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She had wanted to press further, wanted to insist that he need not make perfect sense of a thing before sharing it with her, that half-formed troubles shared were often easier to bear than fully-formed ones carried alone. She thought, not for the first time, of how her own scandal had taught her the opposite lesson – that silence, however well-intentioned, tended only to compound whatever pain it was meant to spare others from witnessing.

She had learned that lesson at great cost, once, and she had hoped, foolishly perhaps, that sharing it with Hudson might spare him having to learn it the same way. But something in his expression had stopped her – a plea, perhaps, or simply exhaustion – and so she had let the matter rest, telling herself that patience, however difficult, was the kinder course.

She was no longer entirely certain she had chosen correctly.

Sleep proved elusive later that night.

Anna lay awake long after the house had gone quiet, her mind circling restlessly between the twins’ evening fussiness, her siblings’ careful concern, and the memory of Hudson’s face at dinner – polite, distant, entirely closed to her in a way that made her ache with a feeling she did not care to examine too closely.

Perhaps Phoebe was right, and patience alone would see them through it. But Anna had never been a woman inclined toward patience when a matter troubled her so thoroughly, and after nearly an hour of fruitless attempts at sleep, she finally admitted defeat, rising from her bed and pulling a dressing robe over her nightgown.

She stopped first at the nursery, as she so often did when sleep escaped her, easing the door open just wide enough to slip inside without disturbing the quiet. Both children slept soundly, Lucy sprawled with the particular abandon of a child entirely unconcerned with dignity, Timothy curled more carefully on his side as though even in sleep he required a measure of order around him. Anna lingered a moment, watching the gentle rise and fall of their breathing, and felt something in her chest steady at the sight of them.

Despite whatever troubled Hudson, whatever distance had settled between them these past few days, she thought, smoothing a hand gently over Lucy’s dark curls, this at least remained solid and true. These two lives, entirely dependent upon her, entirely hers regardless of whatever else shifted or faltered around them.

But even that thought, comforting as it was, could not entirely dispel the ache that had settled beneath her ribs since dinner, and after a few more minutes spent simply watching them sleep, she pressed a soft kiss to each small forehead and slipped back out into the corridor, her earlier resolve returning with renewed strength.

She would speak with him. Tonight, if he was still awake – and if he was not, she would wait until morning- but she would not spend another day wondering in silence what had changed between them, not when they had come so far already, not when she had allowed herself to hope for rather more than she had ever expected to want from this marriage.

Her bare feet were silent against the floor as she made her way down the corridor past her own room toward his chambers, already composing in her mind the words she meant to say to him. Perhaps she would simply ask him plainly – what troubles you, and why will you not let me help carry it? – rather than continue this careful dance of politeness that satisfied neither of them.

In her deep thought, she had failed to hear the soft sounds of footfalls drawing close behind her, or sense the presence that had been watching her for a while.

She had scarcely taken a few steps beyond her own door when a hand closed hard over her mouth from behind, and before she could so much as draw breath to scream, she felt herself being dragged backward into the dark.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Anna could not scream.

She had tried – some instinctive part of her mind demanding she make noise, fight, do something to alert the household to what was happening – but the hand clamped over her mouth was firm and unyielding, and terror had stolen whatever breath she might have used regardless. She was aware, distantly, of being half-carried, half-dragged through the darkened corridor, down a servants’ stair she rarely used, and out into the chill of the night air before her mind had fully caught up to the reality of what was occurring.

Her mind, even amid the terror, could not help but summon the memory of another night a little over a year ago – another dark street, another set of unfamiliar hands, another carriage waiting to carry her toward a fate she had not chosen. She had thought, foolishly perhaps, that such nights belonged entirely to her past. She had built an entire life since then upon the assumption that she was, at last, safe.

The thought lent her a fresh burst of desperate strength, and she twisted hard against her captor’s grip, only for a second set of hands to steady her other side, murmuring something low and urgent that she could not make out over the roar of her own pulse in her ears.

A carriage waited beyond the garden wall. She was lifted into it with more care than the roughness of her abduction thus far had suggested, deposited onto a cushioned seat, and the hand finally, mercifully, released her mouth.

“Please,” Anna gasped, her voice cracking with fear, “Please, I beg you, do not harm me – my children –”

“You are safe, Anna. I promise you; you are entirely safe.”

The voice was familiar enough to still the frantic hammering of her heart by some fraction, though it took her a moment, in the darkness of the swaying carriage, to place it.

“Edith?”

“I am here,” Edith said, and Anna could hear, even through her own residual terror, the note of genuine distress in her friend’s voice. “I am so sorry to have frightened you so. That was never our intention.”

The carriage rattled onward through the dark streets for what felt an eternity, though Anna suspected it was no more than a quarter of an hour, her heart still pounding, her mind still struggling to reconcile the horror of the abduction with the familiar comfort of her friend’s presence beside her. When at last it drew to a stop, she was helped down – gently this time, a hand steadying her elbow – and led into a modest but well-appointed townhouse she did not recognize.

It was only once she stood in the small, candlelit parlor within, her breathing finally beginning to slow, that she saw Cornelius standing near the hearth, his expression tight with something between guilt and determination.

“Anna,” Edith called again, taking both her hands, “I am truly sorry. We did not mean to harm you, or frighten you so badly. We only needed to get you out of the house without Hudson knowing, and I could not think of a gentler way to accomplish it without risking discovery.”

Anna took a moment simply to breathe, to let her racing pulse settle, before she trusted herself to speak.

Edith pressed a cup of water into her hands, her own fingers trembling slightly as she did so, and waited with visible anxiety while Anna drank, and breathed, and allowed the worst of the fear to recede enough that coherent thought became possible once more.

“I am fine,” Anna said finally, more to reassure herself than her friend. “I am fine, Edith. Only startled rather badly. You might have simply sent a letter, you know, rather than resorting to abduction. I would have come willingly enough, had you only asked.”