Page 47

“You do not have to move on tonight. Or any time soon, if you are not ready.” He sat again, closer this time. “What is it you want to do?”

Leonora faced him. “I thought I might go back to Lord Brighton. He knows more than anyone I’ve met so far, and he knew her better than anyone else I have found.”

Anthony clenched his jaw. The sound of it irked him, and he knew precisely why. He had not liked the way the man had looked at her the night of the ball, the attention in it that had nothing to do with simple resemblance, and it was the reason he had pulled her away before Brighton had finished whatever he meant to say. He had no right, strictly speaking, to feel what he was currently feeling, which was uncomfortably close to jealousy dressed up as concern, but knowing he had no right to it did not make it disappear.

“I would rather you did not rely on him for this.”

“He is the only one who seems to know anything.”

“Then let me find out the rest.” He slid from the bed onto one knee in front of her, so that he was looking up into her face rather than down at it, and took her hand in both of his. “You do not need to put your trust in a stranger, Leonora. I should like to think I am rather more than a stranger to you by now. Let me do this for you. Please.”

She studied him for a long moment, her gaze dropping briefly to his mouth before she seemed to catch herself and look up again, and when she finally sighed, it sounded like the last of her resistance going out of her all at once.

“Will you find out how she died, please? What truly happened to her. Where she is buried, if there is somewhere. When it happened, exactly, and how long after my father.” Her voice wavered on the last of it. “I need to know all of it, Anthony. Properly, this time.”

“I will find out everything there is to find. All of it. You have my word.” He pressed her hand once, firmly, as though sealing the promise with the pressure of it. “You need only rest, and leave the rest to me. Do not go to anyone else about it. Let me handle this.”

“Thank you.”

“You should sleep.” He made himself stand, made himself step back toward the door, though every part of him wanted instead to stay exactly where he was and tell her how lovely she looked even now, with her eyes red and her composure in ruins, and that watching her cry had left him wanting, quite badly, to be the one person she let close enough to see it. He said none of it. It was not the night for it, whatever tonight had very nearly become. “Take whatever time you need.”

She nodded, and he let himself out, and did not look back until the door had already shut behind him.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“You are not listening to me again,” Marian said. “I have said the word ‘Ashworth ball’ three times now, and you have embroidered the same corner of that handkerchief three times over without once moving the needle forward.”

Leonora looked down and found, with some embarrassment, that Marian was entirely correct. She set the needle aside. “Forgive me. I was not paying attention.”

After everything that had happened, after the day she had spent crying in a carriage and the three that followed it shut up alone in her own room, Leonora decided that returning to Marian’s side was exactly what she needed. She had grown fonder of that house than she had expected to, and three days away from it had done nothing but bore her thoroughly, leaving her with far too much time to sit with her own thoughts and far too little else to occupy them.

She missed the distraction of it. She missed Marian’s running commentary on every gown, every suitor, every piece of gossip London had to offer, certain that the old woman had missed her in return, in her own stubborn way, whatever she might say to the contrary. She even missed the embroidery she had only ever taken up to keep Marian happy, tedious as it was. She missed the cats underfoot at every turn, Barnaby included. It was time to go back.

“You were not. You have not attended properly to anything I have said all morning.” Marian did not sound offended by it, only amused. “Where does your mind keep wandering off to?”

Nowhere she intended to admit aloud. It wandered, if she was honest with herself, to a bedroom candlelit and quiet, to a pair of arms that had come around her… embraced her. She had thought of it more times in the three days since than she cared to count, the warmth of him, the sound of his voice promising her something would survive even when she did not believe it herself in the moment.

She remembered, too clearly for her own comfort, the exact instant his hand had found the curve of her neck, and the breath that had stopped somewhere in her own chest when his mouth had very nearly, very briefly, found hers. She had no business thinking of it at all, and certainly no business thinking of it while pretending to embroider a handkerchief in his grandmother’s sitting room.

It was becoming a habit, this returning to that one evening as though it were a room she could simply walk back into whenever the present grew dull. She did not care for what it suggested about her, that a single near kiss from Anthony could occupy so much of her waking mind. She had managed years of searching for her mother without once losing track of a single hour to daydreaming. She had lost count, this week alone, of how many hours Anthony had taken from her without her noticing it happening.

“Nowhere of consequence,” she said. “I am simply tired.”

“You have been simply tired for days running. I begin to suspect it is not tiredness at all, but something you would rather not discuss with an old woman who gossips to her cats.” Marian’s eyes, sharper than she generally let on, settled on her. “Very well. Keep your secrets. But you ought to know we have been invited to the Ashworth ball next week, and I intend for us to go, now that the whole of London knows precisely what you are to my grandson.”

“I would rather we did not discuss the Ashworth ball, or any other ball, given how exactly London came to know precisely what I am to your grandson.” The old irritation rose easily enough, familiar ground after the strangeness of the last few minutes. “You announced it to an entire ballroom before either of us had agreed to announce anything at all, Your Grace.”

“I announced a fact. Facts do not require agreement.” Marian waved it away. “Besides, it is done now, and sulking about it will not undo it. We may as well enjoy the consequences.”

“I am not sulking.” Leonora smiled.

“You are magnificently sulking. You have been magnificently sulking about a lot of things, and I have decided to simply let you, since it seems to bring you some comfort.” Marian set down her own needlework, considering something. “May I tell you something about my grandson then, since you are evidently too distracted today to embroider properly regardless?”

Leonora nodded curiously. “If you wish.”

“Anthony was always clever, and always a touch too pleased with his own wit, but the sharpness underneath it, the refusal to take anything seriously that might actually matter, that came later.” Marian’s voice softened into something Leonora had not often heard from her. “His parents loved each other a great deal as I must have told you. Too much, if such a thing is possible. It was the sort of love that burned through everything else in the house, their responsibilities, their patience with each other, eventually their good sense entirely. They adored each other and neglected everything else, including, I am sorry to say, their own son. Anthony grew up watching two people who claimed to love him dearly forget he existed for weeks at a time whenever they were occupied with loving each other instead.”

Leonora’s chest tightened on his behalf. Anthony had spoken to her once about it, and even hearing it now, it still saddened her. “That sounds very lonely.”