Page 37

“Very well,” she said. “I promise.”

“Say the whole of it.”

“I promise I will not say such things to other men.” She held his gaze, faintly bewildered by how much this seemed to matter to him. No one had looked at her quite like this in a very long time. Perhaps no one ever had. “You are taking this rather more seriously than the remark deserved.”

“Perhaps I am.”

He did not explain himself further, and after a moment he stepped back, putting a proper distance between them again, though the intensity lingered in the room even though the space had returned. Leonora let out a breath she had not entirely realized she was holding, and reached for the practical thread of the conversation as though it were a rope thrown across water.

“So what do we do, then?” she asked. “If you are so set against my being careless of my own reputation, we cannot simply let the engagement dissolve quietly in three months and hope no one asks questions. There will be questions. You have said so yourself.”

Anthony returned to his side of the desk and sat at last. “I will take the blame for it, when the time comes.”

“You will take the blame?”

“It is the simplest solution, and the one that costs you the least. A man who cries off, or who is seen to have behaved badly enough that a lady quite rightly washes her hands of him, is forgotten within a season. A woman in the same position is rarely forgotten quite so easily, whatever the actual circumstances happen to be. If the ton believes I am the one at fault when this ends, whether through some ungentlemanly behaviour or a sudden, convenient change of heart, your own reputation walks away largely untouched.”

Leonora considered that, turning it over. “But what precisely would you do? Behave badly in front of witnesses? Announce you have changed your mind?”

“Whatever proves necessary at the time. I have not decided the particulars yet, only the principle of the thing. You need not concern yourself with the details when the moment comes. It will be handled, and handled in a manner that leaves you free to walk away from this without carrying any of it.”

“You make it sound very simple.”

“It is simple. I am considerably more difficult to wound than you are, socially speaking, and I have far less to lose by it. A duke may survive being thought a scoundrel for a season.”

“That is fine, then,” Leonora said, after a moment. “I accept the arrangement, on the understanding that you will tell me nothing further about the particulars until they are actually required.”

“Agreed.”

She studied him a moment, some of the morning’s tension finally beginning to ease from her own shoulders now that the practical matter had been settled between them. “Have you spoken to your grandmother yet this morning?”

“No.” He said and lowered his gaze to the table. “Not yet.”

Leonora said nothing further on the subject, though privately she found she did not much like the thought of the two of them still unreconciled somewhere under the same roof. She had not enjoyed watching him so angry the night before, however plainly he had been provoked to it, however much last night’s chaos had been Marian’s doing rather than anyone else’s. She understood the anger, understood it better than she might once have, having spent the whole of the carriage ride listening to the shape of it unfold. She hoped, all the same, that whatever needed saying between grandmother and grandson would be said gently, and soon, and that neither of them would let the morning slip away without mending it.

She rose from her chair, gathering herself to leave. “I ought to let you get on with your day, then.”

“Wait.”

She stopped, looking back at him, and found him watching her wearily, like he was reluctant to do something. Then he rose from behind the desk.

“I have not been entirely honest with you,” he said, leaned on his desk and crossed his arms.

“About what?”

He clenched his jaw then sighed. “I know about your search, Leonora. I know about your mother, what you are actually looking for, beyond the necklace itself, and how far you have already gone to find it. I know it is dangerous, Leonora, considerably more dangerous than you might have allowed yourself to admit.”

She said nothing for a moment, caught entirely off guard, her mind racing ahead to every possible source, every careless word she might have let slip in front of him or his household without noticing. She could not, for the life of her, work out how he had come to know any of it, and there was too much crowding her thoughts all at once to settle on a single question worth asking first.

“I am perfectly fine,” she said finally, gathering what composure she could. “I have the support of my family. I have managed this on my own, and I have a fair notion of what I am doing by now.”

“Let me help you.”

Her gaze softened. “I beg your pardon?”

Anthony began to pace. “I have resources you do not. Money, connections, the sort of leverage a duke’s name carries that you might not be able to match. We are already entangled in each other’s business considerably more than either of us planned to be, given the events of the last month. You may as well take advantage of that, rather than continuing to manage this alone.”

She laughed before she could stop herself, a short, surprised sound that seemed to catch him off guard.