I'll Be Watching You

1. Every Breath You Take...

Colin settled deeper into the chair strategically placed in front of his bedroom window, taking his spyglass in hand and fixing it on the window across the square.

The candles were still lit, but any moment now it would go dark.

That was when she'd make her move... just as he would make his. It had been thus for a week now.

Before that, she'd been in Ireland... and Lady Whistledown suddenly had nothing to say.

Fancy that!

As for him, he'd been in Italy, France, and Spain, unable to enjoy any of it. Sure, he saw the sights, sampled the food, butchered the language just as he had before, but none of it felt as it had before. It should have been better. On his first tour, he'd been nursing a destroyed engagement and a broken heart.

This time, it was only a broken friendship. It should have been easier.

Why was it harder?

Perhaps it was because the sights seemed less somehow, without someone to share them with. His family replied politely, claimed jealousy, asked after his health, told him about their days, then dutifully asked where to send their next letter. They didn't ask questions or make fanciful comparisons or ask him to describe the tastes and sights in great detail. They didn't tell funny little tales of how their afternoon watching their sisters fight over the last lemon tart was surely just as exciting as watching two Balkan lynxes spar over a hare...

He didn't miss her. He didn't even know her.

How could one miss a friendship that had always been based on lies? Because it had been, hadn't it?

He started at a movement in the window across the square now, but it was only a maid, tidying up as his quarry pretended to go to bed. Any moment now, she would blow out the candles and he'd be ready.

God, he should just go to bed himself! This damnable nightly ritual was exhausting. He could just forget what he'd seen that first night and pretend she was, indeed, sleeping. None of this was his concern. None of this was part of his plans for the season. Not that he had plans for the season. If he did, they consisted of humoring his mother, escorting his sisters, then counting the days until he could leave again.

But once he saw her traipsing about at night, once he realized precisely how Lady Whistledown got her business done, he could not rest until he knew, at the least, that she hadn't got herself killed yet. How he wished he could just ignore it, ignore her.

Yes. That, if anything, had been his plan for the season, but even from that first day, she'd spoiled it...

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One week earlier ...

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Colin had meant to arrive before the season started, at least a week before Frannie was to be presented. But he'd not planned on the weather. He hadn't given it a thought, more fool him.

He should have been on an earlier boat, knowing that the Mediterranean waters obeyed no man in spring. He should have planned for such a thing, but he hadn't. It took two boats to get home and he'd arrived on his family's doorstep looking a mess. His duster jacket full of actual dust, his cravat undone, his red gloves a subject of merriment for his brothers. He'd meant to be there days earlier, dressed for Court, ready to do his duty by his sister... and if he happened to catch a glance of a certain red-headed demon when she arrived, he'd be prepared to see her.

As it was, his family greeted him, embraced him, and then — ultimately — teased him over his attire, his tan, his untied cravat. He smiled, he relaxed, he told himself there was plenty of time to make himself presentable, and plenty of time to prepare himself to see her.