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“It was. I worried, for years, that he would never let himself want a wife, for fear of becoming exactly what his parents had been. I understand now why he says the things he says, about marriage, about love being an illusion best avoided. He is not being clever when he says it. He actually believes it, or believed it, until rather recently.” Marian’s gaze flicked toward her, and Leonora felt her face warm under it before she could stop it. “I only tell you this so you do not mistake his sharpness for something it is not. He says one thing and feels another more often than he would ever admit. He is going to be your husband, so you must learn to love all sides of him.”

Leonora felt a pang in her heart, the sting of it and the tenderness underneath. She was still gathering her words when the door burst open without any warning at all, and a small girl in a pink pinafore came tearing across the room with her hair half out of its ribbon.

“Your Grace! Your Grace, I have come to visit!”

Marian’s eyes lit up. “Alice! Come here at once, darling girl,” Marian cooed as she opened her arms for the child to crash into them.

Anthony appeared in the doorway a half second later, somewhat out of breath, looking considerably less composed than Leonora had ever seen him. “Alice, we agreed you would wait for me before running off anywhere in this house.”

“Her Grace has cats.” Alice said this as though it settled the matter entirely, which, as far as Leonora could tell, it rather did.

“Hence you refused to heed my instructions because you wanted to see the cats?” Anthony asked, letting out a soft sigh. He glanced toward Leonora, and his face seemed to soften. “Ah, forgive the intrusion. Seraphina…your sister, and William have gone to an event some distance from town, and left Alice in my care for the weekend.”

Leonora smiled and looked properly at Alice for the first time since she had come tearing into the room, realizing it had been weeks since she had last seen the girl so close. It was not hard to guess why Seraphina had left her with Anthony for the weekend rather than anyone else. She suspected Seraphina knew perfectly well that Leonora spent most of her days in this house now, and had left Alice here at least partly for that reason, so that the two of them might cross paths again. Leonora said. “You are welcome to join us, Your Grace. I have missed seeing Alice.”

At the words, Alice abandoned whichever cat she had been pestering and barreled across the room to throw her arms around Leonora’s middle instead. Leonora laughed and squeezed her back, struck, as she often was now, by how little this exuberant little creature resembled the quiet child she had first met. Alice had barely spoken a word to anyone when Seraphina had started to care for her. Now she was nearly as chatty as Euphemia’s twins, who had taken to calling their stepmother “Mama” easily enough once they’d decided to trust her.

“How have you been, little one?” Leonora asked. “How’s my sister? The Duchess. Do you still help her with her writing?”

Alice nodded. “Yes.”

“What would she do without you?” she teased, stroking Alice’s hair.

“I learned to whistle, and Seraphina says I am not allowed to do it indoors anymore.”

Leonora laughed out loud. “How loud did you whistle?”

“Very loud.” Alice giggled.

“Well, it’s a great achievement, then, clearly worth the banishment.”

Alice beamed, entirely satisfied with that assessment, and released her just as quickly as she’d latched on, trotting back toward the cats without a second thought.

Leonora was still smiling when she looked up, and found she had looked toward Anthony without quite deciding to, the way she had caught herself doing more often than she cared to admit this past week, some part of her simply wanting to know where he was in any given room.

But he was already looking back at her, and neither of them looked away.

It was only a moment, the two of them simply looking at each other across the width of the room while Marian and Alice argued cheerfully over which cat deserved to be petted first, but her pulse picked up regardless, a quickening she felt in her throat rather than her chest. His face was the same one she had seen about a hundred times by now, the same jaw, the same mouth that used to curve more easily into mockery than warmth.

Yet something in his eyes was not quite the same as it had been before. His gaze felt different, almost the way her body felt different as she was looking at him now. She could not have said when exactly her body had learned to do this, to come alive simply at the sight of him looking at her. She only knew that it had, and that she looked away first, because she did not yet trust herself not to keep staring.

Anthony cleared his throat. “Perhaps Alice ought not trouble you further this morning.”

“I do not mind in the least,” Leonora said.

“It is not your responsibility to mind. I agreed to this, not you.”

Leonora watched him a moment longer, struck by how plainly out of his depth he looked over one small girl who seemed to have only arrived this morning. She bit back a smile. This same man who ran an entire dukedom and negotiated shipping contracts without so much as breaking a sweat. She felt her heart soften toward him, and she rose from her chair before she could think better of it.

“Alice, darling, would you stay with Marian a moment? I need to borrow your Uncle Anthony.”

“Borrow him for what?”

“A very short conversation. We shall not be long.” Leonora crossed to where Anthony stood looking faintly alarmed by the request, and took hold of his sleeve before he could object, steering him firmly out into the corridor and shutting the door behind them both.

“Leonora, is everything all right?”

“Yes. I just need to ask you something, which you are going to let me finish asking before you argue with me about it.” She released his sleeve and folded her arms instead, putting a proper distance between them, mostly because she did not entirely trust herself at a closer one. It had become a habit lately, this careful measuring of space whenever they stood near each other, ever since that night. “Ask me for help with Alice.”