Chapter Thirty
Lila heard theknock before she reached the bottom of the stairs. Three measured raps. Not hurried. Not harsh. Controlled. Too controlled to belong to any boarder she knew.
Mrs. Denning opened the door only a finger’s width, her usual caution after dusk, then widened it at once.
“My lord,” she said quietly.
Lila did not remember crossing the hall. One moment she was on the stairs, the next she stood in the entryway, breath caught, her hands still tangled in the hem she had tried to mend for the third time.
Marcus stood on the threshold.
His coat carried the chill of the evening and the faint trace of smoke from wherever he had been earlier. His hair was mussed. Not untidy, simply unguarded in a way she had never seen. Not Wolfton Hall. Not the Lyon’s Den. Something else. Something that made her pulse falter.
“Miss Edgewood,” he said.
She stepped forward because her body demanded it.
“You’re all right.” The words slipped out in a whisper, stripped of decorum.
He let out a quiet breath. Relief, perhaps. Or gratitude. Or something she did not yet know how to name.
“I am,” he said. “I did not intend to cause you worry.”
“Too late for that,” Mrs. Denning muttered, already retreating toward her needlework with suspicious speed.
Marcus’s gaze remained on Lila.
She hesitated only a moment, then stepped back and opened the door wider.
He crossed the threshold, and the house drew in around him—not closing, but alert. He paused, waiting for the old instinct to settle. It did not come. Something steadier held its ground.
Lila closed the door and folded her hands to steady herself.
“You were gone all day,” she said.
“Yes.”
“You said you would be careful.”
“I was.”
“That is not the same thing.”
His mouth curved, not quite a smile. A shadow of one she had not seen since the lesson the day before.
“You are correct,” he said. “It is not.”
She wanted to step closer. To demand answers. To touch the place where a bruise might be forming beneath his coat. Instead, she held herself still, the way she had learned to do when wanting something felt dangerous.
“Did you confront him?”
“No,” Marcus said. “Not yet.”
“Then what—”
“I spoke to the men who allow him to operate unnoticed.” His voice remained calm. Too calm. “I reminded them what their silence will cost if they continue it.”
Her breath tightened. “Marcus,” she whispered, “you cannot put yourself between him and—”
