And then Cabot had left.

An remarkable opportunity had come Cabot's way — to be the personal arbiter of style to the Prince Regent himself! Button had fixed a proud smile upon his face and blithely urged Cabot to accept.

The pain that had followed Cabot's departure hardly bore thinking about. As much as Button tried, he could not excuse it as the inconvenience of losing a capable assistant. He could not reconcile the aching loneliness as simply missing Cabot's unerringly tasteful input.

He missed Cabot. Not simply the companionship. Not the effortless creative flow unfettered by receipts and billing.

He missed the sound of Cabot's voice, the beauty of his lean, athletic body as he went about the business of his day, and the sharp communication of his breathtaking eyes.

The shop smelled empty without the subtle woodsy scent of Cabot's cologne. Button's soul felt hollow without Cabot nearby.

Then an adventure involving the Worthingtons had brought them together again, a team in stylish action once more. Afterward, with no discussion whatsoever, Cabot had simply relocated back to the apartment above Lementeur and showed up in Button's work room with a tray of tea and cakes as if he had never left.

Button, although perishing to know how the Prince Regent had reacted to this desertion, had never asked. At first tentative and self-conscious, the working relationship had gradually returned to its former satisfying ease.

Yet Button could no longer ignore the fact that his façade of avuncular pride in a fine assistant had been lastingly revealed to him as a self-delusion.

“You are not an age. You simply are, as I simply am, and age is what we make of it.” Cabot had said it once, just once, before he had left. Button had tried to dismiss it, tried to forget it. He had told himself it was a meaningless moment in a singularly difficult time.

The fact was that when Button sat alone in his perfect little house before his perfect fire, he would take those words out of the past and turn them over and over in his thoughts until they were polished as smooth as river stones.

That was why he — the great meddler, the matchmaker, the schemer -– had never even asked Cabot why he had left. And more importantly, why he had come back.

Quite frankly, Button did not dare.

Now, he sat in the dim luxury of his borrowed carriage and tried very hard not to look at Cabot.

He could ask now. It was a simple enough question, was it not?

Abruptly, the carriage slowed and rolled to a stop. Before either Button or Cabot could signal the driver to inquire the circumstances, the door to their carriage opened and Miss Atalanta Worthington scrambled inside.

"Poll is boring." She looked sharply back and forth between them. "What are you two doing?"