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“Marriages generally are, or so I’m told.” Everett slowed his horse to a walk as the ground sloped up, and Nathaniel did the same. “Is it the wife that’s complicated?”

“You’re insufferable.”

“I’m observant. There’s a difference, though I grant you it isn’t always a large one.” Everett glanced sideways at him. “Croft found anything more on Alden?”

“Slow progress. Alden’s careful, which is sensible. He doesn’t keep records that would tie him to Cumberlea directly, not anywhere Croft has looked.” Nathaniel exhaled, letting some of the tension he’d been carrying since leaving the village finally leave his shoulders. “I’m beginning to think it will take months. Perhaps longer.”

“And in the meantime, you have a wife and a niece under your roof, and a great deal of temper you haven’t found anywhere useful to put. Perhaps it’s time to take up fencing again?”

“Only if you’re at the other end of my rapier.”

“Oh, Nathaniel,” Everett said lightly, but his eyes stayed sharp. “What happened?”

Nathaniel remained quiet, long enough that he half-expected his friend to drop the matter.

He didn’t.

“Iris asked about Isabella at supper.” The words came out clipped. “I told her that was enough of the subject… perhaps more harshly than I intended.”

“Ah.”

“Don’t ah me.”

“I’m not ahing you. I’m merely noting that you’ve spent three years refusing to say your sister’s name in that castle, and you’re surprised the girl who loved her most in the world eventually asked why?” Everett’s voice had softened.

Nathaniel’s heart ached, for he did not feel he deserved it.

“It is difficult.”

“Yes, and you cannot grieve her by pretending that she never existed, my friend. I’ve watched you try for years—it isn’t working.”

“I know it isn’t working.” The admission came out low, almost involuntary. “I know precisely what I owe her, and just how badly I’ve failed at paying it. I was too late. Do you understand that? By the time Croft’s report reached me, by the time I understood what Grantham had truly been, what he’d let happen under his own roof… she was already gone. I have spent three years hunting the man responsible, and I cannot even bring myself to say her name at my own table without the whole of it rising in my throat.”

Everett let a beat pass. “And your wife?”

“What of her?”

“Where does she fit into all that grief you’re so determined to carry alone?”

Nathaniel didn’t answer at once. He thought of Laura in his study doorway, flushed and disheveled from the garden, and again last night, close enough to kiss, her breath catching before she’d stepped away from him, her green eyes holding his like a lock and a key.

“She sees more than I’d like her to.”

“That,” Everett said, “is generally what happens when a person pays attention. I’d have thought you’d find it a relief, being married to someone who looks rather than looks away.”

Nathaniel said nothing, but he thought about it the whole ride home longer than he cared to admit.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Laura found herself near the west tower almost by accident three days later.

There it is. I am getting closer.

She followed the sound of dripping water, which she suspected meant another leak, her mind still half on the linen inventory she’d been discussing with Mrs. Holt before it wandered toward the strange sound.

The corridor here was colder than the rest of the castle, narrower too, the stone unswept and the wall sconces long since gone dark. It was as though the castle itself had quietly stopped bothering with this wing.

She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders.