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Leonora blinked quickly. “That sounds a great deal like happiness.”

“Do not tell anyone.” Lady Byron straightened her back. “Which brings me to you. You are the one I worry over, and you know I have always said so. You hold yourself so tightly, my dear. You have had one mission since you were a girl, and it has carried you through everything, and I would not take it from you for a kingdom. But I fear that when it ends, it will end too late. You will have spent every year chasing one answer, and when you finally catch it, you will turn around and find the rest of your life has gone by without you in it.”

The words struck somewhere low. Leonora folded her hands to keep them from shaking.

“I do not think that is what will happen,” she said. “Perhaps love simply is not meant for me. I am not sad about it. I do not need it.”

“Are you quite sure of that?”

“I am.”

“Because I have been watching you since you came home, and I have watched you for months before that.” Lady Byron’s voice stayed quiet. “You are not as headstrong as you were. You listen now. You tell us things. When Seraphina came to dinner, you sat and let her finish a sentence before arguing, which I did not think possible. The girl who began this search would not have done that. She would not have let anyone close enough to try.”

Leonora smiled. “Perhaps I am growing older.”

“I think you are making room. Look at what you have taken on.” She counted on her fingers. “You look after Her Grace, who is not the easiest woman in England. You mind Alice. You are the first person Cordelia and Georgianna ask for when they visit. Your life is expanding, Leonora, in directions you did not choose. I have begun to wonder if there is room in it for something more, and if the gloom you have been carrying is only fear of that.”

For a long moment Leonora said nothing.

“Perhaps,” she said at last. “I will not tell you that you are wrong. But I cannot think about it yet. I am so close, Lady Byron. I have one more answer to find, how she died and where she lies. If I stop now to look at whatever else is happening to me, it would be like leaving a letter half sealed. I need to finish this first. Once I know everything, once it is over, I will deal with whatever remains. I promise you I will. But I cannot be pulled two ways until then.”

Lady Byron studied her for a long moment. She did not argue, and Leonora was almost sorry she did not.

“Then we shall leave it there,” she said. “For today.” She rose and held out her hand. “It is a lovely morning, and you have not been outside in a week. We are going for a walk. I will not hear that you are tired.”

Leonora took the hand and let herself be drawn up from the window seat. The room had begun to feel small. Four days in her bedroom and an hour at this window, and she had not taken a full breath in any of it. Air would help. A long walk under a wide sky might give her mind somewhere to put all the things it had been circling.

“Yes,” she said. “I think I should like that.”

Lady Byron’s brows rose. “No argument?”

“I am too tired to argue.”

“Hm. I shall remember you said so.” She patted the hand once and let it go. “Hyde Park, I think. Fetch your bonnet and a shawl. The wind off the water can be unkind.”

By the time the carriage reached the park, the sun was out in full. The path was crowded with parasols and slow, strolling couples, and the air smelled of cut grass and horses. Leonora walked beside Lady Byron with her arm tucked through hers, her bonnet tilted against the glare, and for the first time in days, her shoulders came down from around her ears.

She had promised Anthony she would stay indoors. But a stroll on a public path, with Lady Byron’s hand on her arm and half of London within shouting distance, hardly seemed to count. So she pushed the thought aside.

“You are quiet,” Lady Byron said.

“I am enjoying the sun.”

“You are not. But I shall allow it.”

They had nearly reached the bend where the path curved toward the water when Leonora saw the cloak.

It was a plain brown woolen cloak, far too heavy for the day, and it belonged to a woman standing at the edge of the trees. Her hood was drawn forward over her brow. She stood quite still among the strolling crowd, the way a stone stands in a river, and Leonora would not have looked twice at her except for the small bright thing at her collar. A silver pin. It caught the sun and threw it back.

Leonora stopped walking.

“Leonora?” Lady Byron’s hand tightened on her arm. “What is it?”

She could not answer. Her mouth had gone dry. She knew that pin. She knew the tilt of that head, which she had seen across a street before and lost in a crowd, and had spent weeks persuading herself she had imagined.

Then the woman turned, slowly, and the hood shifted, and Leonora saw her face.

She was not looking away this time. She was looking straight at Leonora. Her eyes were wide and wet and terribly steady, and her lips had parted as if she meant to speak.