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Sick. She felt sick at the possibilities. He will be here. He is deserving of your faith.

They entered the same building that Sophie had on her first visit to the hospital. Mr. Malloy introduced their group and purpose—though he barely got the words out before Hansbury interjected to rattle off his title—and the four of them were shown into the parlor to wait.

Dust motes lingered in the air. The sun must have declared her victory over the gloom, for gilt light canted in and emphasized the knots in the hardwood floors, buried beneath coats of lacquer. The rumble of male voices was audible through the wall behind her head; the directors sounded more like dueling barristers. Her heart ached. She wanted to do this, to be here, in this place and for this purpose. To do so as Mrs. Balfour would have been the only thing finer.

The doors to the meeting room opened just as the clock tower outside began to chime the eleventh hour. “Lieutenant Smith.”

Sophie didn’t crane her neck to see the speaker, but stared at the reticule in her lap as a man in a yellow coat rose from the parlor and disappeared inside.

“His coat would do Brummel proud,” Hansbury said in a low voice, leaning toward her.

“He’ll be in there for a spell, I suspect.” Mr. Malloy offered her another of his calm, sympathetic smiles, but his heel had begun a staccato tapping on the floor. “It’s a sign of punishment, to have one’s coat turned inside out. ‘Canary,’ they call you.”

The skin beneath Sophie’s eyes tightened with the effort of her forced smile. Tap tap tap tap. Dust swirled like a noxious cloud. One of the pensioners in the room inhaled roughly, as if he intended to spit. The vibrating voices started up again at her back. Anne sighed and gave an almost-imperceptible shake of her head.

“Mr. Malloy?”

He and Hansbury swiveled to look at her in the same instant.

Sophie tried to lower the pitch of her strangled voice. “Forgive me, but if it’s to be a while …”

Mr. Malloy divined her meaning in the work of a second. “Certainly. It’s the second door on the left, miss.”

Sophie nodded and rose, meeting Anne’s glare with a look that said Don’t follow me. Better to panic in the necessary than in a public parlor.

She walked down the narrow corridor with a hand against her side. The pressure behind her eyes built as she reached the door of the water closet, but rather than go inside, she placed her back to the wall and squeezed her eyes closed. She wasn’t sorry, for loving him. Opening her heart had been a fool’s errand, and fool she would be, again and again.

The click of a door opening sent a shock through her. She straightened. Turned. She felt that it was him before the light cleared from behind his form, before she caught a flash of copper hair, like a Brittania penny beneath an autumnal sun. A sharp shoulder. Long, long legs.

The sob formed and escaped in the same instant. Every muscle halted its work, melting, softening, waiting to be caught. Waiting to be home.

“Rafe.” The word broke into three parts, scattered along the remnants of laugh and sob. “You’re h-here.”

Arms scooped her up, as if she weighed no more than that penny, and Sophie was pressed against him. Her arms curled around his neck, her feet dangled off the ground.

“Yes,” he murmured, his hot breath tickling against her ear. “Yes, love.”

She had not lost faith in him, but to feel the solidness of his chest against her, the vital press of his arms, the promise of his words vibrating around her—

It was deliverance.

His lips, dry and chapped, pressed against her neck, behind her ear, the skin just before the shoulder of her gown began. She twined his hair in the empty spaces between her fingers, held him, breathed him in, until her arms shook. Her feet softly met the ground, but his embrace maintained the press of their bodies.

“I’m sorry.” He spoke into her hair. “I’m afraid my strength isn’t what it ought to be just now.”

She pulled away enough to see him, putting her palms to his cheeks. He looked wild. A short beard had grown in over his lower face. The whites of his eyes were tinged red, as was his complexion. Lines she didn’t remember etched the skin between his brows, and she realized, when she dropped her chin, that his clothes were in near tatters.

“What happened to you?” The excited beat of her heart tainted with dread. “Rafe, who hurt you?”

There were buttons missing on his waistcoat. He wore no cravat—how had she not noticed? She seized fistfuls of the garments in her hands as if to prevent his ever moving. “Tell me. Tell me now. Was this your father’s doing?”

He grimaced. “Go easy, on the left ribs, perhaps.”

“Ribs?” Sophie nearly hollered the word, and intensified her grip before realizing the error. “Sorry.”

His pained expression softened into a smile. His hand came to caress the side of her face, the pad of his thumb listing over her brow, her cheekbone, the bow of her upper lip and the mole adjacent to it.

“God, Sophie.” Longing filled his voice, and he shook his head. “I didn’t know that I’d ever see you again. I dreamt … I dreamt of you. I dreamt of this.”