“Grand words for one so young,” Rutledge remarked after a long minute.

“I’ve learned a few things the hard way.”

“I see.” His skepticism was apparent.

He didn’t really see anything, Charlotte thought with a sudden frustration that clawed through her like physical pain. The insane impulse to tell him everything gripped her just as swiftly. What would happen if she were to tell him her name? If she took his hand in hers and told him that she understood more than he could imagine how it felt to struggle and hope, only to be shut out and cast aside?

“Do you see? Really?” She knew she should end this conversation, but she couldn’t seem to stop the words that had built up within her, and she was no longer sure if she was speaking about Rutledge or herself. “Lady Cecelia was not your first mistake, I would think, and probably not your last,” she said. “But neither she nor anyone else, no matter what they’ve done, diminishes you. Not your skill, your talent, or your ambition. It’s all still there within you.”

She knew she’d said too much. Said all the wrong things. Charlie Beaumont from Aysgarth would not have spoken in such a manner. Charlie Beaumont would likely have made a crude joke at Lady Cecelia’s expense and then suggested that they both get thoroughly foxed to forget her.

“What do you want, Mr. Beaumont?” His question was sudden.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You speak of ambition, and I’m curious what sort of ambition it is that you harbor.” He waved his hand in the direction of the panel. “When you are done with this commission, where will you go? What will you do?”

Charlotte ran a finger around the edge of her mug, trying to decide how to answer that. Amid all this candor, it was reasonable for him to press her for details about her own life. Her own ambitions and failings and struggles and…mistakes. Details she could never share.

This was exhausting, all this lying without lying.

She took a sip of tea and then another. “I don’t know,” she finally said with utter honesty. She didn’t know where she would go, but she could not bring herself to imagine ever returning to the cold loneliness of London or Aysgarth. Though that was not something she could tell him. “What of you, Mr. Rutledge?” she asked instead, deliberately turning the conversation back in his direction. “Where will your ambitions ultimately take you?”

“Italy,” he said quietly and without any hesitation. “After this commission is complete, I will go to Italy.”