Sarah waggled her fingers at Letty’s face. “You have… a look on your face whenever you talk about His Grace.”
Letitia clapped her hands to her face. “No, I don’t,” she protested from between her fingers.
“Well,thatis convincing,” Sarah said. “And yes, you do.” She lowered her voice, even though Iris was still too consumed with the matter of her stockings to pay any attention. “And he has the same look when he looks at you. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Letty protested. But then, she could not help herself. “What look?”
Sarah pressed her lips together. “Charmed,” she said after a moment’s contemplation. “You both look… charmed.”
“No,” Letitia repeated, knowing she sounded far too much like the lady who protested too much. “We do not. Not that there is a ‘we.’ I just work here.”
Apparently, her protests didn’t even merit Sarah’s acknowledgment.
“Just… be careful, all right?” her friend urged quietly, her gaze flicking once more to Iris. “I just want you to be careful.”
The naked concern in Sarah’s face dissolved Letitia’s combativeness.
“I will,” she said. “I promise.”
And, at that moment, she meant it. It wasn’t as though she could have anticipated all the things that came next.
* * *
Ezra was exhausted.
He’d spent the day traipsing back and forth across London, seeking his late uncle’s solicitor, who had apparently retired in the years since the fire that had decimated the Lightholder family. He had eventually located the fellow, only to learn that he was yet another dead end. He could add nothing to Tilford’s revelation about an argument that night in Hugh’s club.
All that back and forth, for nothing.
At least it had let him avoid Miss Knightley for another day, something that was becoming increasingly difficult to do.
It should not have been. He lived in a large house. He had plenty to do. And yet… he kept having to force himself not to wander down the corridor where the nursery sat.
Whatwas itabout this woman?
Fortunately, today at least, he was too weary to puzzle over why the red-headed little harridan had taken up such permanent residence in his mind. He collapsed into his bed, barely pausing long enough to yank off his boots and trousers. He let oblivion wrap him in its soft, dark blanket.
When he woke, he was burning.
A very, very distant part of him recognized that this was a dream. An even more distant part of him knew that he’d had this nightmare before, albeit not for a good, long while.
But that part was very hard to access, beneath the panic.
The smoke was choking, and the heat was everywhere. He clawed at his chest, at his face, trying to get rid of the pain, the terror. He realized there was screaming—his own, yes, but others’, too.
“Ezra! Ezra?” His cousin Catherine, her voice high and terrified.
“Help me, Ezra!” Hugh.
“Son. Son, please. Ezra, please! Help me. Why can’t you help me?” His father’s voice, worst of all.
Ezra scrambled for that shred of logic, the one that reminded him that it had not gone like this, but it was so hard to hear above all the screaming.
And then, a quiet voice.
“Your Grace.”
He looked around, but he could not see anything through the smoke, through the flames.
