. The production manager is on the brink of an apoplexy—we have well over a thousand preorders for new Ballentine books, and the reprints for the old ones.” She raised the glass to her nose and sniffed. “I think we shall have to purchase some printing capacity elsewhere, if we wish to deliver on time.”

Annabelle settled in the armchair opposite. “I would have thought that a high number of orders was a reason to rejoice?”

The sherry ran down her throat stinging and sweet. “It is.” It also gave Tristan more power. She had seen the figure columns today; depending on production costs, he was well on his way to making their enterprise substantial profits.

She lowered her lashes as another tide of pain hit the back of her eyes.

“Are you quite well?” she heard Annabelle say.

She nodded. “I am, however, worried that we won’t find another way to publish our report,” she said. “It would have been of great use to us to publish it before Montgomery puts the amendment before the House of Lords.”

“Indeed.”

“Currently, we are not only not finding a solution; I am preoccupied with an entirely new, unplanned undertaking that demands time and resources away from my actual work.”

They fell into a drowsy silence. The sherry was taking effect; Lucie’s core was warming, and her head spun in lazy circles, not unpleasantly. She studied Annabelle, looking cozy and benevolent in her armchair, and the grating sensation returned.

I’m jealous, she realized. I’m jealous of a dear friend.

She did not envy Annabelle her besotted duke, though she supposed it had its charms to be the wife of a man who was keen to lavish his enormous wealth and affection upon her.

No, she envied Annabelle her contentment and her grace and softness, wrapped around a core of steel, and that she was able to receive and bend a little if required, and thus she would not break even when a formidable force like Montgomery was bearing down on her. She was like a blade of grass, could be near flat one day, upright again the next.

She suspected it was quite the other way around with her—her exterior was steely, useful for plowing paths where there were none, but beneath the rigid shell, outside the facts and figures and goals to be achieved, matters were quite nebulous. Her emotions were rarely graceful, and they had been an unrefined riot ever since she had watched a naked Tristan take a candleholder in hand. Hard shell, malleable core. She was not a blade of grass. She was more in the way of an exoskeletal insect. An overwrought one, as of late.

She swallowed the remaining sherry in one gulp and put down the glass, feeling dizzy. “Annabelle. If I were to take a lover, what would be the consequences, do you think?”

Annabelle went very still.

She was shocked, Lucie supposed. And she would have never put this question to any other woman, but she suspected that Annabelle and Montgomery had not just left it at exchanging longing glances before deciding to jilt convention and get married. Surely, her friend could not be too shocked on the matter of taking lovers.

“Well,” Annabelle finally said. Her gaze was uncompromisingly direct. “I believe you know the effects an intimate association with a man can have on a woman better than most, given your occupation.”

Lucie inclined her head. “Possibly.”

“Your now asking me to lay it out for you leads me to believe you desire confirmation that it would be a poor decision,” Annabelle continued. “Which in turn leads me to believe you are already rather too fond for your own liking of making that poor decision.”

“I have always admired your deductive skills.”

Annabelle huffed. “I suppose,” she said, “I suppose it depends.” Her mouth curved into a hesitant smile. “Have you met a gentleman you like, then? Though I suppose if he were truly a gentleman, he would not just offer you a dalliance.”

“Goodness, no—I don’t like him much at all.”

Annabelle’s face fell. “Then I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

Neither do I.

There were Tristan’s sinful good looks and his reputation, of course, which could lead a woman to think it would be worth it despite his ungallant character. But it was more complicated than that. She might think about him precisely because he was a scoundrel. The thought of an intimate affair with an upright, mild-mannered gentleman bewildered her—as Annabelle said, such a man would offer marriage, which was not an option for her, and entanglement of any sort with such a man would be destined to end in disappointment. But a rakehell like Tristan? She would never owe him her courtesy. She would never have to struggle to maintain a sweet disposition or prove herself to be someone she was not around him—he’d care nothing for her manners anyway.

“It would still be risky,” she muttered.

“Indeed,” Annabelle said evenly.

“If anyone found out, my reputation would be ruined.” Plenty of married women and widows discreetly took lovers with little consequence, but never-married ones? She’d had a taste of how it would look like back in Claremont’s breakfast room: stares and turned backs, as though she were contagious. Her daily experience magnified tenfold. Except that the people who mattered to her would be compelled to ignore her, too—the women and activists she’d come to admire and rely on over their shared efforts.

“There’s certainly the danger of rumors and a soiled reputation,” Annabelle said. “But there’s always the risk of more severe consequences.”

“A child.”

Annabelle gave a small nod.

“There are ways of preventing that.” She was familiar with them all. She was also aware that none were guaranteed to work.

“And diseases, since we are already shockingly frank,” Annabelle said. “And then, of course, all the other ways in which a man like him can ruin a woman.”

Lucie froze. A man like him?

“Don’t worry,” Annabelle said pointedly. “I don’t know who he is. But if you contemplate a clandestine affair with a man you do not care about, I certainly know his sort. He must have captured your attention thanks to base attraction alone; he strikes you as an outstanding lover. He probably is, and Lucie, these men all have one thing in common: a mere affair with them hurts a woman’s soul.”

Lucie made a face. “But I told you I have no care for him.”

“Very well.” Annabelle leaned closer. “What I know is that a good lover can addle your brain. He can make you feel things you neither expected nor wish to feel. And what if the passion you share with him is second to none, and ruins you for all others?”

Lucie waved a dismissive hand. “But if one takes a lover, there’s hardly a point in selecting a mediocre one? I do, however, worry about jeopardizing my reputation—it would hand the opposition to our cause splendid ammunition.”

Annabelle’s features softened. “What about yourself?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. If you did wish for a happy-ever-after with a man, you could have it.”

She gave a little huff of surprise. “I confess I find a fairy-tale ending involving a man difficult to envision, given the circumstances.”

She used to think that she was lucky to have been born now, rather than a century or two ago. “Spirited” girls with ambitions could respectably get by as spinsters these days, or eventually settle down with staid old professors called Bhaer.

Annabelle sighed. “Well, whichever path you choose, doing something in your mind is different from doing it. Reality has unpredictable consequences. You could accidentally cross the Rubicon.”

* * *

The following morning, she took an early train to London in her powder blue dress, her hair locked into the most sensible bun she had managed, because that was precisely what was required of her now: being sensible. It hadn’t come naturally, lately.