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“What will you do now?” Lady Byron asked.

“I do not know yet. I had always imagined that if I found her, there would be decisions to make. Where to write to her. What to say, after so long, and whether she would even wish to hear it.” Leonora looked down at the handkerchief in her lap. “Now there is only the necklace, and a grave I have not found.”

“You could choose to let it rest there.”

“I could.” Leonora folded the handkerchief once, then again, smaller each time. “But how can I? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Lady Byron said nothing further to that. The carriage rolled on. Leonora found herself remembering an afternoon she had not thought of in years. She had been perhaps five, sitting on the floor of her mother’s dressing room while Rose brushed out her hair before a mirror, the two of them singing some tuneless song about a fox that her mother had made up on the spot because Leonora had asked for one and none of the proper ones had seemed to fit.

She could not remember the words now. She could remember the sound of her mother’s voice going slightly flat on the high notes, and laughing about it, and starting the song over simply to get the ending right.

It was, she realized, the clearest memory of her mother’s voice she still owned outright, the rest of it having worn thin from years of trying to hold onto something that kept slipping.

Leonora let herself cry the rest of the way home, quietly, for a mother she had spent years searching for and would now never find.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Grandmother, I have arrived with the scones you demanded this morning, under threat of considerable domestic chaos should I forget them.”

Anthony set the small parcel down on the table beside her chair, pleased with himself for having actually managed to do the one thing asked of him. Marian did not look up. She sat by the window with a shawl pulled around her shoulders and her hands folded in her lap, utterly still, as though she had not noticed her grandson enter the room at all.

“They are from Mrs. Hale’s, exactly as you specified. You told me this morning, before you and Leonora left for your dress fitting with Lady Byron, do you recall? You said you wanted them the moment you returned, and so here they are, still warm… or very nearly.”

“I do not want scones.”

Anthony tilted his head sideways. “You asked for them three times before breakfast.”

“Did I?” She said it as a fact rather than a question, which concerned him rather more than an argument would have.

“You did. You described them, in some detail, as the only thing standing between you and a very bad mood for the remainder of the day.” He pulled a chair closer and sat across from her, waiting for the argument he had come prepared for, the one where she insisted she had never said any such thing and he insisted she had, an argument they had conducted a dozen times over a dozen smaller matters and which generally ended in laughter. It did not come. She was looking at her own hands instead, turning them over as though she might find something written on the back of it.

“Grandmother? What is wrong?”

She sighed, a long and unhappy sound that had none of her usual theater in it. “I have been trying to remember something all day. It is driving me rather insane.”

His eyebrows furrowed. “Remember what?”

“That is rather the trouble, Anthony. I do not know. I meant to write it down the moment it occurred to me, and I did not, because I was certain I would not forget it, and now it has gone wherever these things go, and I cannot get it back.” Her hands stilled. “Something is wrong with my mind, Anthony, I know it. This thing… It is important. I know that much. I simply cannot tell you what it is.”

He had learned, these last weeks, not to treat this the way he once had, as a fresh instance of her being difficult on purpose, determined to vex him for sport. It had taken him longer than he was proud of to understand the difference between Marian being stubborn and Marian being frightened, since she dressed the second one up to look exactly like the first, and he had spent a great many months mistaking one for the other before he had finally stopped to look properly. He took her hand instead of arguing with her.

“It will come back to you. These things generally do, in their own time. Nothing is wrong with you.”

“You do not know that.”

“I do not.” He smiled. “But I know that sitting here turning yourself inside out over it is not going to hurry it along, and I would rather you were comfortable than correct.” He pressed her hand once, lightly. “Would it help to think of something else for a moment? We could plan a picnic for tomorrow. We have not done one of those in a while. Or we could go back out and look at more dresses, if you have not entirely exhausted your opinions on the subject.”

“I have several opinions remaining.”

“I rather thought you might.” Anthony lifted his head. “Where is Leonora, by the way? Perhaps she would enjoy being talked at about ribbon for another hour.”

Marian’s whole face changed. “Leonora.”

“Yes.”

“Leonora. How could I possibly have forgotten Leonora.” She sat up so sharply that her shawl slipped from one shoulder, and something in Anthony went cold and alert before she had said another word.

His eyebrows furrowed. “What about Leonora? Where is she? Did something happen? Grandmother, what happened to her?”