“Miss Eleanor Hargrove,” he said, handing her a velum.
The address was inked in elegant script.
Miss Eleanor Hargrove
Thirty-four Cavendish Mews
Immediate
Eleanor’s fingers closed around the envelope.
The footman bowed and withdrew without a word, leaving behind the faintest whiff of lavender pomade and that peculiar chill of being summoned.
Graham eased closer, his shoulder nearly brushing hers as he watched the retreating figure through the crack.
“He knows I moved,” Eleanor said softly.
“He knows you moved,” Graham agreed, voice low.
“How?”
“We may never know, but adjust,” he answered.
Eleanor broke the seal.
Inside was stiff white card stock, the wording polished into harmlessness.
Lady Mordaunt requests the pleasure of Miss Eleanor Hargrove’s company tomorrow evening for a musicale and supper.
The words were faultless. That was the problem. Invitations were meant to feel like open hands. Yet this one felt like a gloved finger beneath her chin, tipping her face toward the light.
Eleanor lifted her gaze.
Graham’s expression had gone cold in a way that was not quite anger.
It was recognition.
“Social surveillance,” Eleanor said.
“A pivot,” Graham replied. “And a trap dressed as velvet.”
Eleanor’s pulse quickened with fear, yes, but also the sharp, illicit thrill of a pattern clicking into place.
“Then we go,” she said.
Graham’s eyes snapped to hers. “You do not even know what you will be walking into.”
“I know enough,” Eleanor said, and her voice did not shake. “If Lady Mordaunt is reaching for me, my father expected it. Which means the catalogue is already doing what it was designed to do.”
For one suspended breath, they simply looked at each other—two people standing over a desk of paper that could get them killed, with rain still in their hair and the city pressing against the door.
Graham’s hand came to her elbow brief, steady, undeniably real. “At Lady Mordaunt’s,” he said, and it sounded like a vow disguised as instruction, “you will stay close.”
Eleanor’s mouth curved, sharp and bright. “Careful, Lord Rathbourne. That sounds dangerously like preference.”
His thumb tightened once against her sleeve, then released. “It sounds like survival,” he said. But his gaze stayed on her a beat too long.
And Eleanor, infuriatingly, felt it.
