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She had his attention now. She wished she didn’t. “You could say that I’m your cousin.”

His eyes bore into her, their color more elusive than ever against the dark velvet interior and shuttered curtains. “No. I’ll not be saying that.”

“There is a good chance that no one will be impertinent enough to question me, you know.” It was one of the things she’d been telling herself, hoping to draw comfort from it. She felt not an ounce of relief just now.

“I don’t play lightly with odds of chance.”

She should look away. “Not even at the card tables?”

“Never.”

“Perhaps you can introduce me as Lady St. Quinton, the widow.”

His eyes swept lower, then away. “Despite you being outfitted for the occasion, I find it difficult to believe anyone would buy into that particular ruse.” His voice had loosened the barest increment, and he reached up to fiddle with the curtain.

By heaven. Some part of him found some part of her attractive. Vanity, that long unwatered seed, blossomed within her.

She smoothed her skirts over her knees. “I’m no girl. I should have debuted two seasons ago. Perhaps even three. It’s not unreasonable to think a lady my age could find herself widowed.” Likely more plausible than he could imagine. People died all the time; here one day and forever beyond reach the next. “If anyone should ask, you may simply tell them I am in mourning. It will not be a lie.”

Sophie ignored the pressure of his gaze, reaching into her reticule to remove the small glass marble she always carried with her. “You say it’s a hospital we’re headed to?” She rolled the trinket between her left thumb and forefinger. “I struggle to understand how an infirmary is more appropriate than a dockyard for my purposes.”

“The Royal Hospital is a home for retired seamen. Pensioners, they call them. Not necessarily infirm. More than that, there’s a chapel and a hall on the grounds that are open to visitors. Much easier to fit in among such finery than at the docks, no?”

The steady motion of the marble seemed to unknot some of the tension that had built behind her eyes. “Navy men?”

“Yes.” His foot tapped the floor of the carriage, then stilled. “Is it a Navy man that brings you to Greenwich, Miss St. Quinton?”

“If you’re imagining a sordid love affair, Mr. Balfour, or implying that any man who disembarks from that ship will know me, I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

One of the carriage wheels skittered into a rut, jostling Sophie forward. Her hands seized on the bench’s cushioned edge, preventing her fall, but the marble clattered to the floor, rolling loudly enough for an article ten times its size.

He had sat up. Mr. Balfour had leant forward, arms braced, and for an instant she met him fully with her gaze. The veneer of distaste had been wiped clean from his features. Freckles punctuated his face and throat in an unpredictable style, varying in size and shape, as if burnt umber paint had been flicked from the end of a brush. One of his brows fanned out disobediently, much like his hair, and his eyes—

They weren’t pure shadow after all. Touches of green rimmed his irises, the color of a hawthorn tree waiting to bloom. He was handsome. It was beyond denying.

“The marble.” She pushed herself back against the squabs in the same moment that he did, and began scanning the carriage floor.

“I’ll find it.” His voice was clipped and remote as he folded himself to search, a movement which emphasized the broadness of his shoulders. When he straightened, the marble was between his fingers. He held it to the weak light of the window and turned it. Faint rays of blue-green danced over his nose and cheek. “It’s not often you see one like this. Where did you come across it?”

“My brother gave it to me.”

He studied it a moment longer before reaching across the carriage to drop it in her outstretched palm. Was she imagining it, or was he careful to ensure their fingers never brushed?

“Will today’s journey be the only one of its kind?” He intoned the question like a statement.

“Yes.” Toying with the marble had ceased to do anything for the jitters in her veins. She returned it to her reticule and cinched the bag closed. “I only need to see the ship once.”

Soon Iphigenia would be transformed, ready for a new captain and a fresh journey. The battle scars she’d earned in the Indian Ocean would be plugged and forgotten, along with the memories of the men who had bled on her decks.

Sophie would never allow Edmund to disappear. But the months, the terrible stretching of time, had made him hazy. Their memories—gallops across the downs in a summer rain, scraped knees from climbing the old oak, the scent of his tobacco and the pattern of his laughter—were covered in a layer of occlusive varnish, as if they weren’t quite hers.

As if they weren’t quite real. Loss on top of loss.

But seeing Iphigenia might change that; wipe clean the lens of time and strengthen the tether between then and now.

“What is your connection to this ship?” Mr. Balfour had crossed his legs, one ankle resting atop his knee.

“Isn’t that rather forward of you to ask?”