Elise moved her spoon absently through stew she no longer tasted. “If they arrive,” she said softly, “they will take everything…”
Mr. Leigh’s gaze was fixed on her.
“Everything that is precious to me,” she continued after a pause.
Silence fell again, heavier now.
Then the sound came—three hard blows, loud enough to startle the very air. The front door was being pounded.
Elise’s blood turned to ice.
Another blow came and then another. This was not the polite knock of a visitor, nor the hesitant rapping of a villager come to ask about a roof tile. This was a demand, an assault—a message delivered with fists.
Mr. Leigh was on his feet at once, his chair scraping roughly on the stone flags. Elise rose too, though her knees felt weak. “Stay here,” he said and simply moved, with swift and controlled steps, from the room. Ignoring his order and gripping the edge of her shawl as if it were a weapon, Elise followed.
They reached the front hall. The house was in near darkness, the lamps kept low to avoid drawing attention. The shadowsmade the space unfamiliar. Elise heard her own breathing echo too loud in the stillness.
The banging came again—then ceased.
Elise snapped her gaze to the narrow window by the door. Light flickered outside—orange, living, flaring unnaturally against the night.
Mr. Leigh opened the door without hesitation. A gust of wind swept in, cold and brisk. The smell of smoke struck Elise like a blow. There, on the front path, a torch had been driven into the earth like a stake. The flame leaped and hissed, fed by oil. Beneath it, pinned to the stake with a knife, was a folded paper.
Elise made a sound—half breath, half protest. The sight of a knife in her own soil felt like a violation more intimate than the ransacking of her belongings.
Mr. Leigh moved first. He took his coat, tugged it off, and smothered the flame with firm, practised motions. The torch sputtered, flared once more, then died with a final hiss.
Elise stood frozen, watching the smoke curl into the air as Mr. Leigh pulled the note free, careful of the knife. He pulled her inside and closed the door before holding the note to the lantern light.
His face changed as he read—hardening, a look Elise had seen only in men who were preparing for conflict. He handed it to her.
Her fingers shook as she took it. The handwriting was crude but legible, the spelling poor enough to suggest either ignorance or deliberate disguise.
MIDNIGHT.
LARKIN’S KEY OR BELAIR HOUSE BURNS.
COME ALONE. NO WATCH. NO SOLDIERS.
LEAVE AT THE SIGNPOST BEYOND THE GATE
Elise’s throat closed.For an instant she could not breathe.
It was not the threat itself—she had lived under threat before, though never so bluntly. It was the certainty in it, the presumption that she could be commanded and that her home, her girls’ refuge, could be treated as tinder for the blackguard’s impatience.
Her vision blurred. Then Mr. Leigh’s hand closed around her wrist—firm, warm and anchoring.
He did not release her wrist immediately. The contact should have been nothing—merely a practical grip. Yet Elise felt it as if her skin had become suddenly too sensitive.
His fingers were warm and his palm firm; a man’s hand, accustomed to strength.
Elise realized with sudden, unwelcome clarity that she had not been held since Charles had died—not in grief, not in comfort, not in affection. She had lived by self-command for so long that the simplest touch now felt like danger of a different kind.
She pulled her wrist free gently, not abruptly. “I am not faint.”
“I did not think you were,” he replied.
He took the note from her hand and read it again, as if the words might change by being stared at.
