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“Four and ten.”

There was a clatter at the door, and the same servant girl walked in with a tray. The tea things rattled as she deposited them on the table. Mrs. Langworthy did not speak again until the girl had quit the room. “I hope you like tea and biscuits, Mr. Balfour?”

“Yes. Thank you.” His stomach clenched at the sight of the orderly tray, yawned with longing as the steaming brew was poured for him. His last proper meal had been twenty-four hours earlier.

“I wanted you to see my son.” The widow handed him a cup and saucer. “When you and I met, you thought yourself very much a man. But you were merely a boy.” She stared at him. “You see that, now, don’t you? You were only a boy who wanted to be his mother’s hero. It would have been impossible not to lend you my sympathy.”

Rafe did not like something in her tone. She spoke as if she were seeking absolution from him, telling a tale she desperately needed him to agree upon.

“I suppose, ma’am, but there are many who would not have been half so kind to me as you and your husband. I feel certain lesser people would have turned me away, or perhaps even—”

“No.” Her voice was firm. Unyielding as the stone walls around them. “No mother could have taken a path other than mine. My child is my entire world, you see, as you no doubt were to your mother. But you are no longer a child, Mr. Balfour. You are a man, yes?”

What a peculiar question, and the tea … Rafe schooled his features and forced a swallow on the sickly bitter brew. It must be the strange scents in the air, tainting his taste. “Yes, ma’am. I hope you do not think I have come asking more of you. Quite the opposite. I hope to return, in some small measure, the charity you showed me years ago. I was sorry to hear of your husband’s passing, but the manner in which I learned of it—”

“Our new proprietor discovered Mrs. Balfour not in residence and wrote to your father of the situation. I am already aware.” The widow’s hands were white and still in her lap. She held no refreshment of her own. “You must understand, I had no notion he would be such a thorough keeper of books. I was content to let the ruse continue, but I am not so charitable, Mr. Balfour, as to endanger my and my son’s position here.”

“Of course not.” Rafe was on the verge of stammering. Perhaps he should have guessed she would know, but she needed to understand the danger. “It is only, well, I’ve reason to believe my father is making the journey here as we speak. I will not allow him to cause you, your son, or any of the residents harm. The deception is surely all my own.”

The words were pouring out of him. God above, he meant them with all his heart, but he felt horrifically insufficient. The tiredness and hunger, the distance traveled, it was all building on him, turning his consciousness to dust. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

“Even when the discrepancy was discovered and the letter posted to your father, I had little cause for concern. It had been so many years, I thought, and you surely grown now. Perhaps you had even exaggerated the direness of your circumstances in a youthful fancy.”

“I did not exaggerate.” His voice was strong though his head swam. “My father poses a real threat—”

“Is your tea not fit for drinking?” One long, pale finger parted from Mrs. Langworthy’s clasped hands and pointed at the plain cup resting in his hands, on his knee. “You’ve scarcely touched it.”

Rafe tried to plaster on a smile, but the muscles required by the task eluded him as much as manners did just now. He took one large, foul-tasting sip. He opened his mouth to speak, but the widow began first.

“I know that, now.” She sighed. “And I am sorry, truly, that it has come to this. But I must now protect my son in the manner I protected you all those years ago.”

“Wh—?” The sound never reached fruition as a word, but hung, half alive on Rafe’s tongue, as he slumped from the chair. The porcelain cup and saucer clattered. He thought vaguely of the carpet, the stain …

That same carpet was plush beneath his head. He stared, open-mouthed, at the fresco on the ceiling, into the grey eyes of Temperance.

Mrs. Langworthy’s voice was distant, muffled by swishing skirts. “Summon the fellow at once. See that both of them are removed from this place within the next quarter hour.”

Rafe’s eyelids were impossibly heavy. Must … Stay … Open.

Useless. No amount of effort could keep them so. As they shut, two thoughts chased behind them before blackness consumed him whole.

They beat me here.

Sophie.

Always, Sophie.

twenty-eight

Two days later

London, England

Sophie inhaled to the top of her lungs. The Public Record Office smelled like the ancient texts it housed: sour mildew and damp leather. “You’re certain about this?”

Lord Hansbury leant toward her, eyebrows raised. “Why don’t you ask the good man behind the counter, if you don’t believe me or your own eyes.”

She scowled up at him, then back at the paper in her gloved hands, and then, finally, at the bespectacled man behind the counter. The attendant shrugged his shoulders beneath his ill-fitting coat. “’Tis public record, miss. It would not be here if it weren’t so.”