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“Very well. The thirty-first?”

He could make no sense of her. “The thirty-first, then,” he said slowly. “I’m not at liberty to use my father’s carriage until half four. I could meet you by Bruton Mews.”

five

Sophie’s fingers swam after a stray hairpin atop her dressing table. “Dratted—thing—” She finally clasped it between her nails with a sigh and leant closer to the mirror. Her cheeks were flushed. Not the pretty variety of coloring associated with rouge or flattery, but the ruddy sort, which was better accompanied by cursing or coughing. The color striped down her throat, disappearing beneath the collar of her dull, black cloak. She dropped the pin. “Glorious!”

She squeezed the fingers of her right hand until the bones overlapped and ached. See? They were still. They were not shaking. She closed her eyes, drew in thin, deep breaths. She shouldn’t feel ashamed—she didn’t feel ashamed.

Blackmailing Mr. Balfour was a product of necessity. Just as going downstairs and making her excuses to her parents was. She had been rehearsing her lines for the last five days since devising the scheme. Yes, the Penneys are waiting for me just opposite the square. No, I don’t need Anne to accompany me. Yes, they have a box reserved for tonight’s show at Drury.

It was only now, as she rose and collected her reticule and large, black poke bonnet, that the excuses began to feel like proper lies. But truth was a necessary casualty. Iphigenia’s return was a final tether to Edmund. The devil take her before she missed the opportunity to feel near to him one last time.

The drawing room door squalled when she opened it. A disheveled tea tray sat precariously close to the edge of the little table between the settee and the armchair. Cake crumbs riddled the plates. The tea box’s lid had been left ajar, the key—meant to protect against theft—laying beside it. For a servant to steal tea leaves, however, they’d first have to come and tidy the room, build the fire.

Papa’s arrhythmic snores filled the space, louder in the absence of crackling flames. Mama’s bare feet twitched from the dregs of a dream. They might’ve spent the entirety of their day in this fashion for all Sophie knew. She slipped from the room, preparing to instead give her excuses to the footman in the entry hall—except he wasn’t there.

All of this was convenient, really. She ought to be relishing the mass disorder of this household and the way it played neatly into her hand, except anger prickled in her breast. She rifled through the drawer of the table by the door, preparing to jot off a note.

Only two sheets of notepaper remained, the ink pot had scarce anything in it, and the quill—Sophie cursed it as she scrawled out her message—had needed a penknife taken to it ages before it reached this stage of dullness.

Laughter drifted up from the servants’ stairs, and Sophie slipped from the house before she could let her ire get the better of her. She couldn’t blame them. Or at least not any more than she could blame her parents and herself. This family had been trapped in the perpetual sleep of grief, and set no precedent for how their home should be run. Sharp quills and dust-free surfaces meant little when one forever had mortality on the mind.

Order was just another thing she must rectify once having married well and returned to Sussex. Fulfilling that duty, making her parents proud, would restore a part of her. She would cease feeling like each day offered little more than survival.

Rather than walk past the windows of every fashionable townhome, Sophie opened her black parasol and cut through the square itself. The brim of her bonnet concealed a good deal of her face, and she let the parasol do the rest, draping it over her left shoulder like a shield. The grass squelched beneath her boots. Rain had come fitfully since before dawn, and even now, the sky cast a thick gloom on everything within its reach. Mist blurred anything that stood a distance removed. Errant wisps of fog clung to the pavement.

Bruton Mews was nearly a part of the square itself, and she spotted the stark figure of Mr. Balfour before she’d even crossed the street. He stood, clad in fine black evening wear, by the stone archway. The scent of horses was amplified in the damp, and the clatter of hooves from the mews reached her as she stopped before him. He had been watching her progress. Now she realized he was frowning.

“Where is your maid?” His hands were tucked into the pockets of his greatcoat. He looked larger than she remembered him. Taller, too, and the way his brow furrowed seemed to affect the whole of his face. There was a thoroughness to his disapproval.

What have I done?

The thought was swatted and killed in the next instant. She gave a small smile, and made a show of looking slightly over each shoulder before returning her focus to him.

His frown deepened. “You cannot be serious.”

“I am. Quite.”

Behind him, a carriage with two bay horses in the traces waited, a white-haired coachman standing beside it. Sophie took a diagonal step that put her nearer to both Mr. Balfour and the vehicle. “Shall we?” She had to lift her chin slightly to meet his eye from this closeness.

A muscle in his jaw ticked. His skin was fair, his eyes desperately dark. “You understand, I presume, the risk you’re proposing to take? Getting into a closed carriage with the likes of me—or with any man, for that matter—”

“Yes.” As if she needed more doubts piled atop her own! “I asked to travel discreetly for a reason, sir, and the longer you delay us the more risk you subject us to.”

“Then by all means.” There was bitterness in his words and in the flourish of his arm gesturing toward the vehicle.

The coachman lowered the step and handed her in. He had kind eyes and a rounded waistline, giving off the air of a grandfatherly figure. Somehow, that eased her nerves a measure. The benefits were ruined a moment later, however, when Mr. Balfour took his seat opposite her. The door closed them inside.

He kept his eyes averted and his jaw in what appeared to be vice-like tightness. Even his hands came to rest in the space between his knees, leather-gloved fingers interlocking. The carriage started forward. That was it, then. She was truly following through with it. If she had to subject herself to a looking glass now, she was afraid her color would rival that of tomato skins.

“I noted the absence of a footman,” she said, staring at her own tightly folded hands.

“Mr. Chenoweth, the man who’s just handed you in, is the only member of my father’s staff I can trust to attest I spent this evening in Drury Lane, occupied by a show.”

Her eyes lifted. “Wouldn’t you know it, I’m supposed to be there myself.” That explained his fine clothes, then. The closely tailored lines peeked out from beneath his greatcoat. “Would that I could trust my maid as you trust your coachman.”

“If we’re approached this evening, just how do you intend for me to introduce you?”