And for a moment, Thomasina’s heart swelled for him. Was that how his mother behaved with him too? She rarely saw them interact, after all. It seemed he was utterly alone in the world.

She was about to go upstairs, to seek out Juliana for a discussion on the subject, when she heard Jasper’s voice in the foyer. She moved toward it, toward him, and stopped at the edge of the circular entryway to the home.

“Reynolds will take care of those arrangements,” he was saying to Willard as he pulled his gloves over his hands. “I assume we will be back by supper tomorrow. I will try to send word if that changes.”

“Back?” Thomasina said, stepping forward.

Willard and Jasper exchanged a brief look, and then the butler inclined his head. “I will do as you say, my lord. Safe travels.”

He exited the foyer and Jasper took a long step toward her, his dark eyes as blank as his mother’s had been a few moments ago. She shrank from that similarity, the ability to feel nothing that she certainly didn’t share. Sometimes it seemed she felt everything.

“Eavesdropping?” he asked, though there was no coldness to his tone.

She shook her head. “No, my lord. I was passing by and overheard you speaking. It is not the same thing.”

“No,” he agreed. “I suppose not.”

“You are leaving?” she asked.

His gaze darted from hers, and her stomach immediately clenched at the break of their connection. “I am,” he said. “Business has called me away, but only to a town not too far from here. We will arrive very late tonight. My business is to be conducted there tomorrow morning and then we will return, assuming my meeting doesn’t require me to stay another day.”

She stared at him as he recited these facts swiftly and with no particular inflection.

“What kind of business takes you away just five days before your wedding? And if you are delayed, what will happen then? Unless this is your way to repay me for my part in Anne’s escape, by running away from me?”

His lips parted and he stared at her a moment, then he surprised her by holding out his arm to her. “Why don’t you walk with me to the stables where my man is preparing our horses?”

She drew back and stared at him a moment. His expression had softened somewhat and he no longer looked so severe or cut off.

“Very well,” she said, and touched his arm, just folding her fingers into the crook of it. How she hated herself for how strongly she reacted to that simple act. How much she noticed the heat of him and the hardness and the scent of sandalwood from his shaving soap.

How she hated that this touch moved her, when it clearly did nothing for him. She was an exchangeable piece of his plan, just as his mother had said earlier.

She shook her thoughts away as he led her from the front door and down around the house to a long path that led to the stables in the distance. They were silent a few steps, almost companionable except for her racing thoughts.