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“You are asking me to use you, Anthony?” she asked.

“I am asking you to be sensible,” he said softly.

“Those are not quite the same thing, Your Grace.”

“They are, in this instance, precisely the same thing, and you are simply too prideful to admit it,” he said. “You have been doing this alone for years. You disguised yourself as a man to attend auctions you had no business attending. Walking from jeweller to jeweller with no one at your back should any of them prove less than honest. You are clever, you are resourceful, and you are also entirely convinced that asking for help is some manner of failure, when it is nothing of the sort.”

“That is not fair.”

“It is entirely fair, and you know it as well as I do.”

Leonora turned to face him properly, crossing her arms too. “I can manage my own affairs, Anthony. I have managed them perfectly well until now.”

“Have you? You have spent two years chasing the same handful of threads with nothing to show for it beyond a necklace. I am not suggesting you are incapable. I am suggesting that two sets of resources will find the truth about your mother a great deal faster than one, and that your pride is presently standing in the way of the very thing you claim to want most.”

“My pride has nothing to do with it,” she said as she approached him.

“It has everything to do with it, and we both know that too.” He took a step forward too. “Tell me honestly. When was the last time you asked anyone for help with anything that actually mattered to you? Not Lady Byron, who I suspect you have spent much effort protecting from worry. Not your sisters, who by your own account know only what everyone else in London knows. I mean truly asked, and let someone else carry a portion of the weight?”

Leonora opened her mouth to answer, and found, somewhat to her own irritation, that she did not have a ready reply. She thought of how carefully she had always managed to keep the whole of the search to herself, sharing only fragments even with the people she loved best, because sharing the whole of it had always felt, in some manner, like handing someone else the power to disappoint her and to be disappointed in her.

“I do not see what that has to do with anything,” she said, which was not an answer at all, and they both knew it.

“It has everything to do with it, and we both know that too.”

She opened her mouth to argue further, though she was no longer entirely certain what argument she meant to make, only that some part of her wanted to keep this going, wanted to hold her ground against him simply for the satisfaction of not yielding it, the way she always had.

“I did not peg you as a man who takes any particular pleasure in helping people, Your Grace,” she said.

“I do not, generally speaking. It is a great deal of effort for very little reward, most of the time.” He considered her a moment, something in his expression shifting. “You appear to be the exception.”

“That is not much of an answer.”

“It is the only one I have at present.”

Neither of them moved to close the small remaining distance between them, and yet somehow it closed itself regardless, the two of them standing near enough now that she had only to tilt her head back slightly to hold his gaze properly. She was aware of her own heartbeat in a way she rarely allowed herself to be, aware of the faint shadow along his jaw where he had not yet shaved that morning, of how his eyes had lost their judgmental edge.

“I will not push you,” he said, low enough that it felt as though he meant the words only for her and no one else in the house. “I will not force your hand, or insist you accept more help than you want. But if you ever find yourself in over your head, Leonora, truly in over your head, I want you to know that you can come to me. Whatever else lies between us, that much is not a performance.”

She swallowed, and found the simple act considerably more difficult than it ought to have been, her stomach turning over on itself. Heat crept up into her cheeks, and she was fairly certain, from the sudden warmth of her own face, that the color there had become entirely too obvious to pass unnoticed.

She stepped back before she could do anything foolish about the way he was looking at her.

“You should enjoy the rest of your day, Your Grace,” she said, a touch too quickly, the words coming out in more of a rush than she had intended.

She did not wait for his answer. She turned and left the study at something just short of an undignified pace, aware of him watching her the entire way and entirely too flustered to look back and confirm it, her heart beating so fast against her ribs that she thought she might need the fresh air she was suddenly, urgently in search of.

She did not go directly to her room. She let herself out through the side door into the garden instead, needing the cool morning air against her face more than she needed the privacy of four walls, and stood there several minutes simply breathing before she trusted herself to go anywhere else at all.

By the time she finally did make her way up to her own room, closing the door behind her and leaning briefly against it, Leonora realized that her heart had still not shown any particular sign of slowing, however long she had stood out there trying to talk it into doing so.

She crossed to the window and stood there a moment, looking out over the grounds without truly seeing any of it, still trying to make sense of the whole of the conversation.

She pressed her palm flat against her chest, as though she might quiet her heart by simple pressure alone, and found it did not work in the least.

As a final effort, she sat at last on the edge of her bed, still in her morning dress, and shut her eyes.

“This is entirely inconvenient,” she said aloud to no one. “What is going on with you, Leonora Ashcroft?”