Chapter Four: To the Carriage

Isabelle’s heart thudded wildly as she stepped away from the shadowed alcove, her gloves damp from where she’d clutched them. Behind her, Lucien and Count Duval stood like carved obsidian and steel—locked in stillness, the air between them crackling.

She couldn’t breathe.

A soft voice broke the tension.

“There you are, cousin.” Lydia emerged from the edge of the garden path, her cheeks flushed from dancing, a lace shawl slipping from her shoulders. “The music is ending, and Aunt Rosalind is calling for the carriage.”

Isabelle hesitated, glancing between the two men.

Lucien gave her a single nod. Not command, not a plea. A promise.

“I’ll see you again,” he said. “Sooner than you expect.”

Duval’s smile was all knowing. “London is full of surprises, Miss Greystone.”

She turned before either could say more, clutching her cousin’s arm as they made their way through the hedge maze and back into the ballroom’s golden glow. But everything had changed. The chandeliers felt colder. The music sharper. Every gaze now seemed capable of hiding fangs.

“Were you with Lord Fenwick?” Lydia whispered as they passed beneath the archway. “You must be mad. He may be handsome, but he’s Northern. And wild. He doesn’t belong.”

Isabelle didn’t answer.

Because maybe—neither did she.

At the front steps, footmen rushed to collect shawls and open carriage doors. The night air struck her like a slap—sharp, clean, add bracing. Gas lamps flickered against the fog as horse hooves clattered on cobblestone.

“Greystone carriage,” their driver called.

As she climbed inside, Isabelle caught a glimpse of Lucien watching from the shadows beyond the wrought-iron fence. Not close. Just near enough for her to feel it—his presence pulling art something inside her like the tide beneath the moon.

And then, as the carriage wheels began to roll, a cross the street beneath a gas lamp, she saw him.

Count Duval.

Unmoved by fog. Unblinking. His gaze fixed on her with impossible stillness. No breath. No blink. Just the patient hunger of something that had lived long enough to wait.

The carriage turned the corner.

Both men vanished from view.

But Isabelle felt their eyes long after she could no longer see them.

And she knew—something had begun tonight that no invitation nor season could end.