She let out a breath. “You’ve been very kind.”
He tipped his head, brushing the brim of his hat as he offered her the ghost of a bow. “I’ll return once I’ve learned something.”
His coat collar lifted against the wind, and footsteps quiet on the stone, he was gone.
Eliza stood for a long while after the door had closed, her eyes fixed on the empty space where he’d stood. She wasn’t waiting for him to return.
She was waiting for Georgina.
But Georgina didn’t come.
A knock at the service door came just after sunset, followed by the quick shuffling of boots and a muttered explanation from a kitchen maid. A village boy had brought word: someone had seen a woman matching Lady Ravenstock’s description near the old toll road. Cloaked, walking alone, boarding a small, dark carriage.
It was vague. It was secondhand. But it was something.
Alex was out the door before the maid had finished the tale. Barrington went with him, coat only half-buttoned, sword strapped hastily over his shoulder.
Back at Ravenstock, Eliza remained in the drawing room, the ticking of the mantel clock growing louder with every passing moment. She paced in measured loops, crossing and re-crossing the same narrow patch of carpet. Her boots clicked faintly on the floor. Mrs. Hemsley sat in her chair by the hearth, her knitting untouched in her lap. The fire gave off little warmth.
Outside, the wind had picked up, whistling through the chimney like a voice trying to speak but never quite finding the words.
The minutes stretched. Then slowed. Then snapped.
Hoofbeats. Distant at first, then louder, sharper.
Eliza stopped mid-stride.
The door opened, spilling cold air into the hall. Alex stepped inside, his coat still damp from the road, his face pale beneath the grime.
“It wasn’t her,” he said. His voice scraped low, dull with fury, and that frightened her more than anything. “A washerwoman. Wrong age. Wrong height. Wrong everything.”
He’d let hope take root. That was the worst of it. He’d built his hope out of her name, out of the memory of her voice, and now the sound of it splintered in his chest. Let it bloom in the space between hoofbeats. Now it was rotting.
Barrington followed behind him, slower. “She had the samecloak,” he offered, as if that justified their hope.
Mrs. Hemsley rose without a word and left the room.
Eliza didn’t speak. She looked at Alex, then at the space behind him as though she might still catch the flutter of a familiar cloak, the glint of golden hair, a voice raised in apology.
But the space behind him remained still. Outside, the wind swept the leaves along the path.
*
Later that night,long past the hour when most had gone to bed, Eliza sat curled on the edge of Georgina’s chaise in the window alcove, wrapped in a shawl that smelled faintly of rose water and salt.
She hadn’t meant to come in here. Her fingers had turned the handle before her heart could catch up.
It was as Georgina had left it. The inkstand was covered. The chair pushed in. A shawl, half-folded, lay across the end of the bed. One of her books, Darwin, of all things, was open to a marked page, the ribbon slightly askew. A hairbrush rested on the vanity, its silver back catching the moonlight, a single strand of blonde hair still caught in its bristles.
The scent in the room was familiar. Lavender from her soap. Dust warmed by the sun. A whisper of ink and wax.
Eliza drew her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them. The shawl slipped from one shoulder. She didn’t bother to fix it.
She had gone over it, the park, the note, the shops, the walk back to Ravenstock, again and again. Nothing out of place. Nothing she could undo. The silence between them had not been troubling. Georgina had smiled the last time they spoke.
She should have waited longer. Followed. Asked one more question. Something. Anything.
The fire in the grate had burned low, casting long fingers of goldagainst the far wall, pulsing gently as if trying to fill the space with warmth that no longer held.
