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“Nothing happened to her, not precisely I think, only there was something, something about her, while we were out this morning, and it has been sitting at the back of my mind all day feeling wrong. I cannot tell you what it was exactly, only that it saddens me terribly whenever I try to reach for it.” Marian pressed her fingers to her temple, chasing the thought and losing it again in the same breath. “We were shopping, and there was a man, I believe, or something was said, and Leonora went very quiet afterward, and I know it was not nothing, I know that much, but the rest of it simply will not come.”

He was on his feet before she finished the sentence. “I have to go.”

“Anthony, wait.”

“Later, Grandmother. I promise.” He was already moving, already halfway to the door, already failing to hear whatever she said after him.

He did not remember the stairs. He remembered being on his horse, and little else of the ride beyond the string of unreasonable possibilities his mind kept producing, each one discarded the moment it arrived in favor of a worse one.

She must have learned something terrible in her search. Someone had said something cruel to her. Someone had followed her from the shop. He had never in his life ridden anywhere in quite this state over news concerning anyone but himself, and he noted that fact and set it aside, because there was no room for it now. All that mattered was reaching her and seeing with his own eyes that she was unharmed.

“Lady Byron. I mean no disrespect, but I need to see Leonora.”

Lady Byron stood squarely in her entrance hall, arms folded, entirely unsurprised to find an unreasonable man on her doorstep at this hour.

Stubbornness, Anthony had begun to suspect, ran thick in their family. Seraphina had it. Leonora had it in considerably greater supply. Lady Byron’s chin was set at an angle that suggested she had no intention of moving from that spot before morning.

“I understand your concern, Your Grace. I would simply rather you went home, and that we did not have this conversation tonight.”

“I cannot go home. My grandmother told me something happened to her this morning, during your shopping, and then could not tell me what, and I need to see for myself that she is well before I can do anything else at all.”

“She is perfectly well.”

“Then let me see that for myself, and I will go.”

Lady Byron’s mouth thinned. “You must understand that I have not forgiven you for drawing her into this engagement of yours, whatever the particulars turn out to be. I do not fully know them, and I have not entirely wished to. What I do know is that I do not yet trust you enough to let you go on getting closer to her without asking what it will cost her. You arriving at this house at this hour, with the staff awake to see it, is not a small thing. People talk. Her reputation is not a toy, and she has quite enough weighing on her already.”

“I am only asking to know that she has not come to harm, Lady Byron.”

“But I am asking you to trust that I would tell you if she had.”

He did not answer that directly. He simply lowered himself onto the bench along the wall, elbows on his knees, drew one long breath, and did not move from it. Lady Byron watched him for a long moment, her expression unreadable, clearly weighing whether what she was looking at was sincerity or simply a very well-dressed man accustomed to getting what he wanted by waiting people out.

He did not particularly care which conclusion she reached. He was not leaving this hall without seeing Leonora, and some portion of him suspected that fact was written plainly enough on his face that further argument would only waste both their evenings.

“Fine.” Lady Byron exhaled, long and resigned. “Wait here. I will go up and find her, and we will have whatever conversation needs having, the three of us, together.”

“Fine.”

She crossed toward the stairs, pausing once to glance back at him as though reconsidering the wisdom of leaving him unattended in her own house, then seemed to decide there was little else to be done about it. “I believe she may be in the library. I will fetch her and come straight back.”

The moment she was out of sight, Anthony had no intention of waiting for her to return. He moved down a side corridor instead, searching rooms he had no permission to search, until he came upon a young maid carrying a stack of linen who stopped short at the sight of him.

“Where is Miss Ashcroft’s room?” he asked.

She hesitated for a bit then swallowed. “Up the stairs, Your Grace, and along the landing. Hers is the third door, the one with the blue ribbon tied to the handle.”

Anthony nodded. “I trust you will be discreet about having seen me.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” She dropped a quick curtsy and hurried off.

He took the stairs two at a time and followed her directions exactly, half expecting to find the room empty, since Lady Byron had been so certain Leonora was in the library. He knocked anyway, because some part of him needed to check it himself rather than simply believe it.

“Yes?”

The sound of her voice gave him a little relief. He pushed open the door and walked in.

The room swam into view, and there she was, sitting on the edge of her bed, dressed, upright. Every limb present and unbroken. Nothing wrong with her that he could see from the doorway, nothing at all, and the relief of it hit him so hard and so suddenly that he had to brace one hand against the frame for a moment before he trusted his legs with the rest of it.