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“You’re not a rattlepate, so stop acting like one,” Millie said. “She will find such treatment intolerable without us to provide comfort.”

Asquith scowled. “She and my mother arranged this visit; I don’t see that I come into it at all.”

“Oh, you don’t?” Millie folded her arms. “Think, Asquith. Be sure.”

Eliza quelled her sister with a hand against her arm. “Lady Asquith called on me before she made the offer,” she explained. “She believes time away from the rest of us would help Lenora overcome her shyness. She says we protect her too much, and she must come out of her shell.”

“Shell.” Asquith snorted. “What an odd way to refer to Lenora’s many deceptions.”

Millie frowned. “Lenora doesn’t lie.”

He rolled his eyes. “Lenora lies all the time.”

“She takes on the personas of other people,” Eliza said. “But only when she’s scared. And that’s not the same thing as lying.

“If you insist.” He inclined his head. “But you cannot make me believe she had no part in the scheme.”

“As it happens, she did not.” Eliza held up her right hand as if taking an oath. “And she is sick with worry.”

Lenora? Doubtful.

Then again, he’d never seen her eyes so wide. Not for quite some time, anyway.

Did you hurt your hand? He heard her child's voice and shivered.

“She’s never been on her own,” Millie added.

“Very well, I concede she might be worried,” Asquith conceded. “What do you want me to do?”

Again, the sisters exchanged a glance.

“You mean, for once, you don’t have a plan?” Asquith asked.

“We haven’t had time to make one,” Millie shot back.

“Just make sure she doesn’t...” Eliza searched for an appropriate exhortation. “Try to disappear.”

He held back a snort. Disappear?

Lenora frequently made herself the center of attention, at least when she was mimicking. “Lenora is far more likely to turn my mother’s entire household upside down.”

“Lenora?” they exclaimed in unison.

“Our Lenora?” Eliza said. “The one who only ever wears wallflower green?”

No, their Lenora, the one who boldly asked a boy she just met what happened to his hand. The one who sent forged letters to blackmail her guardian into clandestine meetings. The one who would lift her skirt and swish her underthings to prove some point about his smalls.

Or, rather, his man-shift.

He went on the attack. “She told me you bribed my stable staff, Eliza.”

Eliza squinted. “When did she tell you such nonsense?”

He shut his mouth. Having asked Lenora not to speak about the meetings, he could hardly mention them now.

“She’s wrong. I didn’t need Barker’s help,” Eliza said. “I escaped on my own.”

“I bribed the stablehand,” Millie explained, “and only to keep his mouth shut after he discovered Eliza had stolen his coat.”