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“Do I?”

“Yes, and I think it is easier for you to believe the worst version of it because it gives you an excuse to hide behind your bloody walls again rather than let me stand beside you through whatever comes next.”

“You know nothing of what I need right now,” he grunted.

“Then tell me,” Laura pressed, desperate now. “Instead of deciding for both of us what distance looks like.”

But he had already gone somewhere she couldn’t follow, his gaze distant. She watched him go back to a time before trust had built between them, and felt something in her chest break at the sight of it.

“I need to see this through,” he said, his tone final. “I need to do it without dividing my attention, without wondering, every time I look at you, whether you’re still afraid of what I might become in pursuit of it. I owe myself that much.”

Laura stood very still for a long moment.

“You are choosing this,” she said steadily. “I want you to understand that. Whatever you tell yourself about duty and promise, you are choosing to shut me out. I hope that when this is over, whatever it costs you, you find it was worth what you’re throwing away.”

She left the room without waiting for his answer.

The rest of the week drifted by like a slow, cold tide she could not avoid.

Nathaniel left the house early each morning and returned late, sometimes well past midnight. Laura learned, from the careful reports Mrs. Holt brought her, that he had taken to questioning old servants from Grantham’s household, tracking down men who had once done business with Cumberlea, and spending long hours locked in his study with Croft poring over documents that never seemed to yield the proof he was so desperately seeking.

He ate little. He slept less. Twice she heard him pacing in his study well past three in the morning, and once, as she passed his door near dawn, she heard him speaking low to no one.

Rehearsing a confrontation with Cumberlea that has not yet happened and perhaps never will, she realized with a sickening lurch.

Alden, she learned from a stiff note that arrived one afternoon and was never answered, had quietly withdrawn from all business dealings. He had written of vague concerns about associating his name with a man capable of such a public display of temper. It was, she understood without being told, a significant blow, and she grieved it on Nathaniel’s behalf.

Everett came twice that week and was twice turned away from the study with some clipped excuse. On the third visit, Laura found him in the front hall, sitting on the floor with his elbows on his knees, rubbing his face in clear frustration.

“He won’t see me,” he said when she came to greet him. “I’ve known that man since we were boys, quite literally throwing mud at each other in the stable yard, and he will not so much as open his study door. I don’t know what to do with him when he goes like this.”

“Neither do I,” she admitted.

To her surprise, she found that saying it aloud to someone who understood eased something in her chest, if only slightly.

“He’s punishing himself, you know,” Everett continued, quieter now. “Not you. Not even Cumberlea, not really, not in any way that will help him find what he’s looking for. He’s punishing himself for every year he didn’t see what was happening to Isabella, and he’s decided, in his own bloody stubborn way, that suffering for it properly is somehow owed.”

“I know,” Laura sighed, sinking down next to him. “You are right. I told him as much the morning after, but it didn’t reach him.”

“It rarely does when he’s like this.” Everett managed a small, tired smile. “Give him time, if you can bear to. I don’t say that lightly, knowing what it costs you to wait. But I’ve watched him do this before, in smaller ways, and eventually the wall comes down again. It always has, with you. I must believe it will again.”

Iris noticed. Children always did. Despite the performances adults put on, they missed almost nothing. Laura knew because she had also noticed everything growing up in her father’s household.

“Uncle Nathaniel is sad again,” Iris said one evening, halfway through a bedtime story Laura had been reading to her. “Sadder than before. Is it because of the man at the ball?”

“How do you know about that?” Laura asked, setting the book down.

“I hear things.” Iris shrugged.

“I suppose you do,” Laura said, choosing her words carefully. “Your uncle is trying to do something very difficult right now. Something to do with your mama and the people who hurt her. It’s making him tired and a little distant, but it isn’t because of anything you’ve done, and it isn’t because he’s stopped loving you. I promise you that.”

“Is it because of you?” Iris asked, and the question struck Laura to the core. “Did you and Uncle Nathaniel fight?”

Laura hesitated for a moment too long.

Iris’s small face crumpled into a frown.

“We had a disagreement,” Laura said gently, drawing the girl close. “Adults do that sometimes, even when they care about each other very much. It doesn’t mean either of us is going anywhere, Iris. I promised you that once before; do you remember? In the garden, after we planted the flowers. I meant it then, and I mean it now. I am not going anywhere.”