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Leonora tied the strap on the valise and drew it tight before she answered. The leather bit into her fingers. “Go on.”

“You have been asking questions about your mother, Leonora. I know that is another reason you are here. But you’re not doing it quietly, either. You have asked after her in every shop and drawing room in London.” Seraphina let out a breath. “I have said nothing because you would not have listened, and because I wanted what you want. I just want you to know, that I am frightened for you.”

“I am not frightened of anything.”

“That is not an answer.” Seraphina inhaled sharply. “When will you stop searching? You’re opening yourself to exploitation, my dear. People will make things up... they might take advantage of your search.”

Leonora’s mouth twitched in spite of everything. She stood and sat down beside her sister. The mattress dipped and tilted them together at the shoulder.

“I am close,” she said. “Anthony has men searching, so I don’t do a lot of asking around these days. But I am nearer than I have ever been to knowing what became of her. If I stop now, I shall spend the rest of my life wondering what the next step would have been. I have to finish, Seraphina.”

“What happens if the answer is something you cannot bear to find?”

“Then I shall have found it, and I shall bear it.”

Seraphina studied her for a long moment. Then she reached over and tucked a strand of hair back behind Leonora’s ear. But her hand went midway. She drew back an inch, and her brows came together.

“Wait. You are letting His Grace help you?” she asked. “You said he has men...searching?”

Leonora turned her head. “Why do you sound surprised?”

“Because I am surprised.” Seraphina looked at her as though she were a page in her favorite book that had been rewritten overnight. “Leonora Ashcroft, in all the years I have known you, you have never once let anyone carry anything on your behalf. Lady Byron has offered for two years. Euphemia and I have offered for longer than that. You have thanked each of us very prettily and refused every time, and now Anthony says he will do it and you simply... let him? She searched her face. “What happened? What changed?”

Leonora opened her mouth. The answer was close, a good deal more than she had planned to say, and it was precisely the thing she had been about to ask. She too, had no idea what had changed.

“Seraphina, that is what I wished to speak to you about.” Leonora cleared her throat. “Even I find it quite...”

The door opened without a knock, and the sentence went out of her head entirely.

Anthony stood in the doorway with his hat in one hand. He had plainly been riding. His boots were dusted pale to the ankle, his hair had been flattened on one side by the hat and lifted on the other by the wind, and his cravat had been loosened by a careless finger and left that way. There was a smudge of road dust along his jaw. He glanced at the room, at the valise, the bed and the two of them on it, and a faint, self-conscious frown crossed his brow, not certain what he had walked in on.

Leonora’s heart took a wrong step, like a foot misses a stair in the dark. It did not skip so much as drop, and for the length of a breath she forgot whether she had been in the middle of speaking.

That had never happened to her before. She had been startled by plenty of men and irritated by most of them, and this particular one had irritated her daily since the afternoon she arrived, but none of it had ever once removed a sentence from her mouth.

“Forgive me,” Anthony said. “I was told William had come.”

“He has gone to find Alice, Your Grace.” Seraphina rose and curtsied, shaking out her skirts. “I was just telling Leonora she looks tired.”

“She does, rather.” He looked at Leonora, and the frown softened a little. “I did not mean that unkindly.”

“I know how you meant it,” Leonora said, and was dismayed to hear how steady her voice came out when everything beneath it was not.

Alice burst into the room with a nightdress clutched to her chest like a captured flag, William a step behind her looking faintly out of breath.

“I found it!” Alice beamed, sprinting to the valise to put it in.

It took William and Anthony about an hour to discuss the Bristol contract, and then another hour for Alice to say goodbye to every one of Her Grace’s cats, before they were on their way. Alice hugged Leonora around the waist so hard it forced the air from her lungs, then repeated it with Anthony, who patted her back twice, stiffly, as though testing whether she might break. William shook Anthony’s hand and said something low that Leonora did not catch, and Anthony answered it with a shake of his head.

Seraphina was last. She paused with one foot on the threshold and turned back.

“We will talk about this again,” she said to Leonora. “Whatever it is, you also wish to talk about. Perhaps, you’ll come visit? “

Leonora only nodded.

When the carriage had rolled out of sight beyond the gate, Leonora stood in the hall with her hands pressed flat together, listening to the silence that had settled over the house.

“Will you come to the library?” Anthony asked. “I have news. I would prefer to say it sitting down.”