The Lady Always Wins by Courtney Milan Page A

his gloves. The same mirror from seven years ago sat in its fading false-gold frame on the wall; when he checked his reflection, he noticed that the edges had begun to spot with age. In the corners of the entry, dust had settled. Simon shook his head.
    A door opened, and he turned from his inspection. The maid came through first. Behind him, he could hear a woman speaking.
    “...very well,” she was saying. “But I don’t believe—”
    The woman marched through the door, swiping flour-dusted hands over an apron. She saw him and stopped midstride.
    He had envisioned this moment a thousand times. Sometimes, she threw herself at him. Sometimes, she flushed and looked away. He usually imagined her as she stood in his memory—a young, slim maiden, dressed in demure, light-colored muslins. Often, he’d thought of her in less. Far less.
    But in all his imaginings, he had never pictured her as she was now: features made severe by the dark gray of half-mourning. The possibility that she’d be clad in widow’s garb should have occurred to him. Given the reason behind his swift decampment, it seemed idiotic not to have imagined her in somber colors. Maybe, deep down, he had refused to accept that she had married another man.
    The years had changed her. They’d carved little laugh lines into the corners of her mouth. She’d rounded out comfortably, her hips and breasts fuller, her arms pleasantly plump.
    The discontinuity in his expectations jarred him. She’d been in his thoughts so much over the years that it was disconcerting to discover that she’d existed outside them.
    But of course.
    She rubbed the back of her hand against her forehead, leaving a trace of flour above her eyebrow. “Mr. Davenant. Why, how lovely to see you.” She gave him a faint, patronizing smile—the sort one might grant to an old acquaintance, long forgot. It might have worked, without that streak of flour.
    He crossed his arms. “Are you not going to ask why I’m here?”
    She flicked her gaze behind her. “Alice,” she said to the maid, who stood near the wall, “if you’ll finish putting the bread away, I’d be most obliged. Mr. Davenant and I are old friends. We’ll visit in the parlor.”
    “Old friends,” he repeated in disbelief.
    “We grew up alongside one another.” She was speaking to her maid, but her eyes had not left Simon’s. “At one time, we were quite inseparable.”
    “I would not have put it that way,” Simon said, not quite as mildly as he’d intended. “Inseparable means unable to separate. The last seven years suggest something rather different.”
    “Oh.” Alice glanced between them, perhaps catching a hint of a dangerous undercurrent. “Shall I bring some tea, ma’am?”
    Ginny pursed her lips. “Yes,” she finally said. “That will do nicely. And some of the new bread. And butter. And the raspberry preserves.”
    “The, um—” The maid blushed, and glanced at Simon.
    “The
good
raspberry preserves,” Ginny said sweetly. “Not the ones we use when the vicar comes calling.”
    Simon scarcely muffled a smile at that. She had not responded to his accusatory tone. She’d always been stubborn—damned stubborn. That, apparently, hadn’t changed. It was what he’d liked best about her.
    He waited until they were seated around a table, tea steeping beside them in a chipped china pot, before he spoke again. “How long has it been since last we spoke?” he mused.
    She met his eyes levelly. “You know perfectly well, Simon.”
    “True.” He picked up his teacup and swirled the dark liquid around. “It was seven years, two months, and three—” He cut himself off. “No. It was four days, not three. That last time we saw each other, you refused to speak to me altogether.”
    She hadn’t even blinked at the precise nature of his recollection. “Of course I did.” She took a sip of her tea and smiled, as if that final, bitter argument had become nothing but a fond memory to her. “Can you