“He is hardly a rake skulking in corridors in search of debutantes. He is a duke. And a friend. We had matters to discuss.”
“Matters that could not be addressed in the presence of others?”
“That is correct.”
Her gaze lingered on me, no longer sharp, but searching. “You are too calm,” she said at last. “And that troubles me.”
She paused, her expression shifting in a way I had rarely seen—less judgment, more memory.
“When your father fell in love with your mother,” she continued quietly, “he sounded very much the same. He insisted I was mistaken. That I misread what was plainly before me.” A faint, rueful breath escaped her. “At the time, I feared he had set his heart upon a foolish girl—one who seemed to possess more hair than sense.”
“Mama was not foolish,” I said at once.
“No, she wasn’t,” my grandmother replied gently. “But I did not learn that until later, God forgive me.” Her eyes softened, fixed somewhere beyond the room. “After she married your father, she became a devoted wife and a remarkable mother. She made him profoundly happy.” A beat. “For that, I shall always be grateful.”
She straightened, the present returning to her with measured resolve.
“My point, Rosalynd, is this: you are behaving in much the same manner. Your attachment to Steele is evident to anyone with a set of working eyes.” Her gaze met mine steadily. “And his attachment to you is equally plain.”
“You imply Steele and I share some sort of romantic understanding,” I said. “We don’t.” The lie felt absurd even as it left my tongue.
“I imply nothing. I state, plain and clear, that you are in danger of forming a deep attachment to a man whose life you do not fully comprehend. A man who does not wish to marry.”
“I do not wish to marry either.”
She took a deep breath and, for a few moments, did not speak. But then she spoke, her voice softening a fraction. “I do not seek to crush you, child. I know you involve yourself in matters of reform, that you visit places polite society pretends not to see. You did so long before Steele muddled your life. I do not say such work is wrong. I suspect it may even be needed. There is too much suffering in this city.”
“There is,” I murmured.
“But you are not invincible. Reputation is fragile. You walk into shadows that can drown you. And you do so with a man who moves through those depths more easily than you. That does not make him safe. It only makes him more dangerous.”
The room closed in around me. The portraits on the walls—Rosehaven ancestors serene in gilt—had never stepped foot in a mission for fallen women. They had never seen a girl lying cold in a coroner’s cellar.
“I cannot stop,” I said.
Her gaze sharpened. “Can you not?”
“Girls are going missing, Grandmother. One has been found dead. They are being taken or lured to false employment. If I turn away, I am complicit in their destruction.”
“You are a lady, not a constable.”
“Is that all I am allowed to be? A lady?”
The words hung between us, heavier than I intended.
Her fingers tightened on her cane. For a moment, the mask slipped, and I glimpsed not the Dowager Countess but a mother who had once lost a son to a senseless accident.
“You are my granddaughter,” she said quietly. “I wish to see you happy. I wish to see you safe. If you fall in love with this man, if you bind yourself to his life, you bind yourself to his burdens. You risk heartbreak. You risk scandal. You risk being drawn under by causes that do not let go.”
“I am already drawn,” I said softly. “Whether by Steele or by the girls or both. It hardly matters. They are tangled together now.”
“You admit it, then.”
“I admit that my heart is in danger,” I whispered.
There—bare and irrevocable—the truth lay between us.
Her expression softened. “Oh, child.”
