Meet me at the eastern shore in half an hour. It concerns your sisters. Come alone.
He read it twice. The noise of the room seemed to recede—not vanish, but dull, as though someone had closed a door inside his head.
For a brief moment, he felt nothing at all. Then his fingers tightened.
“Well?” someone next to him prompted. “Is it scandalous?”
William folded the paper neatly once, then again, and tucked it into the inner pocket of his coat. The smile returned to his face without effort. It had never required effort.
“Hardly,” he said. “I am disappointed myself.”
Laughter followed. Someone demanded he stay for another round. A lady tugged lightly at his sleeve.
“Just one more dance, Your Grace,” she said. “You cannot abandon us now.”
“Alas,” William replied, lifting his glass in farewell, “even dukes must occasionally breathe.”
He drained the last of the brandy, set it aside, and made a show of stretching, as though the night had simply grown tedious.
“Fresh air,” he added lightly. “I shall return improved.”
Ashby watched him closely. “You rarely leave a party early.”
“Then treasure the occasion,” William said. “They are so rare.”
He turned before another question could be asked.
Outside, the night was cool and sharp, the air carrying the distant scent of salt. The sound of the party was muffled the moment the terrace doors closed behind him.
He stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust. The lamps along the drive cast long, uneven shadows across the gravel as he descended the steps alone.
Then he reached into his pocket and unfolded the note again.
It concerns your sisters.
He stood there in the dark, the paper in his hand, the sea a black weight at the edge of everything. The party glittered on behind him. Somewhere above him, two floors up, his sisters were asleep—or pretending to be, which was close enough.
He folded the note. Put it away and walked towards the water, coat collar turned up against the wind, boots striking the ground in a steady rhythm, the folded note heavy against his chest.
By the time the lights of the house faded behind him, the laughter might have belonged to another man entirely.
CHAPTER 2
The baby had opinions.
Cecily had known this in the abstract—babies cried, babies required things, babies operated on a schedule entirely their own with no regard for anyone else’s—but knowing it in the abstract and lying awake at half past four in the morning while those opinions were expressed at considerable volume through the wall were two different experiences entirely.
She stared at the ceiling. The crying continued. Then, distantly, she heard Beatrice’s footsteps—her sister’s particular soft, unhurried tread that meant she had done this enough times that she no longer started—and a moment later, the volume reduced itself to a series of hiccupping complaints, and then near silence.
Beatrice had been married for three years now. She moved through motherhood with a steadiness Cecily both admired and did not entirely understand, as though sleepless nights and small crises were simply another form of order.
Cecily waited, decided sleep was no longer a realistic ambition, then reached for her wrapper.
The nursery was at the end of the corridor, small and warm and smelling of milk and lavender. A single lamp burned low on the table.
Beatrice sat in the chair by the window with the baby against her shoulder, patting his back in a steady, rhythmic way, her hair loose down her back, her expression entirely peaceful for a woman who had been awake since before the sun had started to rise.
She looked up when Cecily appeared in the doorway.
